Bound
by deardeer
Summary: Five years ago, Ren left the village with one goal in mind: to break a bond that's plagued her family for the past century. Even now that she's back, it's the only thing she's concerned about and she will go to any lengths to be free. canon fic.
1. The Inevitable Return of Kagiru Ren

Disclaimer: Dispite this being categorized under Sasuke, this is not a SasukexOC pairing. Just a note to keep in mind while reading. Thank you.

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**BOUND  
Part I  
Chapter 01: The Inevitable Return of Kagiru Ren**

When I was young, there was a massacre in my village. It happened down the street from my family compound, and it was all anyone could talk about for a very long time. I knew about it and, despite being the tender age of seven, knew what it was about: A bright, promising young shinobi named Uchiha Itachi, barely thirteen years old, had wiped out his entire clan in a single night, sparing only his little brother to bear the weight of the loneliness that was to come.

I left the village a little bit after that massacre happened, on a mission of my own, one that ended up taking five very long years. As I said, I was only seven at the time I left on my own, but I wasn't really on my own. The Hokage had assigned an ANBU team to look out for me, follow me for the greater part of the five years until I was able to shake them off by sneaking into the Wind Country on a circus caravan.

That was one of my finer moments.

Seven year olds, after all, aren't normally allowed to go on self-assigned missions to reclaim their family honor. I was the exception. I think the Hokage felt like he owed me something, although I couldn't say what. I mean, he's not the one who killed my family.

The old geezer drums his fingers together now, lips pulled taut as I stand before him, hands clipped behind my back. His office is the same as I remember it, give or take a few papers and books coating his desk. Books cram the shelves lining his walls, and a perfect view of the village is framed by the wide windows behind him. The office smells like stale tobacco, evidence of his bad habit.

He leans forward in his seat, sizing me up. "Kagiru Ren," he says. "You're late, you know."

I flick at the dirt under my nails. "Not hardly," I say.

"The graduation is tomorrow."

"Then I'd say I'm right on time."

"I had been expecting you to come back a bit earlier," he says, sighing, "so we could have placed you in this year's class, which would have uncomplicated things significantly."

"Also, the Village Council was annoyed when they found out they couldn't track one of the Leaf's oldest kekkei genkai, right?" I say, offering a sharp smile.

The Hokage frowns at me, but relents. "Yes, that was a concern to the Council, but it was second to your wellbeing."

"Sure it was," I say, rolling my eyes. I tap the headband I have strapped around my forehead, my nails clicking against the metal dulled with time and travel. "As far as my graduation goes, though: I don't need that experience. I've told you that before. This 'forming bonds' thing that you want me to do—I'm not interested. Do you think I'd want to run around forming bonds when I nearly spent the past five years trying to break one?"

"I only thought," he says gently, like he's coaxing a child, "you would want to replace a bond you hate with many you love."

I shake my head. "You only say that because you don't understand my situation. So, no, thank you, Hokage-sama, but I'll pass on this one."

The Hokage raises a brow, says, "I take it you haven't gotten any closer to breaking the bond than before you left, then?"

I tense, my hands rolling into fists. "No," I admit, avoiding the old man's gaze.

There is a pause, then the Hokage says, "Regardless, when you left, you made a deal with me."

"In exchange for allowing me to leave the village," I say with a heavy sigh, "I would have to graduate from the Academy, go through a few survival training courses, pass them with flying colors, and return the year that kids my age were graduating."

"The year _before_ the kids your age would be graduating," the Hokage corrects. "For the most part, the agreement was fulfilled. You completed your training, left, and are back. I am impressed. The second part of the deal, however, was that you were to retake this year at the Academy and graduate _with_ your class. You are late, Ren, and by a considerable amount, too; now you have repercussions to pay."

"I—_repercussions_?" I repeat, the composure I had felt now faltering. "But—I'm not even that late!"

"There are always consequences. You must accept that fact," the Hokage says, "especially as a shinobi. Your punishment will not be as bad as you think," he goes on when I groan, planting my face in my hands. "Seeing as it's your first day back, I will give you time to get settled before I tell you about your punishment. I will see you tomorrow, Ren. Oh, and make sure you take off your headband before anyone sees you. We don't want people asking questions."

Despite my protests, I'm dismissed. I pull my headband off my forehead, shoving it into my bag. The Hokage nods in approval and I shoulder my knapsack, trudging out of the his office. Not an hour back and I'm already fed up with this place. I should really have considered relocating.

I have nothing left here, anyway.

The scenery is one thing I can appreciate about Konoha. There is ample flora for me to bask in the shade of, for me to observe and pull together to make medicine. The trees are the only thing keeping me rooted.

I am threading through the trees in the park, jumping from shadow to shadow like a child avoiding the imaginary lava, when I hear my name. It makes me freeze in my tracks, makes the hairs on the back of my neck bristle as I jump to the defensive. That I have let my guard drop that I only notice someone once they have gotten close enough to recognize me is a testament to this village's ability to make me weak.

But the boy I see is no threat to me; in fact, the sight of him makes me straighten, makes a smile burst to my lips. He regards me with his brow drawn together in confusion, his hands shoved in his pockets. A shadow from the branches above cuts across his face, but I would recognize the slump of his shoulders and the stub of his ponytail from any angle.

"Well, if it isn't Nara Shikamaru," I say. "Funny seeing you here."

He pauses for a moment, blinking at me like he's making sure I'm real before he answers. Then he steps forward in the light, his head cocked to the side. "I could say the same about you," he says, scowling. "What are you doing here? How long have you been back?"

"One, I live here," I say, "two, I've only been back a few hours! I had to talk to the Hokage a bit to get some things settled, but—I'm here."

"Yeah," he says, tilting his head back in thought. Another pause as he takes me in, and I wonder if this situation feels as awkward for him as I feel. Nara Shikamaru. We had been best friends before I left the village, but time and distance could take a toll on any relationship, no matter how strong it is. Was. I had no contact with anyone in the village after I left, though if there were anyone I would have liked to talk to while I was away, it was Shikamaru.

He shakes his head, breaking out of his reverie, and says, "I thought you went to live with some relatives in the next town over."

Ah, there it is—the lie the Hokage had told people when I disappeared. The bond isn't necessarily a secret; those savvy enough to know about it know about it. But before I was born, the bond had been out of the cosmic rotation since nearly the founding of Konoha, so, really, only those inclined to believe in myths and legends think the bond is a real thing.

If I had stayed in the village, grown up beside Shikamaru, I might have told him at the very least. As it is, though, no one in my generation—save for one other person—should know about this bond I have.

In my anxiety to feed this lie the Hokage had created, I move my hand to my forehead, ready to adjust my headband when I remember how I had taken it off in the Hokage's office. The one sound piece of advice the Hokage had given me during that whole meeting.

"I did," I say with a shrug, moving my hands behind my back to keep them occupied. My smile is a tight line across my face. "But they let me come back so I could graduate with the class."

Skepticism braces his features. "Were you being homeschooled?" he asks, and I nod, quick to agree to any lie that makes sense. He considers this for a moment, but then leaves it alone, plopping down into the grass. Typical Shikamaru, I think as he stretches out in the shade. Curious enough to wonder, but too lazy dig any deeper.

"Same old Shikamaru, huh?" I ask, nudging him with my foot. "The exams are tomorrow, right? How do you expect to pass if you don't study or practice?"

"I've been practicing all week," he says, frowning and scooting away from my prodding toes. "Anyway, it probably won't be anything so hard that I need to train extensively for it. We're only gonna be Genin, after all—the lowest of the low."

"That's no way to think of it. At least you—_we_ will be ninja, finally."

He scoffs, his scowl deepening as he closes his eyes. "Yeah, but once we're full-fledged ninja, we'll have to go on missions and do menial tasks for people, and all that work is—"

"I know, I know: troublesome." I laugh, dropping my knapsack into the grass beside Shikamaru. "Man, Shika, you haven't changed at all."

Shikamaru shrugs, opening one eye to ask me, "Well, you don't seem to have changed much either. So I'd say we're even."

I scoff, flicking his broad forehead and causing him to flinch. "Is that a challenge?"

"No."

"Too bad. You're on." I drag Shikamaru to his feet then move to the other side of the small clearing. I present the seal of confrontation, my index and middle fingers side by side while my others curl toward my palm. "Just a little sparring match," I say, "so I can see how much you've grown."

"I came here to relax," he complains, his hands remaining shoved in his pockets. But when I maintain my form, Shikamaru slumps, mirrors the seal. "It's going to be so much more troublesome with you back, Ren."

I grin. "I'll take that as a compliment."

[+]

It ends like this: Shikamaru has me stuck in place with his shadow technique, and we stand face-to-face with our hands on our knees, our shoulders drooping under the weight of our fatigue. We both breathe heavily, beads of sweat spotting our brow, as I wait for Shikamaru's shadow to lose substance, for me to be free again.

He must have something in mind to finish off the battle as he raises his head to glare at me. He's smart, after all, smarter than I could ever dream to be, though no one would ever know given his penchant for laziness.

But he lets his shadow thin out, lets me free, lets his knees give out under him as I laugh.

"That wasn't so bad," I say, wiping my brow with the back of my hand. I move toward him, offer him two fingers in the seal of reconciliation. He glares at my hand before taking it, and I sit down beside him as he releases my fingers. "Your shadow technique is a lot stronger than I remember."

"I could say the same for you with your vibrations," he says as I rub my arm, feeling the sting of small cuts on my skin. "Your guardians must have trained you hard. Too hard, if you ask me."

I hum, pressing a hand over the cuts on my arm, my chakra seeping into my flesh, healing. "Just wanted to make sure I kept up with the rest of you guys at the Academy," I say, taking Shikamaru's arm and laying my hand over the bruise purpling at the crook of his elbow. "Sorry about this."

He watches me heal him and, when I move my hand away, he turns his arm over, searching for the bruise that had been there moments ago. Shikamaru scowls, shakes his head, and says, "I'd nearly forgotten about your medical ninjutsu. To be honest, I think you've gotten much better than the rest of us at the Academy."

"You're too kind, Shikamaru," I say, checking the sky for the time. The sun hangs low, an hour maybe before sunset. That image in conjunction with the low rumble in my stomach tells me that it's about time for dinner. "Anyway," I say, getting to my feet. I offer Shikamaru a hand and pull him up. "It's getting late. We should get home and rest before the test tomorrow."

"Do you want to come over?" Shikamaru says, patting the grass off his pants. "My parents would be happy to see you again. Besides, Mom would kill me if she found out you'd come back and I didn't invite you over, and that's more trouble than it's worth."

I laugh, raking a hand through my hair. Blades of grass come off in my hands, and I shake them out, saying, "Thanks, but I have a few errands left to run before I call it a night. Tell them I said hi though, and insist that you did everything you could to make me come over, but I refused. I'll vouch for you when I see them later."

Shikamaru's lips lilt in a small smile of amusement. "I'll see you later then, Ren," he says, turning on his heels. But then he pauses, glances at me over his shoulder. Frowns. "I'm glad you're home."

I wink at him, waggling my fingers at him in goodbye. I watch him as he retreats, waiting for him to completely disappear into the distance before picking up my knapsack and going on my way. The sunshine beats down on me, making me especially hot after my training.

Without my headband on, my hair ruffles into my eyes, irritating them and making them water. I try to push the loose strands behind my ear, but it's too short to stick. Moments like these I wish I hadn't been so hasty to cut my hair this short so many years ago, or bothered to keep it this way. But short hair is less of a hassle, especially during combat.

There are more important things for shinobi to worry about than their hair.

The village is half-empty as I wind through it, the setting sun adding a golden tint to the village, making the people who are out and about glow like brilliant, moving gold statues. They hustle their kids along, holding onto last minute groceries for the night's dinner. Under their rushed faces, they have a sense of calm and unconcern. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

I amble past the shops, past the delicious smells emanating from shops I can't afford to splurge on at the moment. My stomach whines in protest, begging for a taste of something. I give it a sympathetic pat. It replies with another dismal grumble.

Distracted by the cramps rolling around in my abdomen, I bump shoulders with someone, hard enough to bring the both of us to a stop. They knock me sideways a bit, forcing me to face them, and I am met with exuberantly blue eyes, heightened by spikey blonde hair. The boy stares back at me, the lens of the goggles stretch over his forehead glinting in the setting sunlight.

I vaguely recognize him from years ago, an obnoxious boy who always disrupted class with his outrageous claims and pranks. Not to mention, once, when my father came to pick me up from school and found me playing with him and a few other boys, my father regarded the boy with disdain, told me, "He harbors a dark spirit within him, Ren. I don't want you playing with him again."

It was later that my father explained what he meant by 'dark spirit.' The boy was a _jinchuuriki_, a human container for the Nine-Tails Fox that had attacked our village twelve years ago.

It didn't take me long to figure out that he could have possibly known about what he held inside him. He was too light, too brilliant, too normal. Or maybe, like me, he was just really good about hiding his burden.

"Sorry," I mumble to him, ready to move past him without any indication that I knew him once, but then my name is called, bringing me to a stop.

An older man comes up beside us, greeting me with a wide smile. A puckered scar cuts across the bridge of his nose, touching either cheek, and it moves slightly as he says, "Ren! The Hokage told a few of us at the Academy that you were back. How lucky it is that we've run into you. Do you remember me?"

"Yes, hi, Iruka. Sensei," I add quickly, almost forgetting my manners. Being on your own for five years could do that to you. Anyway, I never liked using honorifics. They're too stuffy for someone like me. "It's nice to see you again. I'm surprised you recognized me after so long."

"A teacher never forgets his students," he says, and motions to the boy beside him. "Some introductions might be in order, though. Ren, this is Uzumaki Naruto. Naruto, Kagiru Ren. You might remember each other; the two of you were in the same class back at the Academy many years ago."

Naruto scrutinizes me, squinting his eyes to slits. "Yeah, I remember," he says, frowning. "You were the girl who got all quiet one day and the disappeared all together. What happened to you?"

Iruka shifts on his feet, looking nervous, but I save him from having to answer by saying, "Konoha wasn't doing it for me anymore. I went to stay with family in the next town over, but now I'm back to graduate with you."

Naruto looks affronted, jabs a finger at me and says, "Hey, Iruka-sensei, that's not fair, is it? If she didn't train with us, we can't be sure that she's strong enough to become a Genin."

"Well, you know what they say," I say with a tight smile. "He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good."

Naruto blinks at me, uncomprehending. Iruka takes advantage of Naruto's dull moment and says, quickly, "So, Ren, what do you have planned for tonight? Would you like to come to Ichiraku's Ramen Shop for dinner with us?"

I'm about to shake my head no, insist that I have business at home, but then Naruto's mouth opens with incredulity. "But, but, but!" he protests. "It was supposed to be just you and me, Iruka-sensei!"

"I would _love_ to go," I say, happily taking part in Naruto's discontentment, and after talking Naruto out of a tantrum, Iruka leads the way to the shop.

It's a humble shop, with only a few stools lined beneath a bar. The owner seems to know Naruto well, greeting the boy by name and asking, "Your usual?" which Naruto confirms with an enthusiastic nod. I let Iruka order for me while I slide into the seat beside Naruto, drumming my fingers against the bar.

We indulge in mindless chatter until our food arrives, then Naruto becomes much too preoccupied with his dish to even say a word. He slurps up his noodles with a satisfied grin while Iruka smiles over at him, a kind, fond smile that's disarming and makes me feel as though I am intruding on a moment. I busy myself with my food when Naruto takes a moment to breathe, looking at me briefly before asking, "So, is there a Ninja Academy where you were, too?"

I swallow my mouthful, shaking my head. "No. I trained with—my family," I say, shrugging. "For the most part, I trained on my own when my family was too busy to look out for me."

Something about what I've said makes Naruto's face drop. He stares at his goggles, which he's taken off and placed on the bar, and says, "Ah."

Iruka watches Naruto with concern, lowering his chopsticks into his bowl. He says, "Naruto? Can I ask you something? Why did you deface the Hokage monuments this morning? Don't you know who the Hokage are?"

I nearly choke. There is a monument of the faces of our current and past Hokage carved into the cliff side overlooking Konoha. Their eyes are unblinking and unnerving, in my opinion, but they are a great symbol of the strength of our leaders, and a pride to the village. There can't be any other monument they're talking about, at least not that I know of, and to deface them is possibly the greatest disrespect to our village. Despite this, Iruka doesn't like he's scolding Naruto, or like he's leading into a lecture.

Naruto opens his hands, waving his arms around him to make his point as he says, "Of course! Those who receive the Hokage name are the strongest in the village, and among them is Yondaime Hokage, a hero who saved the village from a fox demon!"

I flinch, concentrating on my food, pretending I don't know what I do.

"Then why did you deface the monument?" says Iruka, confused.

"One day," Naruto says, suddenly gaining momentum, "I'm going to receive the Hokage name and then I'm going to surpass all the previous Hokage!" He uses his chopsticks to point at Iruka, the broth flinging around the restaurant. "And then, and then, I'll make the village recognize my strength!"

This time, I really do choke. I cough into the crook of my elbow, drawing the attention of Iruka and Naruto, and attempt to wave them away. "I'm fine," I wheeze, when I regain my breath. "Sorry, sorry."

At my insistence, Naruto turns back to Iruka, holding his hands together as though in prayer. He bows his head and says, "Anyway, sensei, I have a request."

"What? You want seconds?"

"No," Naruto says, and then, "Well, yes, but something else. Can I…borrow your Leaf headband?"

Surprised, Iruka reaches up to touch the metal of his headband before adjusting it. "This? No, no," he says. "This is for after you've graduated. This is a symbol that you've come of age. Maybe you'll get one tomorrow."

Even though my headband sits in my knapsack at my feet, I feel like I am suddenly guilty of some crime and the headband is incriminating evidence. I hop to my feet and scoop up my knapsack, pulling it over my shoulders before another word can be passed between Iruka and Naruto. "I think I'm gonna go ahead and skip on home first," I say as Naruto and Iruka look up from their conversation. "Thanks for the meal, though; it's filled me up. I'll see you tomorrow for the exam."

"Are you sure?" Iruka says as Naruto orders seconds without his approval.

"Yes," I say, digging through my pockets for money, but Iruka stays me with his hand, saying, "No, it's all right, Ren. It's on me. A welcome home gift of sorts. Naruto, say goodbye."

Naruto frowns as the empty bowls are removed from the bar by a young lady. He quirks his brow at me like I've shown up with the sole intention of ruining his time with his sensei. "Later," he grumbles, and turns away.

"Naruto," Iruka admonishes.

"It's okay," I say. "I hope we didn't get off on the wrong foot today, Naruto. You seem like an okay guy by my book. I'll see you later."

I wave to Iruka one last time, and as I push aside the flags that hang over the shop's entrance, I hear a feeble muttering of, "I'll see you later, Ren."

I tilt my head back, wondering if he had intended for me to hear that, but go on without acknowledging him. If fate permits it, I'll definitely see Uzumaki Naruto again.

Whether _I_ allow fate to get in my way, however, is a whole other story.

The path through the residential area where I live is dark and empty, with most of the families already inside, probably snuggling into bed with their bellies full. I sigh at the thought, my own full stomach lulling me to sleep. Not much longer, I tell myself, and I'll be able to fall into my childhood bed and sleep better than I have in five years.

I scoff at my optimism.

After all, my house hasn't been lived in for five years. Chances are, it's completely in ruins, with weeds overtaking the yard, the porch rotted through with termites and weird woodland creatures making nests in the burrows. Maybe the roof has even caved in and the windows broken by the stones of careless kids, maybe vandalized walls, a boarded doorway.

My house comes into view as I think this, shimmering in the moonlight—or in my fatigue. It is indeed shabby-looking, but it still maintains its frame: no caved-in roof, no broken windows or boarded up doors. There _are_ weeds growing wildly, but it's not so out of control that I can't see the path leading up to my door. I'm tempted to sigh with relief, but then I remember I haven't seen the _inside_ yet.

_If_ I can get inside, I realize. Because I don't have the key to my own house.

I freeze at the foot of my porch, scowling. Of course I don't have the key to my house. I mean, I _did_ at one point, but it was likely lost during all the rapid unpacking and repacking that I had done. I groan, slapping a hand to my face, wondering why I hadn't thought about this in advance.

But it's an old house, with shanty locks that haven't been changed in years.

I ascend the porch steps, taking the doorknob in my hand. It is cold, slightly rusted, indicative of weakness. I take a deep breath and turn the knob.

It sticks.

I jiggle it harder. Nothing. I yank on it, trying to pull it out of its socket, and then push against it to see if I've managed to weaken or loosen it a bit. The door remains unyielding.

I groan again, frustrated, and drop my forehead against my door with a soft _bang_. A dull ringing reverberates through my brain, followed by an equally dull pain. I pay no mind to it, weighing whether I should just kick the door down. I decide against it, considering the fact that I don't want—or really have the money, I don't think—to replace the door. Besides, I don't want any critters or creepy crawlies coming into my house while I sleep once I can get inside.

There is a spare key to the house, but it isn't hidden here.

"God," I grumble. "It's going to be a long night."

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**A/N:** Thank you for checking out my story! This is my first time posting, so I'm very happy that anyone is here to read at all. I hope you enjoyed and please review! :)


	2. Key Move

**BOUND  
Chapter 02: Key Move**

A few streets down from my house sits another house of some importance. That house was where I spent a majority of my childhood, mostly because my parents spent most of the their time there, and since I was a kid it was kind of mandatory that I followed. I liked the place enough, when it was all imaginary jungles and "don't step in the lava!" games, but that got old quick after I found out the reason why my parents were there—and why they brought me there—so often.

The house itself is nice. Much bigger than my own house and residing on a family compound much bigger than my family compound, there were always places to explore. Not to mention the family who owned the are had shops that sold sweets and other delicacies that I would always get free because of how close my family were to them.

The house from my childhood grows bigger with each step I take, but remains much smaller than how I remember it. It's dark and menacing, made hard to see through the darkness and a foggy memory. It looks as empty as my house did, but I know that's not the case. I can feel the heart pounding, alive and awake, just inside those walls.

He's home.

I take a deep breath before heaving myself up the porch, to the front door. I knock on the door three times as loud as I dare, and as I wait for an answer, I imagine what he must look like after all this time. Maybe he's going through a gangly awkward stage. Maybe his beauty won't make my heart stutter.

When the door opens, I jump, though it only swings back a few centimeters. A tired face framed by black hair regards me through the crack, the lines of his visage still, unfortunately, graceful. Behind him, the foyer light makes his eyes hard to see, but I remember them well enough—they are as black as the shadows at my feet. And one thing I know for sure is that age has only enhanced his attractiveness, and I can only be thankful that my heart doesn't respond. Something else, however, stirs in the back of my mind.

"Hi," I say, a breath I hadn't realize I'd been holding coming out with it.

Sasuke blinks at me, first in shock, then in irritation. The door opens wider and I see he's wearing plainclothes, about ready to slide into bed, I bet.

"What are you doing here?" he says in lieu of a greeting.

This makes me scowl. "Definitely not because I wanted to see the likes of _you_," I snap, pushing my hair out of my eyes. It flops untidily back into place. "I just need the key to my house and I'll be out of your hair."

I duck under his arm and into the house against his protests. The interior of the house is nice and cozy, vaguely the way I remember it from years ago, minus a few pictures and pieces of décor here and there.

I slip out of Sasuke's range with ease as he makes a grab at my collar, and move through the foyer to the staircase, where it is twice as dark. Sasuke is hard on my heels as I move through his house. "You need to leave. Now."

"Trust me," I say, "I want to get out of here as fast I can, too. You just gotta let me find my key. I'm not gonna go rooting through your stuff."

"I don't _have_ your key," he spits.

"You're only saying that because you don't know where to look, Saa-kun," I say, and glance over my shoulder in time to see him wince at the nickname I had used for him when we were kids. That I'm able to elicit this response from him brings me an evil sense of satisfaction.

I move down the hallway of the second landing, Sasuke's heavy footsteps following close behind. I count the doors until I make it to the one I'm looking for, and when I do, I slip into the bedroom, much to Sasuke's growing irritation, and look around.

The room is spacious with a large bed centered on adjacent wall and a long chest of drawers placed beneath the windows. There is a small pile of books on the nightstand by the bed, but other than that, the room is pristine, with nothing to give away the kind of person who sleeps there.

"Going for the minimalist look, huh?" I say, taking two steps into the room and dropping to my knees at the end of the bed. "I should have figured you would be that kind of guy, Sasuke."

"Get out of my room," he says as I start to tap the floorboards lightly with the side of my fist.

"Not just yet. My parents liked to hide things under your floorboards," I explain, "since we hung out here so much. In retrospect, it was kind of weird, but I thought it was cool when I was a kid, and I'm sure you would have too if I'd ever bothered to tell you about it. But my parents mostly hid notes for me and the occasional present that I never wanted to share, but there was always a spare key. Just in case."

his face screws up with disbelief as he looks from me to the floor. After a few more pounds that result in nothing, he closes his eyes. His brow twitches in aggravation. "You're crazy," he says. "There's nothing—"

I hit my fist against a panel closest to the foot of his bed. The other end flies up as my fist sinks below the wood paneling. I grin at Sasuke as I remove the floorboard. "You were saying?"

Sasuke scowls. The expression looks natural on his pretty face, and for a second I think what a pity that is before sticking my hand into the cobwebbed opening of the floor. I feel around for anything out of places; my fingers knock against something that slides away with a metallic sound. Triumphantly, I extract a small gold house key that's musty with age. Pocketing the key, I replace the floorboard and stand with a fulfilled sigh.

"Now I'll leave," I say, patting him on the shoulder. The gesture surprises us both, prompting the us to recoil from the other. "Er, right. I'll see you later then. Bye."

"Why did you come back?" he asks as I cross the threshold of his room. I brace myself against the doorframe, searching the wall in front of me for an answer.

"I made an agreement with the Hokage," I say. "Don't be so vain to think that you had anything to do with it."

"But I did," he says quietly, challenging, "didn't I?"

My grip tightens on the doorframe. "You always do."

I leave without another word, without a backward glance, and by the time I reach his porch, I have broken into a full-out sprint, running like I remember running on the night my family was killed, when I came home and everything was wrong and—

Goddamn Sasuke. He always knows how to put me in a bad mood.

When I return to my family compound, my anger has all but leveled out. I shake off the remaining thoughts of Sasuke to the best of my ability, giving me room mentally prepare for what awaits me inside my house. I push the key into the doorknob; it turns, opens, and I take a deep breath before stepping inside.

An eerie loneliness shrouds the place and I am filled with a sober sadness that makes me want to immediately turn back and leave. But I force my way through, though I keep the front door open in case I do want to make a quick escape.

Everything is covered in plastic sheets and covered again by layers of dust. I frown, skimming over all the moving boxes that crowd my house, like someone had tried to put all my family's things together and move us out, but figured it was too much trouble and abandoned the chore halfway through. I shift some boxes aside, stumbling around them to the couch, and still manage to trip over a box despite my carefulness. I catch myself on the arm of the couch, my fingers squishing into five year's worth of dust. My frown deepens.

I wipe my hands off on my pants, leaving a white handprint on the fabric. I groan in disgust. This is going to need a lot of time and energy—time and energy I won't have once the Hokage dolls out his punishment, which I'm sure will be an assignment on one of the graduating teams. There's no other reason why he would have wanted me to graduate with the current class.

Leaving the living room behind, I walk down a corridor, keeping as far from the walls as I can, afraid of what critters might be hiding in the shadows. When I reach the first door on the right, I reach for the door, half-expecting it to be locked too, but it opens with ease.

I poke my head through the door to find another darkness. I pat my hand against the adjacent wall, searching for a light switch, and when I find it, I flick it on. Naturally, it doesn't work. I scowl and shove the door completely open.

There are no boxes in this room, though there is a dresser, a desk, and a small bed with a nightstand, all of them covered with plastic. Minus a few books and papers, and general signs that anyone had lived here at all, my room remains unchanged from when I left it. I pause for a minute at the door, watching the trees outside the window above my desk sway in the moonlight, remembering, for a moment, all the times I had thought about running away before I finally managed it. I purse my lips, pushing the thought away, and walk to the bed, yanking the plastic coverings off. Dust rises with the violent movement, and I accidentally inhale the particles and am thrown into a sneezing frenzy.

When I finally recover, my nose burns and my lungs ache. Irritated by the lack of forethought in my actions, I swipe at my nose with the back of my hand, shrug my backpack off my shoulders and throw it onto the bed. A deathly plume of dust rises from the mattress where my bed lands, horrifying me.

I should have thought this through better. After all, no one has lived here for the past five years and everyone who would have cared to keep this place clean was either dead or, well, me. And I've been gone, leaving this place to rot.

I rub my face, wondering whether I should touch my knapsack, but most importantly where I can stay tonight. Shikamaru's place is always an option, but I'd declined his offer for dinner, and I have too much pride to go and ask for a favor. That leaves only one other places for me to go, and even that is not a guarantee, which only serves to make me annoyed.

I drum my fingers against my arm, frowning. But really, where else would I have to go if not back to Sasuke?

I sigh.

[+]

"What do you want?" Sasuke spits as soon as the door opens. There's no going through formalities with this one.

"I need a place to sleep," I say, shifting uncomfortably on my feet. My knapsack dangles on my shoulder, the dust that I hadn't managed to brush off leaving white lines across my shirt. After walking through the health hazard that is my house, I feel dingy. My hair is clumped and oily and I need to be quarantined. I need new clothes and food and water, but mostly sleep. The night has been too long.

"You've got your own place," he says. "You made a point of it by stomping around my house earlier for your key."

"Okay, yes, but that was before I realized my house is a medical health concern," I say, holding onto myself as the night cold seeps into my bones, making me shake. "It hasn't been lived in for five years, Sasuke. It's really, _really_ not clean, and you know how much I like pure, sterile places. Without, you know, bugs and stuff nesting in my mattress and dust mites rolling around under my bed, laughing and building resorts and spas and—anyway, the point is, I was wondering—"

"Don't you have anyone else to stay with?"

I look to the sky, the stars overhead blinking like I am part of some big cosmic joke. Well, I suppose I am.

"No," I say curtly, deciding that, if he's going to decline me a place to stay, I may as well get it over with quickly. What is sleeping under a tree for another night? It's not like I haven't done it plenty of times before.

The tendons in his hands shine through his skin as his hand clenches, and I prepare to turn around and find a nice park to settle in. But then the door swings open and Sasuke steps aside, letting me through.

I stare at him, awed, and stand stunned long enough that he scowls at me and says, "_Well_? Do you want a place to sleep or not?"

This effectively breaks me out of my reverie. I shuffle into the house, muttering my thanks and glancing around the house, watching for the details I hadn't noticed during my earlier barrage on his house. The foyer and living room is lit up, exposing more of the surface area than I had seen before. I was right when I noticed there were pictures missing. I remember there was one here, on the bookshelf of his living room of me and him and—

"I can sleep here," I say, dropping my knapsack on the couch. "And unless you've completely reorganized your house, I know where everything is. I won't really be needing anything though. I just want a shower and some rest."

The front door clicks shut. His feet pad across the floor at a leisurely pace, though I think it's more that he's unsure of what to do with a guest in his house than that he's in a state of calm. He watches me as I rummage through my bag for my toiletries, making me pause. I look at him, wondering if he expects me to say something, but he just turns away, flicks off the foyer light, and heads up the stairs.

I listen to the steps creak under his weight, hear the faint, faint sound of his bedroom door shutting. I am momentarily at a loss for what to do. Why had he even been so nice as to let me stay with him? I hadn't been so hospitable running through his house earlier. Maybe I should apologize.

I abandon the thought, more concerned by the nest that is my hair, and hustle upstairs, into the bathroom. I take a long shower, the hot water steaming all the dirt out of my pores and turning brown at my feet. I have to apply three coats of shampoo and body wash before the water clears, and even then I linger under the water that starts to burn my skin, making it a flushed, angry red.

I come out smelling strangely of apples.

I dry off quickly, pulling on the cleanest clothes I found in my bag. Once I'm dressed, I step out of the bathroom, steam trailing behind me like a heavy morning fog. I am ruffling the last of the water from my hair when I bump into something, stumbling back into the doorframe. Sasuke catches me by the shoulders, holding me steady as I regain my balance.

"Sorry," I apologize as he lets me go. He rubs his hands off on his shirt like I have some sickness he doesn't want to contract. The light that floods out of the bathroom shines into his eyes; even then, I have to scour his irises to find his pupils. His eyes are so dark.

Then it occurs to me. "What are you doing standing outside the bathroom while I shower?"

He scowls, the expression doing nothing to dull the attractiveness of his face. This time, my heart scalds with a yearning that I have a hard time stifling.

"It was bad timing," he says. "Besides, I…needed to tell you that I moved all your stuff into the spare bedroom at the end of the hall."

"Oh," I say, unsure of how else to respond. "Thank you, I guess. I mean," I say when he rolls his eyes. "I just—I didn't expect you to be so…so nice to me. Especially after, you know, and the current condition of our…" I clear my throat. "Relationship. I—"

"You don't have to sleep there if you don't want to," he says sharply, walking back to his room. "All I'm saying is I moved your stuff there."

I watch, dazed, as Sasuke slams his bedroom door shut behind him, wondering what I had said to make him do a total one-eighty. I was thanking him, wasn't I?

I scoff, annoyed I had bothered trying to be nice and go to the room Sasuke had given me. There's no point letting a good room go to waste. Besides, my back could use a break after all the nights I've spent sleeping on the ground.

Flipping on the lights to the room, I find my knapsack has been placed in the center of a small bed, the mattress bare of everything save for a fitted sheet. I consider going back down the hall for blankets and pillows when I see a pile of them folded and stacked neatly at the foot of the bed. It's impossible for me to tell if Sasuke had brought them in or if they had been here the whole time—not that it matters, anyway. What matters is I have a nice, comfy, and clean place to sleep for the night.

I glance at my knapsack, then back down the hall where a small light flares out from under Sasuke's door. I spent a long time in the shower; he could have easily rummaged through my things. For what reason, I don't know, but he could have. When I open my bag, though, I see nothing's been touched. In fact, my things have hardly moved from where I'd organized it all.

And then I feel guilty for being suspicious of him, for thinking he would have stooped so low as to go through my things. What he's looking for isn't anything that can be carried around with me. He's not a scavenger. He's not like me.

But, still—after the massacre of his family, he must have been lonely, too. He'd been betrayed by his brother, his idol. Everyone who made up his entire world was dead, and to top it all off—

_"…you're leaving?"_

"I left him too," I mutter sourly to myself. I—whose job it was to always be by his side, who was supposed to protect him and look after him at the end of all things—had abandoned him for my own gain. So I could break this bond that bound us together and killed my family.

I could have stayed with him. I could have been there for him and protected him. But I wouldn't have done it willingly, and those responsibilities required a level of dedication that I couldn't have provided because of the resentment that had built up between us. And even though I had come back from my mission no closer to breaking the bond than before I had left, I had to try. I couldn't have lived without having tried.

The bond stirs up now, sending me a signal that tells me Sasuke is still awake and restless, tells me I know what I need to do. And whether of my own will or because the bond's urging, I end up at Sasuke's door, knocking lightly. He greets me with silent eyes, half-closed with forced sleep.

"Hi," I say, fiddling my fingers. He's half-hidden behind the door, like he's trying to shield himself from me in case I try to hurt him. "Sorry to, uh, bother you, but I wanted to tell you because I don't think I made it very clear before. Thank you, Sasuke, for letting me stay here and offering me a bed when you didn't—you _really_ didn't have to."

He doesn't answer, keeps staring, not quite at me, but not exactly avoiding my gaze either. I bite the inside of my lip and go on.

"I know," I say, "I haven't…_been_ there for you when I should have been, and—I'm only sorry that it had to be this way. I don't know if you can understand that, but it had to be that way, Sasuke, I had to leave and—"

His silence brings me to a stop. I'm obviously not helping the situation, but I can't stop. I hadn't been good at using words when we were kids, either, but now it seems so long overdue, and I can't stop.

"I need my own life," I say, "and if, once I get it, you're still part of it, then I'll be happy about that. But I—I can't have you forced on me like this. It isn't fair to me. But now I'm just getting off topic and—right. Thank you. For doing me this favor. I'll be out of here as soon as I can."

His head lifts a bit as though he's realizing that I'm standing here at all.

"Okay. Anyway. I'll go back to bed now. See you in the morning. Good night."

I shuffle back to my room and shut the door behind me, leaning against it and sliding to the ground in my relief. A few seconds later, I hear his door shut too, and plant my face in my hands.

It shouldn't be this way between us. I mean, generally. Considering the bond that exists between us, we shouldn't be at odds. Those who carried the bond before us, after all, were always the perfect shinobi pair. And our families, the Kagiru and the Uchiha, lived in symbiotic harmony: what my family provided in service and medical assistance, the Uchiha provided with jobs and rank and respect. All because this bond that goes deeper than blood, that connects our very souls—in this life, Sasuke's and mine specifically—a bond that has been recycled in our families for over a hundred years.

Those who don't know any better might call us _soul mates_, but the connotation of that term is too flowery for me. Essentially, though, that is the idea. Our souls are connected; we can feel each others' physical pains, hear each others' thoughts. Like a telepathy, of sorts.

Which is why it's hard for anyone to take it seriously when they hear about it, but it's true. Sasuke and I can vouch for it ourselves.

The bond between us at the moment is weak, with barrier upon barrier set up so I can't feel Sasuke, can't hear his thoughts, or understanding him without trying like any normal human being would have to. But those barriers are mostly on my front. They are my fault.

I can only be so close to the boy whose brother killed my family.

* * *

Thank you for reading! Please review!


	3. Crime and Punishment

**BOUND  
Chapter 03: Crime and Punishment**

The sunlight burns hot pink through my eyelids. With a groan, I force myself into sitting position and am reward with the glorious smell of an unidentifiable but delicious food wafting up from downstairs. I open my eyes, one at a time, and stumble from my bed.

I stretch out my body, hearing the bones of my back settle with a satisfying crack. The bed was the best I'd slept in since, well, five years ago, like lying on the most luscious field of grass with covers like sunrays beating down on me and warming not just the top of my body, but every crevice and curve. The thought of it makes me want to jump back in, but the smell of food is too tempting.

I clean up before heading downstairs, the sweet aroma of food growing and waking my stomach. Mussing my hair, I wonder what Sasuke has managed to make and when and how he had learned to make it. Living on your own would force you to learn these kinds of things, like cooking and doing laundry, I guess, but my lack of access to these kinds of resources when I was traveling made it hard for me to hone my skills in the home department.

When I reach the kitchen, I find the table laid out with a small breakfast, still steaming with heat. But no sign of Sasuke. Mouth watering, I take a seat at the table, ready to dig in, when I realize I should probably wait for him.

"Sasuke?" I call. No response. Well, I can't say I didn't try. I dig into the breakfast, breaking after a few bites to call for Sasuke again. Again, no answer, so I give up and concentrate solely on eating. What can I say? Food has always been a vice for me.

I finish breakfast and still, Sasuke is not here. Now that I think about it, there's only enough food laid out for one person to eat. I wonder if he had made it for himself—but no, he would have been back by now if he were waiting for it to cool down before he ate. Sighing, I consider dropping the guard I've built up against the bond to check in on him and make sure he isn't passed out dead somewhere. But what if that makes the barriers I've strengthened over the past five years weak and they can't hold against Sasuke anymore?

_That's silly_, I think. If I had been strong enough to build them up in the first place and keep them that way, then I could do it again, no problem, especially knowing what I know now.

So I drop the guard, just a bit, and peak into Sasuke's head.

He's safe at the Academy, waiting for his name to be called so that he can take the graduation exam. It's simple, really, just a basic bunshin jutsu that any rookie ninja could do. He will pass it with ease and graduate—

I curse and jump to my feet, the chair I'd been sitting in knocking backward in my haste. _The graduation!_ How could I have forgotten? And that _bastard_ for not waking me up! Of course, I'd never told him that I needed to take the exam as well—or even, really, told him why I'd come back to the village in the first place, other than I had promised the Hokage I would. But still! He could have woken me up and told me he was going to leave or—never mind, I don't have time for this.

I run back to my room to get changed, sling on my hip pouch and thigh holster, both still half-filled from my adventure. I find my headband too and shove it into my pouch instead of putting it on. That would be for after I graduated. Or maybe they'd give me a new one, which would be nice, considering the dents and scratches that cover my current one.

I pull on my sandals as I leave the house, bracing myself against the doorframe, but my finger gets caught between my heel and the strap, so when I drop my foot I'm pulled forward. I tumble down the porch, down the steps leading up to the front door, and land on my face in the dirt path. I groan, lifting my head to look at the road in front of me. It's long and wide and now that I think about it, I really don't want to go.

A shadow eclipses me as someone lands beside me. I look up and find a silhouette of someone with spikey hair that leans to the side, like it is too lazy to stand upright on its own. The person bends over and the light shifts so I can see his face. Well, what's exposed of it anyway.

The man's face is half covered by a mask pulled up to the bridge of his nose, and his headband sits diagonally across his face, covering his left eye. The one eye that is exposed regards me with amusement.

"Kagiru Ren," he greets. "I thought I'd find you here. It's nice to see you again."

"Kakashi," I answer, pushing myself up. I flinch, feel a throb go through my rib cage. Blowing my hair from my face, I frown, pressing a hand against my ribs. "It's been too long."

"You okay there?" he asks, offering me a helping hand.

I take it and he pulls me to my feet. "Just _peachy_, thanks. What do you want?"

"Rude as ever, I see," Kakashi says with a smile, and I roll my eyes. "The Hokage has requested your presence and assigned me to come pick you up. He said you might be a handful."

"Sorry, but he's gonna have to wait. I have to get to the graduate that _he_ so desperately wanted me to attend."

Kakashi takes my elbow. "Don't worry about it," he says as he starts to lead me away. "The Hokage has had a change of heart. Now come on."

It takes much longer than it should to walk to the Hokage's office with Kakashi leading the way. He walks too slowly, with no urgency to his tread at all. Whenever I try to pick up the pace, Kakashi catches me by the collar and says, "Easy, Ren. You've just come home. Don't you want to stop and smell the roses?"

When we finally reach the building, the sun is high and the exams must be over. But since the Hokage had called on me, I must be excused from taking it, right? Regardless, I need to get my ninja ID renewed so I can hightail it out of here again. The Hokage can try as much as he wants to stick me on one of the graduating teams, but when it comes down to it, I'm much too over-leveled to be stuck on a _Genin_ team. I've basically been a journeyman for the past five years, after all. I could have the rank of Chuunin right now if I tried hard enough, and once I explain this to the Hokage, he'll see.

Kakashi leads me through the administration building, where the older shinobi are abuzz with preparations for the new Genin that need to come in and register for their ninja IDs. I wonder, briefly, if Sasuke is among that group and when my curiosity gets the better of me, I drop my guards against him again. One more time won't make a difference.

As soon as the guards are lowered, I sense Sasuke's haughtiness, and immediately put the block back up, irritated by his arrogance. Obviously he's passed the exams, but with something as simple as the bunshin jutsu as the final—

"Did he pass?" Kakashi asks as we ascend the final steps to the Hokage's office.

"Yes," I huff, scowling. "He thinks he's—wait, how'd you know that I knew?"

"It's not hard to read you, Ren," he says, shrugging. "You got this look on your face and I could just tell. Sasuke triggers a special kind of irritation in you. Here we are."

Kakashi knocks on the door to the Hokage's office before I can retort, and without further ado, he opens the door and lets me in first. The old man sits at his desk, chewing on his pipe and looking over a few papers.

"Thank you for coming in at such short notice," the Hokage says, putting his papers away as Kakashi shuts the door behind us. "I know I said you would have to take the graduation exam today, Ren, but I thought it was better if we didn't suddenly throw you into a classroom full of strangers. It would have raised too many questions."

"So what happens now?" I ask. "Do I still get to graduate or can I just leave?"

"Leave?" The Hokage's lips lilt up in amusement. "But you've just come back. Anyway, where on earth would you go?"

"To search for a way to break the bond," I say, frowning. "Like you so accurately observed when I first returned, I've made little progress with a way to break it, and I need to keep looking before—before the bond gets stronger and I totally lose my free will."

"Has it ever occurred to you that the answer might be right under your nose?"

I narrow my eyes at the old man. "Is there something you aren't telling me, Hokage-sama?"

He holds up his hands in defense, says, "I know as much as you do about the bond, Ren, maybe even less. All I'm saying is that, since your family and the Uchiha can trace their roots back to the founding of Konohagakure, maybe their secrets are kept here as well. But I digress. The reason I've called you here this morning is to discuss—"

"My punishment."

"Punishment?" repeats Kakashi, amused, and I realize he is still here.

"I came home late from my mission," I explain to him. "The Hokage says there must be consequences."

"It is not nearly as bad as you're making it sound, Ren," the Hokage laughs. "What will happen is this: it appears there are an odd number of Genin graduating this year; including you, however, will even out our numbers. That being the case, you will be put on a team with two other students under the direction of our very own Kakashi. I know," the Hokage says over my protests, "that you believe you are much stronger than the Genin of this class since you graduated early and have been training vigorously during your travels, but _I_ believe that this team will do you some good. And there's no use arguing anymore. Your name has already been put on the roster with the other graduates; the teams will be discussed and decided tomorrow. That same day, you'll return to the Ninja Administration building to retake your official ninja ID card to replace the one you have now. The day after that, you will attend orientation with your peers and meet your new teammates."

"But I don't have time for any of that!" I say. "I can't be bothered by being on a team and having to look out for other people. I know you want to give me a normal life by doing this, but if I don't break this bond, I won't have the slightest chance of having a normal life. This mission—"

"You may," the Hokage interrupts, "continue with your mission. I'm not going to stop you from finding a way to break it."

"And this isn't going to stop me," I say, scraping my bangs to the side of my face. "It's going to hinder me. And like I said, I don't have time to waste."

"But like _I_ said: It is already done, Ren. You're dismissed."

"So, Ren," Kakashi starts as I stomp out of the building ahead of him. "What _have_ you gathered from your years away?"

"The Wind Country is hot and the Fire Country is actually windy," I spit, throwing my hands up. "If you're asking about the bond, though, I told the Hokage the truth: I haven't made any progress with it. No history books cover blood oaths probably because no one takes this kind of thing seriously, and no one is interested in events that don't have a main part in the drama. When I couldn't find anything in the history books, I decided to skim fantasy books and all those books about myths and stuff, but even they barely touched on the subject. It's like some sick joke."

"Maybe looking at books and records isn't the way to go."

"Then where else am I supposed to look?" I counter, narrowly avoiding a group of kids rushing through the streets. "Unless you expect me to go around to every town in the Fire Country asking, 'Do you have any idea about the blood oath between the Kagiru and the Uchiha? Or, I don't know, are you affiliated with anyone who has a blood oath themselves?'" I scoff, clenching and unclenching my fists to relieve the pressure I can feel building up in my body. "Get real, Kakashi. No one can help me. This is something I have to do on my own."

"Have you asked Sasuke?"

I throw my hands up, say, "Oh, why didn't I think of that? How stupid of me. _Of course_ I've asked him."

"I highly doubt that," Kakashi says, stuffing his hands in his pockets, and I glower at him.

"He doesn't know anything," I say, diverting my gaze to the road in front of us, filled with people and families and love. I look to the sky instead. "Even if he did, I'm sure he wouldn't tell me."

To this, Kakashi doesn't respond. I reach into my pouch and pull out my headband, glad I had thought to bring it with me, and tie it on. "I'll see you later, Kakashi-_sensei_," I say, and with a curt nod, I turn down a side street toward midtown.

Stupid Kakashi, always thinking he knows everything. During the final stages of my training before I left the village, he was the one to catch me and turn me in. And as he escorted me back to the Hokage, cradled in his arms, he said, "I used to think bonds were a waste of time, too, you know. But, in the long run, I have found that the benefits outweigh the costs, Ren. Think about that."

I'm running my fingers over the scratches on the metal plate of my headband when I hear someone say my name. It's Shikamaru, coming the other way, with a plump boy carrying a bag of chips.

"I didn't see you at the graduation," he says, eyeing the headband I wear. "Where were you?"

"The Hokage called me up to his office for a quick meeting about how he expects me to keep up with everyone even though I didn't have the same training," I say, surprised by how easily the lie occurs to me. "It coincided with the graduation so I dropped by the Academy early in the morning, took the exam, and went to the meeting."

Shikamaru scowls in disbelief, but then shakes his head. "Anyway," he says and turns to the boy beside him. "Chouji, you remember Kagiru Ren, don't you? She used to hang out with us sometimes when we were younger."

"Oh." Chouji smiles, his brain finally registering who I am. "Yeah, I remember you. You used to always be with Sasuke, too, didn't you? And then—you just kind of left one day."

"Yeah," I confirm, smiling tightly. "I went to stay with my relatives in the next town over and trained there. In any case, I see you guys have graduated too. What do you guys think is gonna happen now?"

Shikamaru scuffs his foot against the floor, says, "My dad told me they're going to put us on teams of three based on skill sets, intelligence, whatever. Whichever students complement each other best are the ones who are put together."

"Teams of three, huh?" I say, folding my hands behind my head. Dealing with two other people and Kakashi might not be so bad. As long as one of those two people are not Sasuke.

"Hey," Chouji says. "What if we three are put on a team together?"

I pause, looking between Chouji and Shikamaru. Chouji grins broadly while Shikamaru looks less than pleased at the thought. He eyes his friend warily as though wondering if Chouji knows what he would be getting himself into should the three of us be paired up—or, rather, what Shikamaru himself would be getting into if the three of us were paired up.

I laugh then, and with a shake of my head, I say, "I don't think we'd be so lucky, Chouji."

I part with Shikamaru and Chouji, declining their offer to go to the park and watch the clouds because there is still the matter of my house and Sasuke and the bond and Sasuke. Returning to Sasuke's house, I'm glad to find the front door unlocked, whether because he thought of me or because he's careless, I don't know.

The light is muted in his house, unable to cut through thick curtains or even the shoji doors that line the living room. I poke my head into the kitchen, calling for Sasuke, but no answer.

Glancing up the stairs, I consider going up to check his room for him, but then the floorboards creak behind me. I turn quickly, defensive, only to be knocked backward because I ram into Sasuke's chest.

"Wow, we've got to stop running into each other like this," I say, rubbing my nose.

He doesn't answer, only examines the headband I wear. His eyes narrow with this kind of disgust that makes me take a step back, at once putting up my guard.

He is different from yesterday. I bet if I had showed up at his porch today instead of when I did, he would have thrown me out without a second glance. After all, he's a full-fledge shinobi now. He has a badge to prove his strength. But then so do I.

Without a word, Sasuke shoves past me to climb the stairs. Just as he reaches the middle of the staircase though, he stops, his hand tight on the rail.

"Without," he says, "avoiding the question or replying with some snarky remark, tell me: why are you here?"

I purse my lips. "I already told you," I say. "I made a deal with the Hokage. It was part of the agreement that I had to come back."

"And why did you leave in the first place?"

At the question, I startle. I sigh and start to move up the staircase too, deciding it's better if I just settle in for the day. My house can be dealt with later. "I think you know the answer to that."

Before I can continue past him, something tugs on the tips of my fingers and freezes my feet in place. My mouth set in a grimace, I have to fight the words bursting out of my mouth, but even then, I am not strong enough. The bond—the barriers I had built up to suffocate this bond crumble without a fight, and then I am blurting, "I left because I wanted to break the bond. I left because I didn't—_don't_—want to be bound to you anymore. In fact," I add, gritting my teeth, "if I had had the choice, I would never have been bound to you at all."

I am gasping by the time I finish speaking, leaning hard on the railing for support as my chest heaves for air. I cough into my shoulder, the weight of the bond lifting from me, and Sasuke brushes past me.

"Now," he says, "that wasn't so hard, was it?"

[+]

I don't have much of a choice when it comes to the bond. It has been passed down through our families for generations. It's not a matter of being handpicked by the heads of our families and being inducted, either; it's a matter of luck, of being born around the same time, and a great cosmic misfortune, the result of a century old love contract gone wrong.

The dynamic has to remain the same: a boy from the Uchiha, and a girl from the Kagiru.

So that's why we're here, Sasuke and me.

That's the only reason why I'm here.

* * *

Thank you for reading! Please review!


	4. Bonding

**BOUND**

**Chapter 04: Bonding**

The next morning the air is stale. I guess Sasuke decided not to be so generous with breakfast today. So I change my clothes and washing up, I amble down the stairs, still half-asleep despite the cold water I'd splashed on my face.

With no food at Sasuke's house—and in fact, after further inspection, no Sasuke—I go into the village to run errands. I need to reregister, pick up supplies for my house, but most importantly, I need food.

I count the change I have in my pocket, frowning at my lack of funds. There won't be much I can afford. I might just have to buy a quick snack before going about my business today. Maybe while I'm at the Administration building, I can pop in an see the Hokage again about my family funds. I had pulled some out for my trip, but there should still be a substantial amount in whatever account the village kept for me. After all, being affiliated with the Uchiha, who were the village's police force and well off in their own right, set up my family comfortably. Not to mention, my family were also the leading private medical practice in Konoha. Whatever patients the village hospital couldn't treat were referred to us, which was oftentimes the case with shinobi. So we were in good business, my family. We were well-off in our own right. We could have survived on our own.

Even at this hour, the streets are crowded with people shopping or socializing. So many people around makes me nervous; I was never one to have many friends as a kid because my parents forced Sasuke and me together, and as a result my social skills were stunted at a young age. Aside from Shikamaru, I never hung out with anyone at or outside of school, especially since all the girls started hating me once they realized how much time I was spending with Sasuke.

I slip through the crowd as best as I can, weaving through the fray so carefully that I don't bump shoulders with anyone. I scan the streets for cheap food vendors I can grab a bite at and find, instead, a group of girls about my age standing in a clump at the corner of a block. The show off their headbands, moving them from their foreheads to their necks to their waists to see which way would suit them best.

The sight of the girls and their fussing distracts me long enough for me to ram into someone's shoulder, spinning them around. I star to apologize to the scowling boy when I recognize him from the other day.

"Oh, Naruto!"

He studies my face before realizing who I am, then he breaks out into a smile and says, "Ren! Sorry, I don't have time to talk. I'm supposed to be meeting Iruka-sensei at Ichiraku's for a celebratory bowl of ramen!"

"What are you celebrating?" I ask dumbly before remembering the graduation.

Sure enough, Naruto says, "Becoming a Genin, of course!"

"But," I say, looking him up and down, "where's your headband?"

"I left it at home," he says, waving his hand under his nose like there's a stench in the air he can't stand. "I don't want to wear it and ruin it before I have to. Yours is looking pretty beat up already."

I touch the metal of my headband, frowning. I'd forgotten again to buff it like I've been meaning to, but there's no reason to bring that up. So I say, "Yeah, silly me. I'll take a note from your book next time, Naruto."

"Hey, you want to come to Ichiraku's with me?" he says, and I am struck by the fact that he is still beaming. Then again, I'd been stuck with Mr. Doom-and-Gloom for the past two days. I don't have much to work with. "It's Iruka-sensei's treat!"

"You know the way to a girl's heart," I say with a wink. "But no, thanks. After intruding on your and Iruka's meal the other day, I think I should let you guys have this to yourselves. I'll see you later though, right? At the orientation?"

Naruto nods vigorously and I start to think there's no end to his enthusiasm. He waves goodbye as he dash off, kicking up dust behind him and bristling some of the villagers he passes.

That boy. I'll be interested to see how the shinobi life treats someone as peppy as him.

I pick up some dumplings from a street vendor and head straight to my house, figuring I would do inventory before I try to assess what tools I need to buy to work on the place.

In the morning light, my house looks even worse and creepier than it had when I first returned. I can see now that the paint is stripping, like someone has taken an apple peeler to it. Some of the windows are broken, cracks spider-webbing from the corners of the panes, and the porch is cracked in places, weeds growing between the floorboards.

I tiptoe onto my porch, thinking it might collapse on me, but the wood doesn't even creak under my weight. I reach for the doorknob, and once I have a firm grasp on it, I can feel the patches where rust is starting to wear it away. I groan in disgust, glad there is a treatment for tetanus, and push my way through.

As it had two nights ago, the door creaks a welcoming, though it's more like a death sentence at this point. Mold could be gathering in some musty corner of my house. Termites could be tearing at the wood right now. I could walk farther in and everything could collapse on me, killing me on the spot, like some kind of twisted revenge because I haven't been a good homeowner.

I shake off the dread, shake off the overactive imagination, and scan the inside of my house. The sunshine that bleeds through the paper-thin curtains of my living rooms allows me to see the dust particles floating in patches. They swim back and forth in the air and without wasting another moment, I slam the door closed.

_Later_, I think, rushing down my porch and away from my house. _I'll do this later._

Looking over my shoulder, I watch as my house recedes behind me, watch as the responsibility drops from my shoulders as soon as my house is hidden behind trees. Rebuilding that house will not be something I can do alone.

As I turn to face the road ahead of me, I get a face full of someone's shirt. Both I and the person I've run into grunt as I stagger back, but he is able to stay his ground. He reaches out to steady me, and I find his hold familiar. I shake my head, clearing it of the dizziness, and look up to see—

"Oh," I say as Sasuke scowls. I rub my nose, squinting through the morning light. "You again. What are you doing here? And why do you keep appearing out of nowhere?"

He arches his brow at me, then his gaze slinks toward my house. "This place is a dump," he says without answering either of my questions.

"Don't think I haven't noticed, Wonder Boy," I grumble, moving around him and down the dirt path that leads back to the middle of the village. He falls into step beside me as I say, "Now you know why I was so desperate to find a place to sleep."

Sasuke doesn't answer, instead turns his gaze to the markets that begin to line the road. "How are you going to fix it up?"

His question surprises me because his tone borders on concerned. But I ignore it, blow my bangs out of my face. "I don't know. Why?" I say as a realization hits me. "You want me out of your house that badly?"

The corner of his lips twitch like it's taking ever fiber of his being not to frown at me. He takes his time gathering his words before he says, "I just don't know how you'll ever get it done on your own."

"You know," I say, holding up a finger, "you haven't answered a single one of my questions since we started this conversation."

Sasuke smirks and without a word, we continue on our way through town, though I don't know where we're going. Sometimes Sasuke leads a turn, and other times I bring us down a side street. Everywhere around us, though, is the sweet aroma of all the food stands that make my mouth water. My stomach snarls, low and feral under the murmur of the crowd around us. The sound doesn't go without Sasuke's notice.

As Sasuke opens his mouth to say something, a whine stabs through the tranquility that we'd created for ourselves, making me flinch.

"Sasuke-kunnn!" comes a girls voice as she shoves through the crowd. She is dressed in purple, with arm warmers that go from her elbows to the middle of her biceps, her headband tied loosely around her waist. Her eyes land on the boy beside me and she ogles at him, clapping her hands together in delight. She pries into the space between me and Sasuke, shoving me aside.

"Sasuke-kun," she says, "what a _coincidence_ it is to see you here."

"I'm sure," I mumble. And though Sasuke and I don't stop or even slow our pace for the girl, she disregards the fact that neither of us are pleased by her presence.

The girl glances at me like she's surprised I'm still here at all, and then turns back to Sasuke, her long blonde ponytail whipping the side of my face. I sputter strands of her hair out of my mouth, as she says, "Who's your new friend, Sasuke-kun? Aren't you gonna introduce me?"

"Actually," I interject, but I'm nonexistent to the girl now. The girl is smitten by the sight of Sasuke; I can practically see the hearts in her eyes.

I'm about to separate myself from the situation when I hear, "INO, YOU PIG! GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF SASUKE-KUN."

The girl next to me, Ino, who hadn't even been touching Sasuke in the first place, latches herself onto his arm now, halting him. It's so abrupt that by the time I've noticed, I've already taken three steps away from them. I look over my shoulder at Sasuke, who leans away from Ino. There is a noticeable gap between his torso and his arm, like he's trying to make his arm detach from his shoulder. I stifle my laughter and fail miserably when a group of about five girls push through the crowd.

The girl at the front of the group, one with a startling shade of pink hair, glares at Ino. There's something faintly familiar about her, the fall of pink on her head, that resonates with me, but I dismiss it as she jabs an accusatory finger at Ino.

"What do you think you're doing?" the other girl demands.

"Oh, Sasuke-kun and I were about to go on a brunch date." Ino smirks and allows the pink haired girl a condescending wink. The vein in the pink haired girl's broad forehead pulses. "I'd invite you along, Sakura, but the reservation is for two only."

"LIAR," Sakura shouts, her fists clenching. The girls behind her agree, planting their hands on their hips. I notice the headbands on their foreheads, tied around their necks. These girls are my competition in the Genin class? If all they're interested in is Sasuke, surpassing them will be easy.

Getting away from them completely, though, will be another story. I could make a run for it now, but then I catch sight of Sasuke, looking pained. I sigh as the fan girls start to squabble amongst each other. I contemplate running away, but I know I can't leave Sasuke. I still need to talk to him. But he can get away on his own, right? After all, the girls are distracted, and he's a member of the Uchiha clan. If he's as good a student as I remember he was, it shouldn't be too hard for him.

Until Ino clutches Sasuke's hand, twining their fingers together and tugs him toward her.. The girls in the group collectively turn beet red, like they're about to have a heart attack in unison. Somehow, they manage to open their mouths as a collective to scream something at Ino, but then I clear my throat and they whirl toward me, only to narrow their eyes.

"Excuse me," I say, brushing past them until I'm standing in front of Ino and Sasuke. I pick up their entangled hands with my forefinger and thumb and carefully peel her hand from his. Once they're apart, I drop their arms back to their sides and step between Sasuke and the horde of girls. I grin at them as I push Sasuke back.

"Sorry to break up the party," I tell them. "I was having a good time watching you all—really, I was—and I'd love to get to know you all someday, but Sasuke and I have business we need to take care of, so we'll have to take a rain check!"

"Who are _you_?" Sakura demands, and the girls behind her shout in agreement. Ino has even joined her ranks now, watching me with a glare.

"Not really relevant right now," I say, turning. "But nice talking to you bye!" I spin Sasuke around so that I can put my hands on his back and shove him forward, out of the line of fire. I hear the girls protest behind me, but I weave through the crowds well enough that I'm able to shake them off. "You're welcome," I mumble once they're out of earshot.

"I didn't need your help," Sasuke retorts.

"A simple thank you would suffice," I say, sidestepping him so that I can walk at his side. "Anyway, those girls were like harpies. I remember them pining after you when we were kids, but they have gotten _so much worse_ through puberty. How you managed this long, I don't know. I should get pointers from you," I say, pushing my hands into my pockets. "Obviously you know something I don't if you've been able to last here."

We are quiet for a long time after my comment, growing tense as what I've said sinks in. He hasn't _lasted here_, after all. He was simply here. And if it came down to it, if he had the opportunity I did, he probably would have left a long time ago too.

"Anyway," I say, trying to shake off the awkwardness. "I do have something I want to talk to you about, Sasuke. Why don't I take you up on that brunch date you had with Ino, since I've so inconsiderately forced your hand in cancelling it?"

We pick a restaurant not far from the Ninja Administration building so we can head over there and get registered when we're done eating. As we're waiting for our orders to come out, we don't talk or exchange pleasantries. Sasuke stares at nothing while I stare out the window we're seated by. When I get tired of people-watching, my eyes flick to Sasuke.

He has his hands entwined and leans forward so that his lips are pressed to the sides of his fingers. His eyes are glazed over with thoughts of something I don't try to figure out.

"Why do you always sit so seriously?" I ask. His eyes widen a bit as he is knocked out of his reverie and he regards me blankly. "Don't give me that look. You know exactly what I mean. You always have this—broodiness to you, with your hands clasped together like you're thinking so hard about everything and being philosophical."

Sasuke scoffs as our food comes and the waitress lays it out before us. "Is this what you wanted to talk to me about? My 'broodiness'?"

"No. But I thought it would be a good ice breaker."

Sasuke stays quiet while I dig into my food, rich, hot rice warming my insides. My belly settles with satisfaction as I swallow. "The thing is," I start tentatively, not knowing where to start. But then something occurs to me and I ask instead, "What _were_ you doing at my house this morning?"

"I wanted to see what it looked like," he says, taking a drink of water. "I thought you were being dramatic. I didn't realize it was actually so bad."

I scoff, saying, "_Bad_ is an understatement. It'll take a miracle to clean that place up. But I'm saying that because the thought of work disgusts me." I slouch in my seat, playing with my food, appetite forgotten at the idea of my badly run down house. "It's hard to believe," I say softly, "that anyone ever lived there, huh?"

Sasuke's silence is all I need to know that he doesn't want to talk about it.

"Anyway," I continue, sitting back up. "You never really said why you were at my house."

"I told you: I just wanted to see how it looked."

"Yeah, okay, but _why_?"

He blinks at me a few times like he hadn't thought about it before. Then he shrugs as though it doesn't matter. "I was curious."

"Are you sure you didn't come because you wanted to see how long it would take to get me out of your house?" I tease, but it comes out quiet and serious and pathetic.

He pauses, his chopsticks halfway to his dish. "…no," he replies. "That wasn't it."

I sigh, relieved, and close my eyes.

"There's something else you want to ask, though, isn't there? The real reason you wanted to talk."

The abruptness of his voice makes my eyes snap back open in an instant. I regard him steadily, wondering what gave it away. And then something prods my brain to remind me it's there. I scowl. Not three days back and already he's trying to pry into my mind with the bond.

"Don't get inside my head like that," I tell him, annoyed with myself for letting my guard down. "I don't do it to you."

"What is it that you want to ask?" he says again, ignoring my demand. Despite the fact that we had been talking normally before, I find myself freezing up. It's so hard to ask this question, to bring up this topic at all really because of all the resentment and loss and—

I clear my throat and say, "Well, that is…I was wondering if you…if you knew anything about where the bond is. Or, you know, about it in general."

He glances up at me, brow arched, and puts a mouthful of food into his mouth.

"You know what I mean," I say when he doesn't answer. "_Sasuke_."

"I don't have it," he says finally. "My family has never had it, and my parents never told me anything about the bond. I didn't even know about it until—" He stops, his face falling at an unpleasant memory that I don't press for because I already know.

A dark night, too still, too broken, too fragmented by my unwillingness to recall it.

I purse my lips as he says, "It doesn't matter. All I know is that the bond isn't on the compound."

"How would you know that? Have you tried looking for it?"

"I wouldn't know where to look," he retorts, and it's the ferocity in his voice that makes me flinch. "But it seems to me like you would, since you know _all about_ my house and the little secret hiding spots your parents used to use."

"I've already checked everywhere though," I blurt and Sasuke eyes me carefully. I cover my face with my hands, say, "Before I left, I—I went through your house. I checked everywhere my parents would have thought to hide it, and some other places, but—there was nothing."

When I finish, there's silence. I can hear people talking at the tables and booths around us, can feel their feet clomping and their hearty laughs, can hear their breaths and hearts in time with my own. At last, I look up from my dish to find Sasuke watching me with disgust. I recoil back into my seat as best I can, but it does nothing to ease the fury in his gaze.

"Then what makes you think I have it," he says tightly, "when you've apparently searched my house so thoroughly?"

I fiddle with my thumbs, say, "Secrets. Your family has so many secrets, I just thought—"

He pushes his plate away from him and stands. Without another word to me, he leaves.

"Hey!" I call after him, stopping a few groups next to us mid-conversation. Their eyes flick between Sasuke and me, waiting for a showdown, but when he doesn't turn around, they go back to their meals, whispering. I scowl, pushing my plate away as well.

As I chuck my chopsticks on the table, a realization strikes me and I groan, slapping a hand to my face.

The bastard left me with the bill.

[+]

I have to sit through a lecture by the restaurant owner about how kids these days have no respect and how I had probably come in here hoping for a free meal by making up my sad story and having my boyfriend walk out on me before a neighboring party takes pity on me and pays my tab for me.

I thank them with every fiber of my being before I set off to the Ninja Administration building to get reregistered, where I have to sit through another lecture from the Hokage about how he expects great things from me and he can see me doing well on a team, despite my attitude, which he believes will be rectified as soon as we finish a few missions and I die a little inside with every moment I have to spend with him.

Once I'm released, I decide to go back to my house and at the very least start sorting through the boxes lying around my living room. I mean, there's nowhere else for me to go.

I manage up the front porch, unchanged from when I'd visited this morning. Gathering up my nerve, I open the door and walk in, leaving the door wide open again—just in case. I maneuver around my living room and shove the curtains cover the window aside, opening the window to allowed the dust out and fresh air in. I sigh, leaning my forehead against the chilled window.

I breathe.

I hold onto the window sill and lean back, glancing over my shoulder to see what I should sort through first. I decide to plop down in front of the box at my feet and start there.

The box greets me with a kiss of dust when I open it. I hold my breath and wait for the dust to fly out the window before inhaling. I still sneeze. Wiping my nose, I push the flaps of the box down so they don't get in my way. The first item on top of the pile of junk is a picture. The edges have ripened and turned yellow, but it is otherwise in pristine condition.

I hold it up to the light to make sure what I'm looking at is authentic. Sure enough, the sun glints across the glossy surface of the photo, setting the colors ablaze.

It's a photo of me and my parents. My mom has me in her hands, held high above her head. I have my arms and legs spread-eagle, and this look of pure bliss on my face as though I really can fly. My father sits at my mother's feet, arms crossed, looking irritated, but in the fond way that parents do. There's no real annoyance behind it. At least, I don't think. He was always good at hiding what he truly felt. Or maybe it was that I was good at ignoring it.

The photo clutches at my heart. I stuff it back into the box roughly. The sound of it crinkling and possibly ripping brings me a guilty kind of satisfaction that really does nothing for me.

I stare into the box, wondering if this is the kind of endeavor I really want to take on when I've just returned from a mission I'd assigned myself, a mission that, if they were alive today, my parents would have condemned. But it's because they are not alive today that I am doing this. It's because they are not alive today that I will go to such great heights to break this bond.

For me, this is the revenge that will finally give me closure for the death of my family.

* * *

Thank you for reading! Please review!


	5. Living in the Past

**Bound  
Chapter 05: Living in the Past**

A lot of bad things have happened to me in my life. Besides being born into a family in which I was bound to a person because of a trifle piece of parchment, there was this time when I was young and just starting my medical training. I couldn't completely grasp the idea of the chakra control needed to perform medical ninjutsu, though. It was frustrating, even for me as a child, that this concept was so hard for me to understand. My mother was complacent; I was a child. Of course I was going to struggle with something people normally learned when they were four or five times my age. My father, however, was less forgiving.

It's a requirement for the Kagiru women to become skilled medical shinobi, especially for the one who had a part in the bond—in this case, me—so that they could take care of their Uchiha counterpart if it came down to it. So to him, I was nothing more than a tool that was needed to protect a specific member of the Kagiru's worshipped clan. The fact that it was taking so long to teach me something my father considered so simple irritated him.

One day, he snapped. That was the day I was stripped of being allowed to stand up for myself.

That day is an obvious second to this day though. The day after my family was massacred along with the whole of the Uchiha.

I don't remember much from that day. I try to block it out as much as I can. Even when I think about it, though, it still won't come back to me in more than bits and pieces. It could also be a psychological thing that has me a little messed up, some sort of selective amnesia that's my mind's way of protecting myself. But the most prominent thing I remember about the Uchiha massacre is this: Waking up.

The ground was pact tightly from feet stampeding over it for years. It'd been cold that night so the dirt was cold as ice. The cold seeped through my school clothes and into my bones. I shivered, the side of my face pressed into the pebbles that lay under my head.

My bloodline—the Genshindou—made it easy for me to pick up on vibrations, however slight they were. With my ear against the ground, it served as a kind of alarm system. There were vibrations scraping up against the ground and reverberating into my ear. I picked them out to be footsteps. After a few moments, words flew into the air and landed in the dirt, relaying back to me.

The voices were murmuring to me. _Wait,_ I thought. _Were they murmuring _to_ me or _about_ me?_ I wasn't sure. It'd felt like my eardrums had been blasted out by too loud music. My body didn't feel so hot either. Every part of me was sore, and for some reason everything burned. Maybe I wasn't even really hearing—or I suppose _feeling_—these voices or footsteps.

The only voice I definitely know I heard was one that nagged at me from the back of my mind. _Wake up, Ren,_ it urged. _You gotta wake up, understand?_

"I understand," I grumbled then, pushing myself up. My arms, however, were shaky and feeble. I didn't have enough strength to support myself. I dropped back to the ground. My body screamed with such pain that a groan had to escape my lips. It was low and mournful and the sound of it hurt my heart.

Weakly, my senses picked up on vibrations that were coming along the street.

"Did you hear something?" These vibrations were deep and grown. It probably belonged to an older man. I could feel the anxiety and hopefulness bleeding through his words.

There was a pregnant pause that took over before another pair of feet—lighter than the first; that of a woman, I presumed—shifted closer to me. They were about a meter or two away and their presence alarmed me. I couldn't bring myself to open my eyes though. I didn't have the energy to.

"Yeah," the second voice answered belatedly. It _was_ a woman, as I had guessed, and even in this moment, I couldn't help but feel a tiny bit of pride for having placed it correctly. "It came from somewhere over here." She hesitated forward. Her partner inched in behind her.

"Hello?" she called. "Anyone there?"

Even if I wanted to answer, or knew what to say to her, I wouldn't have been able to reply. My tongue was heavy in my mouth, like someone had tried to superglue it shut.

"We're here to help," the woman reassured. "There's no more danger. It's okay for you to come out now if you were hiding."

_Danger?_ I wanted to ask her. _What danger?_

And then it hit me, much too hard and much too fast. I remembered the silence of the night, the bad feeling in the air. The feeling that something was terribly, excruciatingly wrong. I remembered the bodies that weren't supposed to be lying that way, the blood spilled on the ground that only looked like puddles of rainwater.

And how I had to relive how it all happened.

Like I said before, I don't remember much of it anymore. All I know is, in that moment, I truly was terrified because it was still all so fresh.

I was surprised then to feel my chest being pressed on by some invisible hand, my throat getting that way throats get when they're on the verge of cracking and spilling all your feelings on the spot even when you don't want them to because you want to be strong and pretend that everything is all right so that maybe they really will be all right.

Through my eyelids, the sun is shadowed. I didn't work to open them to see what had caused the eclipse. I just wanted to go home and act like none of this had ever happened—that I would wake up and my father would pester me about my training and my mother would give me my lunch and I would scowl and take it without thanking her and then my father would reprimand me for being disrespectful. I found myself starting to miss the people who I'd only begun to hate not days before.

The irony was sadistic.

"I found her," the woman said and, softly, her arms wrapped around my torso, turned me over, and lifted me from the ground. "She looks okay. Tired and drained, but okay. I think she may be the only other survivor."

"We've got to hurry our rounds, in case that's not it," the man answered. "At this rate, the possibility of survival has increased by a bit—bits small enough to almost matter." There was a brief quiet that settled around us as he decided on what to do. "Right," he said. "Take her to the hospital. We'll continue looking through and cleaning this mess."

The woman turned, and grunted in agreement. "You're lucky," she whispered to me as though I didn't know, "to have survived through this."

But at what cost? I wonder. My family was dead, that much I remembered of the past night's events. How was that lucky?

The woman jumped. Judging by the way the air moved around us, she was running and hopping across rooftops to get me to the hospital. I could feel her chest rise and fall with life. I could feel the reverberations of her heart. I counted them to keep from thinking.

They lulled me to sleep.

[+]

I would've sworn it was all a bad dream. I would have sworn that I'd overexerted myself the day before, passed out at the Uchiha compound, and was now resting in my room because my surroundings were dark and my bed was caressing me gently. It was soft enough, familiar enough. Warm enough. But this bed was not enough.

Realizing that crushed any hope I had of being at home. I heard the mechanical beep that reminded me I was awake and alive and in fact _not_ at home, but in the false security of a hospital where they told you everything was all right only because that was their job.

I blinked in the darkness that was everywhere. My fingers twitched beneath the covers. I could feel where they'd stabbed the IV into my arm, where tubes wrapped around my fingers, like I needed special medical attention because I was dying. These hospital guys were overdramatic, I remember thinking.

I squeezed my eyes shut with force, trying to seal them shut forever. That would've been a relief. I wouldn't have to face my reality so much if I couldn't see it.

My lips pursed together. I whimpered a bit, clutching the blankets around me. I turn on my side as best I could with everything in my arm and curled into a ball, using the covers as makeshift comfort.

I just wanted to go home.

[+]

The next morning, doctors came in and asked me questions, all of which I couldn't answer. Or didn't want to answer. I'm not sure anymore. Either way, I know I felt as though the questions they asked me were impossible for me to answer, and that I was the wrong person to question.

At some point, the Hokage came to see me. This was the first time I'd ever seen him before, in all his powerful, aged glory. At any other moment in time, I would have reveled in seeing the man whose face is carved onto the mountainside. But then he told me my family, along with the Uchiha, had been wiped out, and I was not to worry because I was safe and they were hunting the man who had made this happen. The old man regarded me with pity, and when I didn't reply, he sighed and left, whispering to my doctors to make sure I was all right.

The only thing they told me that was worth any kind of response was when one of the nurses came in and announced that Sasuke was now awake and well, to which I replied, "No. He's not well."

They all stared at me then. I don't think they wanted to ask me what I meant. I think they already knew. They were doing what they did best: lie.

They ran Sasuke and me through some psychoanalyses; I guess it was standard procedure for people who'd lost relatives like we did. We'd passed the test with Okays, and were then scheduled for some counseling sessions for coping with loss. But I think the biggest problem they had after that was figuring out who to get to sign our release forms.

"Do you have any friends you could stay with, Ren?" The doctor spoke slowly and with purpose. I stared at the white covers that rolled over my toes, considering his question.

Friends. Did I have friends? Outside of Sasuke and the Uchiha, I—

. . . yes. I had friends. Well, _a_ friend.

"Shikamaru," I said and my voice cracked from having not been used much for the past day.

This shocked my doctor. He'd asked the question without expecting an answer, which, I thought, was stupid of him. He adjusted his glasses and leaned in a little closer. "Sorry?" he asked. "What did you say?"

I pursed my lips, all the sorrow that I'd built up inside tumbling out with every word I was about to say. "Shikamaru," I said, my eyes turned down and watering. I stumbled for his last name, a last name that I'd only heard my mother use when addressing Shikamaru's father, Shikaku, who had told my family, myself included, from the start to call him by his first name, so I never bothered to remember his last, although my mother definitely did. She couldn't stand the impropriety of calling someone she respected and appreciated so much by his first name, despite how much Shikaku protested.

I tried to think of how my mother would call me into the living room and announce that we would be going over to Shikamaru's house. I tried to think of the way her tongue rolled on the letters, the way she always seemed so excited to be going over to their estate. I thought of how my mother frowned, the lines of her face filled with anxiety, when she told my father about the increasing time that I'd been spending with Shikamaru—that Nara boy.

Nara.

"N-Nara Shikamaru!" I looked up at the doctor. He was caught off guard even further by the tears welling out of my eyes. "I used to go see him all the time." The doctor didn't answer. I started panicking. Had I taken too long to think of his last name and now the doctor's offer for me to stay at friend's house was invalid? Or had something happened to Shikamaru and his family too? "Is that okay?" I pressed, gripping the sheets.

"Ah, yes, yes," the doctor reassured me. It was obvious he'd had no previous training with children. He jotted the name down on his clipboard. "And how do you know him?"

"He's in my class," I said in a rush. "And . . . my mom used to go over to their park to get medicine that his dad got from the—the deer. I don't know."

That seemed to be good enough for him. He called a passing nurse into the room. "Sweetheart," he said to me after sending the nurse off with a set of instructions to get a hold of the Nara family. "Sweetheart, everything is going to be okay now. Nurse Haya is going to call your friend here to see you, and hopefully, you'll be out by tonight, okay? Watch. Everything will be okay."

I was already growing sick of everybody telling me that. I knew what they were doing. And it wasn't going to work on me. I mean, my entire family was dead, and they expected me to believe everything was okay?

"Sasuke," I said then, remembering how it was my duty to watch over the Uchiha boy as well. If my family was dead, the least I could do for them was what they'd always wanted me to do ever since my bond to Sasuke had been revealed. "Sasuke. Where is he?"

"He's fine," the doctor told me, standing in his chair. "I'm going to go see him now. Don't worry about him." He sighed, massaging his brow with his forefinger and thumb. "You two are remarkable. And extremely lucky."

The nurse from before came into the room and gave the doctor a note. He read it over hastily and pocketed it. "The Nara will be here for you in a moment, Ren," he said, nodded to the nurse to dismiss her. "I'll see you then."

I swiped at my eyes and scowled at the wall opposite me, wanting to get the hell out of there. My doctor left as he said he would, and I realized that my anger was futile. The doctor was right: At least I had my life.

At the time, though, I didn't know that my life had been saved for the sake of another. For the sake of Sasuke.

I watched the sun set through the window to my right. I ignored every person that came into my room and denied every meal they tried to feed me. It wasn't long before I felt a familiar pattern of footsteps vibrate through my body and small fingers prodding my hip.

I looked away from the sunset and my eyes met with milky brown irises that projected curiosity. It was Shikamaru, his stubby hair tied into a short ponytail, his index finger still in the air from when he poked me "What're you doing here, Ren?" Shikamaru asked. "Are you all right? You're not hurt, are you?" His eyes scanned my face, looking for traces of injuries.

An adult sized hand, calloused with hard work, was placed on his shoulder. We both looked up to find Shikaku staring grimly down at us. "Shikamaru," he said, pulling his son away. "Come with me for a moment. We'll get something to eat."

Shikamaru glanced from his father to me and back again. He furrowed his brow but went with his father, calling "Goodbye" to me over his shoulder. As the two left, Shikamaru's mother entered, her face worn and weary. She looked at me with a sadness I neither wanted nor needed.

She made her way over to me slowly, raking her mind for what to say to me, no doubt. When she reached me, she perched on the edge of my bed and folded her hands neatly into her lap.

"The sunset looks beautiful this evening," she started, smiling into the scene as a mother does when she finally gets a moment away from her family. "Is that what you were looking at Shikamaru came in?"

I didn't answer. Instead, I gripped the covers of my bed and kept my eyes down.

She tried a different approach. "Ren, I'm glad you gave them Shikamaru's name when they asked you for it. It makes me happy to know that you trust him that much. The way he is, I was afraid he'd never even want to put the effort toward making friends." She chuckled a little. I didn't.

She reached out to stroke my hair. I didn't shy away. "Ren, I want you to know that you're always welcome at our home. Especially at a time like this. Please don't ever think that you're alone."

I didn't acknowledge her, but she seemed to know that I understood what she was saying. She stroked my hair a few times before the doctor came by and beckoned her out. He gesticulated professionally; his facial expressions were a perfect doctorial blend of anxiety for the patient and cool, collected calm that made people trust in him. Yoshino nodded after almost everything he said, throwing in questions here and there. Something he said made her eyes widen and flit toward me. She pulled her bottom lip in between her teeth and chewed on it, crossing her arms. I wondered how mothers were so good at being concerned about kids, when I was nothing but concerned about myself. Would I grow up to be as kind as Yoshino, as good a mother?

Doubtful.

The doctor finished speaking and, without any more questions, Yoshino thanked him and returned to my room. She pulled the stool next to the bed closer and sat down. She smiled pleasantly, hiding the feelings that the contents of the preceding conversation had given her.

"Ren," she started, covering my hand with her own. It was soft and fleshy and warm. It made my skin tingle. "You're going to stay with us for a few days, all right? We'll take care of you until we can figure things out."

"What about Sasuke?" I asked before I could help myself. "Sasuke doesn't have any friends to stay with. He's going to be all alone here."

Yoshino recoiled, unsure of how to answer. "Don't worry, Ren," she settled with telling me, pulling the covers back and allowing me room to climb off the bed. "You have enough on your plate as is."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Yoshino gave me a moment to clear my head. In that quick minute that it took me to forget about everything, I thought, "Poor Sasuke."

I clambered off the bed and onto the ground, where the height difference between Yoshino and me was so obvious that it made me want to puff out my chest and grow a meter. Yoshino took my hand and led me out of the hospital room where Shikamaru and Shikaku were waiting for us. She breathed deeply and forced another smile on her face, for the sake of her son, I think.

"Hey, kiddo," Shikaku greeted me. I nodded at him before training my eyes on Shikamaru. He furrowed his brow together. I shrugged as a means of answer. To his wife, Shikaku asked, "What's it look like?"

Yoshino's eyes flicked toward me. "The doctors told me that she could be unresponsive," informed Yoshino, "because she may be suffering from PTSD. It's already showing in the way that she's not eating any of the food they've been giving her."

PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. My mother had talked to me about that once before, when we were going over the scars that can be attained from battle. But I hadn't been in any battle. And there were no physical wounds on me. I didn't understand how I could be suffering from something that didn't even show.

"That's probably because it's hospital food," Shikaku dismissed. He bent down to be at eye level with me. He smiled the first genuine smile I'd seen since I'd gotten there, one that wasn't full of sympathy or pity or anything other than relative happiness. "How about we get you home," he told me, "and have a nice big dinner—Nara family style? How's that sound to you, Ren?"

I blinked at him, taking in the long scar that runs across the right side of his face. I'd been so used to just seeing him as my friend's father that I hadn't really looked at him before, hadn't noticed the scar or wondered how he'd gotten it. The only thing I'd really noticed about him was how much Shikamaru looked like him.

I wondered if I looked anything like either of my parents.

My hand received an encouraging squeeze from Yoshino. "Sounds good," I said. Shikaku's grin widened and he patted my head, standing straight.

"Let's go then," he said, and together, the four of us left the hospital for the Nara home.

[+]

Dinner that night was great. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed eating. I swore to myself that I would never starve myself to prove a point ever again.

The Nara talked a lot. It was mostly about how Shikamaru was doing in school and how Shikaku would help him with learning a secret family technique if he were ever up for it, which he said he wasn't. (Obviously, though, he _eventually_ caved and learned what his father had to teach him, albeit reluctantly.)

Whenever they addressed me, I kept my answers as short and as concise as they could be. In my defense, I was stuffing my face.

I felt like things were sinking back into normality—that I was only there for dinner and, when I finished, I would go home and be with my family once again. That was a lie, but I took consolation in it anyway because, honestly, what else did I have?

After dinner, Shikamaru and I washed up and got ready for bed. However, having had the food revitalize me, I wanted to play a few games. I pestered Shikamaru about it until he gave in. He sent me out to the living room to collect a card game his parents had gotten for him, and found it on a stand topped with books.

I grabbed the card deck, which slipped from my small hands and splay across the floor. I sighed and swept them together, making sure I had them all, when I heard noise from the kitchen, where Shikaku and Yoshino were cleaning after dinner.

They were talking. Though they kept their voices low, the vibrations carried out to me, rubbing against my eardrums and making it sound like they were speaking directly to me.

"What do we do?" Yoshino asked, sounding nervous. "How do we explain to a seven-year-old what's happened?"

"Yoshino," said Shikaku sternly. "From the way Ren's behaving, can't you tell that she already understands?"

Yoshino sighed heavily and plates clattered. The water turned on. "I was talking about how we're going to explain this to our _son_, Shikaku," she said, pulling out another plate that made all the others cave in. "And how do we go about our lives now? Everything's going to be different now we have a second child to take care of."

I took a sharp breath. The last thing I wanted to be was a burden to anybody. Especially these people that had always been so nice to me.

"Nothing's going to change," he said softly, but firmly. The legs of his chair scraped against the ground as he got up. I heard his feet trod across the ground, but it didn't come any closer to me, so I didn't shy away from where I sat. "We can handle this, Yoshino. We go about living normally. I think that Ren would like that more than anything else. Normality is what she needs right now anyway, not all this sympathy and attention."

I pursed my lips to keep from crying. Quickly, I stood and, disregarding the cards all together, shuffled down the hall, to Shikamaru's room, where I knew he'd still be awake. Or, since it'd taken me so long to gather the pieces of the game, at least still _alive_.

Sliding his door open, I poked my head into his room. "Shikamaru?" I mumbled, and when he didn't answer, I went all the way in and closed the door behind me. I scurried across the floor and climbed into his bed, curling in under the covers with him. "Shikamaru," I repeated, giving him a small shove. At that, he turned and scowled at me, his eyes furrowed and annoyed.

"Hi," I breathed because I wasn't sure what else to do. I knotted my hands together. "Sorry for bothering you. And sorry for coming into your house and ruining the normality that you've got and invading your space. Like I'm doing now. So I'll get out and leave you alone now."

There was a pregnant pause in which all we did was stare at each other and wait for the other to make a move. When neither of us did anything, though, I said, "All right. Bye. And sorry. Again."

I started to clamber out of his bed, but he stayed me with his hand. I stopped, my eyes having adjusted to the darkness to see his brown, innocent orbs.

"It's okay," he said, pulling away. He gathered the covers tightly around his shoulders and grumbled, "It's fine. You're my friend, Ren. It's no trouble at all."

It was—and still is to this day—very un-Shikamaru-like of Shikamaru to say that something was 'no trouble at all'. It surprised me that he would ever admit it, or even allow, such a thing. I had expected him to let me go without a word.

"I want to know, though," he said, "why you can't go home. My dad told me that something happened to your family that made it not safe for you to go back, but what?"

He would hear it sooner or later. I decided then and there that it would be better if he heard it from me, so that he wouldn't get the sugar-coated version that made it seem like it was normal to have your family massacred.

"Someone killed my family," I whispered. "They . . . they don't know who did it"—though I certainly did. I saw it all through the miracle of the bond, not that I was going to tell him that—"but everybody keeps telling me that it's all going to be okay, so I guess it will be, but I think that they're lying."

Shikamaru's eyes had widened to the size of saucers. It was cute, how I remembered him. He'd curled closer to me as I finished talking. _"What?"_ he managed when I was done. His voice was barely audible.

"Well, yeah," I muttered. "Grown-ups always lie like that. How else do you think they stay so happy?"

"No," Shikamaru said, shaking his head so that his hair rubs against the pillow we're sharing. "You—your family. They're—"

He didn't finish and I didn't continue, though I knew what was coming. It was a word no seven-year-old should ever have, need, or want to say about anything.

"Why would someone do that?" he asked.

I replied, "I don't know", though I very well did know.

The Uchiha were spiteful people. They were proud and vengeful and isolated because they believed they were too good for the other people in the village. I was sure that they had made enemies that they underestimated, and that was the reason they were nearly extinct now.

"I hope they catch him," he said, and silently, I agreed. However, I knew it would be impossible because this guy that they were dealing with—he was beyond whatever realm we were in.

Our eyes glazed over with thoughts about everything and anything—our lives, our friends, school tomorrow, why my feet could only brush his shin when we were the same age and basically lying at the same eye-level on the pillow. We laid in silence for what seemed like the slow moment of forever that sinks in and makes you revel in it, then speeds up again and returns to normal, until there was a soft knock at his door. It slid open to reveal his parents standing on the other side, giant silhouettes compared to our small frames.

They came in stealthily, the only part of their youth they had not left behind. Yoshino sat on the edge of the bed, putting a hand on my shoulder. "Ren," she started, "sweetheart. Can we talk to you for a moment?"

"I'm really tired," I said quickly because I didn't want to talk and because it's true. "I just want to sleep please."

Yoshino regarded me warily and bit her lip. Shikaku came forward and placed a hand on his wife's shoulder. "She's right," he said as the woman looked up at him. "Tomorrow, when I take Shikamaru to school and get this all sorted out with the administration at the Academy; you can talk to her then."

"But I want to go to class tomorrow," I protested. I remembered what I'd heard them talking about and started to use it against them. "I want to be normal."

Yoshino was pained when she looked at me. Every line in her worn face showed me how much she wished things could really, _truly_ be normal. "You'll only miss one day, Ren," she assured me. "Don't you think you deserve to have a day after all that's happened?"

I didn't even deserve for this to happen, I wanted to snap at her, and look where I was now.

"Okay," I relented, turning back on my side to face Shikamaru once again. He watched me curiously, frowning. "Good night."

Yoshino hesitated before replying. "Good night," she said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. She leaned over me and kissed her son on his temple. He closed one eye, as though irritated she had to be so affectionate in front of his friend. "Good night, Shikamaru," she reiterated to him, _solely_ to him, and the words were so filled with such wondrous and powerful love that it made my heart hurt and my stomach fold in on itself with so much yearning and sadness that I cringed. She only made it worse when she whispered, "I love you", and he whispered an "I love you" back, and Shikaku murmured, "Good night", from where he stood with the same parental love that Yoshino had displayed and Shikamaru "Good night"-ed him in return, like it was all routine.

I pulled the covers over my head as they left, burrowing my face into Shikamaru's pillow that smelled like home and family and love and all the things I no longer had, as well as the smell of the park where his family took care of the deer. But underneath it all, it smelled like the awe-inspiringly sweet kindness that was Nara Shikamaru and that was I all tried to breathe in that night because, I knew that no matter what, I would have to leave him.

[+]

Shikamaru's head rested precariously on his fists, his eyes fluttering to a close. I watched him with interest as his head slipped forward, off his arm, and almost hit the table. Almost. His eyes jerked awake as his head fell and he righted himself, scowling.

"Shikamaru!" Yoshino scolded, realizing that he still hadn't fully woken up yet, even after a full breakfast. Or that he didn't want to wake up. At the sound of his name, Shikamaru opened one eye to regard his mother.

"Yeah?" he yawned. I elbowed him roughly. His lips turn down into a deeper frown as he wiped the sleep from his eyes.

"'Yeah'?" his mother repeated, the vein in her forehead pulsing. "'_Yeah_'? You're on your way to being a full-fledge ninja and you answer your mother with 'yeah'? Have some _respect_!"

Shikaku slowly sipped his tea on the other side of the table, used to all this commotion. I poked at the food I still hadn't finished.

"If you're always going to be this lazy," Yoshino grumbled, snatching Shikamaru's plate away from him, "I don't know how you'll graduate!"

"Easy, Yoshino," Shikaku consoled, putting his cup down.

Yoshino glared at her husband over her shoulder. "What are you two even still doing here?" she barked. "School starts in ten minutes! Get moving now or you're going to be late."

My head perked up at 'school'. I shoved my plate away and got to my feet. Yoshino's glare straightened out to a look of surprise. I knew I wasn't supposed to go to school today, but it was a force of habit that I did that. I felt like I still needed to go pick Sasuke up.

"I feel kind of sick," I lied, bracing myself against my chair and holding my stomach. "I'll be right back."

I shuffled to the bathroom as quickly as I could and just about slammed the door shut behind me. I slid down to the floor with my face in my hands. I heard the plates clatter together slowly. I could feel the vibrations of the chairs scrape against the ground through the naked skin of my feet, the vibrations of people moving across the living room, the front door being jerked open and clicking closed. Funny how I could feel all that and yet—

There was a soft knock at the door. "Ren?" Yoshino called through the thick wood. "Are you feeling better?"

I took a deep breath, scrambled to my feet and ran the water. I rinsed my hands under it for a second. I opened the door as I wiped my hands clean on my shirt, looking sullenly up at Yoshino. "I'm okay," I told her.

She crouched down to be at eyelevel with me. Smiling, she said, "Good. I'm glad." She patted my head as she stood up and led me out to the living room. Sure enough, Shikaku and Shikamaru were gone.

She sat me down on the body consuming couch of theirs. I sank between the cushions and struggled to right myself. She hooked her hands under my arms and picked me up, helping me sit against the back of the chair. Then she said, "Ren, I wanted to talk to you about this last night, and after thinking about it some more, I'm not quite sure I know how to . . . explain what's happened to you."

"I know what's happened," I said, lowering my eyes. "Someone killed everybody in my family. And all the Uchiha too. Didn't they?"

Yoshino bit her lip. She wavered, but only for a moment. "Yes," she confirmed. I could feel the pressure building up in my chest. I don't know what it is about adults admitting to you that everything is wrong when you already know that everything is wrong that makes the situation seem so much more terrible. "But, yesterday morning, when they found you and Sasuke at the Uchiha compound, they also found someone else."

My ears perked up, my eyes widened, my gaze turned up to watch Yoshino. Guarded. I wouldn't let my hopes be built up and crushed if she didn't mean what I thought she meant.

"Your mother, Ren," said Yoshino, beaming. "She's alive."

* * *

Please review!


	6. Friction

**Bound  
Chapter 06: Friction**

I inhaled sharply and clutched the cushions I sat on. My eyes felt like they would pop out of their sockets.

It didn't make sense. Everybody—they were all dead. They were deaddeaddead. They had to be. There was no way anyone could have survived. No way, no way.

Sure, _I_ had survived, and so had Sasuke, but, I would later find out, we each had our own reasons for existing, for defying the fate that was supposed to befall us. Besides, we hadn't been there at the time of the massacre. We had arrived late and maybe, I thought then, Itachi hadn't had the time to finish us off. There was a logical explanation for why _we_ were alive, but my mother? No. Not that I could think of, at least.

So, amidst my confusion and reluctance to accept the fact that my mother was indeed alive, I did what kids do best—I turned the situation around on the messenger.

"You're a liar," I accused. "You're lying, aren't you?"

Yoshino's face melted with anxiety. I'd vexed her again, but how else did she expect me to react? Did she want me to start celebrating? Did she want me to throw my arms around her with glee? Because I couldn't do that. For one, my entire family, the entire population of my world at that time, had more or less been wiped out. I was—_am_—an endangered species. Secondly, up until this point, I'd believed everyone to be dead. Now she was bustling in with this news that my mother was alive? What else was being kept from me then, I wondered?

You couldn't _drop_ that kind of news on a child without thinking about how much it would cause them to reevaluate the things around them.

Yoshino placed a hand on my knee, a hand that was supposed to calm me, supposed to help me understand. "Ren," she said, "I'm not lying. I'm not trying to trick you or get your hopes up. I wouldn't be telling you this if it weren't the truth. Your mother is alive."

"No," I insisted. "No. She can't . . . be alive. Everyone on the compound was dead. I felt it. I _felt_ it."

She didn't know what I was talking about and couldn't understand why I wasn't happy about the news. Her head tipped to the side, her confusion causing the weight of her head to become uneven.

"Granted," she added, "your mother . . . is in a coma. But the doctors told me the other day that she had used all her chakra to heal her fatal wounds, to save herself. She is a medic after all. But using up all that chakra caused her to slip into a coma. It's her body's way of making up for losing so much energy at once, going into—"

"A hibernation-like state," I finished mechanically, narrowing my eyes in confusion. "I know. I know. But . . . but if she—she must have known that everyone else—why would she do that?"

She inhaled sharply, racking her brain for an answer to my question. "She knew that you and Sasuke were still training at school," she said. "And maybe she wanted to make sure that the two of you were all right."

"Maybe," I repeated, like that was out of the question. There was a power in that word that I didn't understand then. It was so promising and, at the same time, it was such a letdown, an unfulfilling compromise. "But it was dumb to use all her chakra. She would've only gone into a coma, and when people slip into a coma, they may never wake up. She might be alive, but she is practically dead."

Yoshino recoiled from me, my medical knowledge of these things way more than she knew she could handle. Any other child would have sat there and bordered on the edge of understanding what was really going on. I, however, knew better. This was my field after all. I am a medic, like my mother was.

We sat and listened to the clock tick away our lives. I could hear her sigh a few seconds into our silence. The reverberations of her thumping heart ran through her flesh and bones and relayed themselves back to me. I could feel the life being drained out of her with every moment she spent on this planet. I could feel her heart beating, beating, beating.

And I couldn't feel mine. Or hear it.

My mom had taught me when I was just starting my medical training that there were many places you could feel your heart beat. The most common places people knew of were the spot near your jugular and at your writs, or just placing a hand over the left side of your chest. My mom let me try it out on her. I felt her heart twitching right away and was amazed. It was like I was holding their life source right at my fingertips.

Mom told me that, even if I had never had anyone near me, I could always feel my own pulse, know that life was constant, always happening, and I would know that, even alone, there were other people with the same heartbeats, the same rhythms to their lives as mine. And so I moved my fingers up to my jugular and searched for my heartbeat. When I couldn't find it, I got scared and thought I was dying. Or maybe I didn't have a heart at all and was some kind of soulless beast. She laughed at me and took my hand in hers. Then she flattened my hand out on my chest and smiled.

"Can you feel it now, Ren?" she had asked me. "You're alive."

And sure enough, I could feel my heart working. I calmed down a little, but when she moved her hand away, I was never able to really find my pulse again. It wouldn't come to me. Maybe because I didn't want to admit that I was wasting away as all these other people were. Maybe because I was refusing to believe that there could be anyone out there with the same kind of rhythm to their life as me, because I didn't want to be like them. Or rather, I didn't want to think that they were like me.

Because the way I saw other people made it easy for me to distinguish one life from the next. I could so perfectly see the way their body worked—the blood racing through their veins, the speed of their cells healing over a wound, the nervous system connecting throughout their body. But when I looked at myself, all I saw was this pathetic little human girl. I was never a science miracle or an interesting specimen. I was just . . . me.

"Can I go see her?" I mumbled feebly to Yoshino. "I guess . . . I mean, she _is_ alive. And she's my mother. I should at least go see her."

Yoshino's eyes went blank, like she could see that this won't play out right, like how it didn't go as she'd planned it to earlier, but she quickly recovered. She nodded and stood, patting my head. "After lunch," she told me. "We'll go get groceries for dinner and stop by the hospital then. How's that sound?"

"Fine." I crawled off the couch and slunk back into Shikamaru's room. Then I slipped back into bed, under the covers, and back into dreams, where things were considerably better off.

[+]

The hospital was as all hospitals are—white, sterile, and a mess of people in pink, green, and blue scrubs, some with white coats on over them, or some with nothing but a hospital gown to shield themselves. People rolled past me on wheelchairs and gurneys or with IV's, alive or dead or getting there. Yoshino checked us in at the front desk where we only had to wait a moment before a nurse came along and led us to my mother.

"Right," the nurse said, stopping in front of a door identical to all the others. She regarded the clipboard in her hand to make sure that she indeed had the right room and nodded. "Right," she said again. "Kagiru. Here you are."

I gripped Yoshino's hand tightly, digging my stubby nails into her flesh. Standing outside my mother's hospital room made everything so much more real. I wasn't sure this was the best decision I'd ever made.

The nurse opened the door for us. Yoshino and I started on our way in, but we were stopped. "Sorry," the nurse said sheepishly. She adjusted the clipboard in her arms so that it was a barricade between her and us, like she was afraid that we were going to pounce on her after what she said next. "Due to the patient's current condition, visitations are limited to immediate family only."

"Oh," Yoshino said. "I see."

I was instantly alarmed. Would she so easily let me go in alone? Leave me to deal with this by myself? "But," I began to protest. Too bad that was the only thing I could think to say.

Yoshino glanced at me, smiled her Reassuring Mother smile, and lowered herself so that we were eye-to-eye. She casually brushed my hair out of my face and said, "You should have time alone with her anyway, Ren. I'll be waiting right out here for you when you're done, all right?"

I kept my eyes on her, thinking that when I turned my back on her, she would disappear, like all the other adults. Seeing the doubt on my face, she tried again.

"Don't worry," she said, fixing the collar of my shirt. "I'll be standing right out here when you're done. I won't leave you. Unless you want me to come in with you."

Yoshino turned her attention back to the nurse who remained nearby. The nurse immediately straightened her posture once eyes were back on her and cleared her throat.

"Would that be okay?" Yoshino inquired. "If she asked me to in with her, would I be able to?"

"Well . . . " The nurse's irises shifted back and forth, the answer obviously unknown to her, although she couldn't very well admit that. _She_ was supposed to be the professional in this situation after all. "I—well, I mean, I suppose. She _is_ a child."

Yoshino accepted this reply smoothly, as though the uncertainty of the nurse will only play to her advantage, and returned to me. "So?" she asked. "What do you say?"

"No," I responded. "I'll . . . do it alone. I should, shouldn't I?"

Yoshino's smiled warped encouragingly. "You do what you think is best."

What I thought was best, huh? I peeked into the hospital room where I could hear the faint recurring strokes of my mother's heart, luring me in with its universal familiarity, soothing. I mangled my hands together, trying to wring the uncertainty out of my body. When it did nothing to help, I took a deep breath and nodded.

"Okay," I said. "I'll . . . go. Alone."

Yoshino patted my head, the muscles on her face sticking in the warm supportive grin. She stood up and pushed the door open further, guiding me through with a hand at the very top of my spine. I held my head high as I entered, but the moment the door clicked shut behind me, I wanted to bang on it and call Yoshino in. I was too proud to do that though, so I stood my ground, brimming on the perimeter of the room, thinking to myself that maybe if I stood there long enough, it would seem like I actually did something in the room and I could get out without a hitch.

But there was a knock on the door, and when I peered up at the window in the door, I saw Yoshino waving her hand toward me, urging me on.

My eyes flicked to the too still body then, waiting for something to happen that I knew wouldn't. I diverted my line of sight and instead narrowed my eyes at the ground.

This was all so wrong, I thought. It wasn't supposed to be like this. It was never supposed to be like this. Two children had lost the whole of their family in one night. And for what? Why? What kind of world did we live in where this was all taken in stride?

That was all I wanted to know. And I swore: I was going to get the answers. I needed them. I deserved them. Didn't I?

I advanced closer to my mother, my eyes moving to find a safe haven anywhere but on her body. I knew I would have to look at her eventually. I would have to see her and take in the person that she was now, not the person that I knew before all this.

There was a stool next to the bed for visitors to sit on. A box of tissues were placed conveniently on the nightstand along with what I assumed was a complimentary vase of flowers to try to brighten up the room. I pulled myself up onto the stool that was so ridiculously high it required more effort than should have been called for. Then again, I was a child. I couldn't do much and my struggle to get seated seemed to be a redundant reiteration proving it.

Once I was able to situate myself, I smoothed down my clothes and twined my fingers together, dropping them in a fitful ball on my lap. My face screwed up with nervousness and I couldn't stop chewing on my lip. In the back of my mind, I pictured myself looking up to find my mother with her eyes opened, staring at me accusingly. She would blame me for the deaths of all the precious Uchiha, for not being able to protect Sasuke, for killing everyone.

"No, no, no," I muttered, pressing the heels of my hand into my eyes. "It wasn't my fault. I didn't kill anybody. It was Itachi-san, wasn't it, Mama? It was _him_."

I had seen it, seen _him_. The bond had spared me no detail when Sasuke was forced to relive it all and I—

The metallic beating of my mother's heart on the monitor accelerated. I jerked my head up, away from my hands, and sat up a little straighter, staring directly at my mother's face now. And there she was, in all her glory. Her heart shaped face was downy, the little hairs across her skin catching the light and seemingly making her glow. If she didn't look so sickly, I would've thought that she was sleeping. It was always that way with the dead or dying, I found.

My gaze flicked back to the heart monitor. Nothing was amiss. Maybe I'd imagined the monitor acting up.

I glanced back at my mother whose timely breaths made her chest rise and fall. All of a sudden, I was angry—angry that my mother hadn't done more to preserve herself, angry that, although she was technically alive, she was all but dead. It was her fault that, at that moment, I was alone when I could've been with a mother—it was her fault that I would no longer have anyone to rely on after she passed.

Because my mother had to be stronger than this. I'd seen her perform medical ninjutsu before. She had saved lives. She'd helped people recover from the brink of death. She was capable of more than this. She was more than capable.

So I came to the conclusion that she, like all the other adults in the world, was lying to me. She was ashamed of herself, ashamed that she hadn't been able to protect my father, our family. Now, knowing that I was alive and well, this was her way of hiding from me. Of never having to face me and tell me that she'd made a mistake. Of never having to tell me the truth.

These people—that's all that they're about. Never wanting to face or own up to their mistakes, never helping others, never caring for others, never even giving anyone other than themselves a second thought. They're all selfish, greedy bastards. Everyone. The Uchiha, the Kagiru, the whole of Konoha. Including me. We could all only put ourselves into consideration because we were the only ones who truly mattered to us.

I didn't need to deal with this. I didn't need to deal with people who don't even care about how other people are doing. I didn't need to be with people who could only be concerned with themselves when _I_ had to be concerned about _me_. I'd already spent a good portion of my life serving a group of people who were the epitome of self-importance, and it ended up backfiring on not only me but my entire family terribly. It was obvious to me that caring for other people did nothing but hurt you in the long run.

I wasn't going to be part of this anymore. I was going to break this goddamn bond, and I was going to get out of here and live for me, only me, solely me, wholly me. Just me. And by god, no one would stop me. There was no one to try anyway.

"This is your fault," I blamed, gripping the fabric at my knees. My body shook with the adrenaline of disobedience, even if my mother couldn't hear me, because that was still what I was doing, wasn't it? Revolting?

"This is _your_ fault. And now I have to fix it all by myself because you couldn't—you and Papa couldn't see it for yourselves how stupid stupid _stupid_ this all is. How dumb we all were to be so loyal to a bunch of people who never cared for us in the first place!" I pounded my fists into her arm as those last words came out, unable to contain my disbelief, unable to grasp how self-destructive my parents had been with their decision making. "This is _your_ fault!" I repeated at the top of my voice, kicking the bed and grabbing onto her forearm. I shook her so violently that the bed whined, warning me that that wasn't such a good idea. Not that I cared.

"YOUR FAULT!" I screeched as I was yanked away at the waist and lifted into the air and hugged against a body that was warm and in control and forceful. "THIS IS YOUR FAULT!"

"That's not going to help anything Ren," Yoshino's breathy voice said into my ear, shaken. "Stop."

"No!" I shouted through gritted teeth as the nurse from earlier bustled in to check on my mother and make sure that I hadn't disturbed anything that shouldn't have been touched by anyone without professional training. I clawed at the image of my mother, so close here and so far away in consciousness.

The nurse in front of us turned around, barricading my mother from me. "Ma'am," she said, glaring at me, although I can tell that she was speaking to Yoshino. "I'm going to have to ask you to lea—"

"But she's lying!" I insisted, launching myself at the nurse who stumbled back into the bed.

"Ma'am, please—"

"My mother," I growled at the nurse, who recoiled as far away from me as she possible can. "She's playing dead so that she doesn't have to face me. Just watch—_watch_."

"Ren, stop," Yoshino urged, as though I were directing these words at her. "Stop. That's not going to help anything."

"Nothing is gonna help," I breathed, pushing on her forearms so that maybe she'd let me go. "Nothing is gonna help anything."

[+]

I shut myself up in Shikamaru's room when we arrived home, leaving only once to take my bath. My position under the covers helped muffle the vibrations, but not enough to keep them from reaching me completely, from denying the person that I am and allowing me to cut any and all ties to the Kagiru like I wanted. And it definitely wasn't enough to keep me from feeling how Yoshino would hesitate at the door before walking away because she didn't have the power to knock and face me.

I was playing with a loose thread from the blanket when Shikaku came home, son in hand, and the three Nara sat down for dinner without coming to get me. Not that I cared. I had more important things to get done, like how I was going to get out of this labyrinth of suffering, if I could get out at all.

But maybe, I figured, wrapping the loose thread around my finger and straining it so that it straightened out. Maybe I wasn't supposed to get out. After all, the key to getting out was to get through first.

However, the line between getting through and getting out was so fine that I couldn't even see the difference between the two. Either way I would get what I wanted, and that's all that meant anything to me.

I pulled on the thread too hard and it snapped, causing me to flinch as the inertia that had built up in my hand caused it to rush toward me. I didn't get hit, but I kept my eyes closed anyway because at that moment, feet were padding down the hallway. If someone came into the room then I could at least pretend to be sleeping or trying to get to sleep.

The feet slowed in front of the door as though their owner could hear that I was thinking about them and wanted to see what else I would have to think about them. I inhaled deeply and held it to keep the feet moving forward. Luckily, they did and I was allowed to breathe again.

The pipes in the wall started to hiss, water making the metal creak like old bones out for a stretch on a new day. The sound, thankfully, helped drown out Yoshino and Shikaku who, with Shikamaru out of the room and taking his bath, had started to talk about things that I probably didn't want to hear. I was glad that my best friend could look out for me inadvertently like that.

I lied with my face planted in Shikamaru's pillow with the covers pulled over my head and cinched around my neck, breathing in a musty earth smell that I connected to the Nara family park. I started to wonder: Was there any way I could continue living like this?

Granted, I didn't want to leave the Nara. They had done so much for me already, and I hadn't been able to do anything for them in return but bother them and burden them with the way my life was turning out. So it really was better for the all of us if I left, wasn't it?

Not only that, but I'd really chosen the wrong profession to get into. I mean, being a ninja did call for you to do things and put your life on the line for other people. But I didn't have to follow those rules that had been set up for ninja. I could go about doing things my own way. I wouldn't have to worry about anyone or anything other than me, and who would protest?

No one. Because I would be on my own and there would be no one to bug me about how I lived my life.

And I knew I was supposed to be trying to talk myself out of leaving Konoha, but I was only finding more and more good reasons to ditch this town.

Turning on my side, I tucked my hands under the pillow. The coolness of it spread to my feet and soothed me. I wiggled my toes, wondering how it would make the Nara feel if I just left.

. . . I was sure they'd get over it soon enough. I mean, how long could someone dwell on something?

I started as the door shut with unnecessary force. I burrowed my face into the pillow again as feet dragged against the ground like they were too much of a hassle to be picked up. The bed creaked and shifted as extra weight piled on and the covers lifted from my head, only to be replaced milliseconds later. The scent of Shikamaru heightened as I wondered how distracted I was to not feel through the vibrations that he was coming.

"Hey," he breathed, making me turn my head sheepishly and regard him with one eye, keeping the other half of my face hidden.

"Hi," I answered as quietly, tucking my arms under me. "How's it going?" My words slurred together in this chain of incomprehensible sounds due to my reluctance to work to move my mouth and speak correctly.

Shikamaru was still able to understand me and replied without missing a beat. "Okay, I guess," he told me, scowling now. "Iruka-sensei kept me and Chouji along with those two other boys, Kiba and Naruto, after school today because he said we weren't focusing enough at the Academy." He shut his eyes and sighed. "If they'd bothered to teach us anything cool, there wouldn't be a problem in the first place."

I agreed vaguely and started running through how my day would have gone if the massacre had never happened and I had gone to school that day. Would I have gotten in trouble with Suzume-sensei, the lady who taught the girls how to become successful kunoichi, for stirring up problems with the other girls in my class who were so infatuated with Sasuke that they always talked about him during our lessons? Would those very same girls have harassed me after class for being in such close proximity with their beloved? Would I have started new rumors to make them fuss about Sasuke more than they already did?

All I knew for sure was that I wouldn't have gone to the hospital and gotten angry at my half-dead mother and I wouldn't have been there, thinking about how to get out of Konoha.

"Chouji asked me why you weren't at school today," Shikamaru said casually, but there was a lot more to the reason why he told me than I could convey with my own words. "I told him you were sick. Are you sick, Ren?" He opened one eye to examine me carefully. "Is that why you couldn't eat with us tonight?"

_No_, I wanted to admit. _I'm plotting how to run away._ But instead, I said, "Kind of. But it's not like a sickness with my immune system. More like a sickness in my heart."

Shikamaru blinked, incomprehension stuck to his eyelashes. "Well, hopefully you're better in the morning," he told me, lifting the covers above his head so that new air circulated into our small space. "The guys really missed hanging out with you today."

Shikamaru didn't submerge back under the covers as I was expecting him to. Instead, he tucked the blanket under his arm. Moonbeams shuffled in and beat my darkness from where the blanket didn't totally meet the curves of his body. I shimmied the blanket down as well to find that I could breathe easier and see that the room was covered with the moonbeams that penetrated the shoji doors leading onto the wraparound porch outside.

I met Shikamaru's eyes; my brow twisted in what I felt was an inverted circumflex. But Shikamaru smiled at me and shut his eyes, ready for sleep.

"Good night, Ren," he muttered.

Unexpectedly, a smile bumbled its way across my lips. The pull of the muscles on my face felt awkward. But I was fine with that. And I believed that, at that moment, having Shikamaru as my best friend was enough for me to not want to leave.

"Good night, Shikamaru."

[+]

I was awake and alive the next morning in a considerably better mood. I spoke every now and then, piping in for more food or to say that I was happy to be going back to school.

Yoshino mentioned nothing of what happened yesterday.

After a bit of pestering from Yoshino, I was finally allowed to go to school, lunch in hand, with Shikamaru and Shikaku leading the way. I felt like I was finally one step closer to having a normal life, which was, at the time, all I really wanted. I didn't mind having to live with the Nara for the rest of my life. I wouldn't have minded it at all, actually. But the fact of the matter was I would not have lasted in the Nara home the way I was then. Despite my seemingly recovered state of mind, Shikamaru could not, I knew, always come to my rescue the way I wanted, needed, or believed he could. Only I would be able to help myself. After all, who knew better than I what I needed to become myself, truly as I was, once again?

That day at school, the girls ignored me as they usually did, shunned me because of the relationship I had with Sasuke. Although since I hadn't shown up with him that particular morning, I mattered less to them than usual.

Suzume acted like she knew nothing of my situation with the massacre, but by the way she kept glancing my way and pushing me to interact, I knew she was trying her best to make me feel better. Even with her extra shove, I tried not to do more than was required of me.

At lunch that day, Shikamaru and I met up and rested in these fields not too far from the Academy, just the two of us. Usually, Chouji would've been with us, but I supposed that with everything happening, Shikamaru thought it'd be best if we were alone. Not that he tried to talk about anything with me. He wasn't that type of guy. We laid there and watched the clouds. It was the best he could do for me, and it was enough.

Shikamaru knew how to handle things.

A few minutes into our recess, a stray ball rolled into the fields. It bumped against my feet and made me sit up to see who would be coming after it. When no one stepped up to claim it though, my eyes shot to the edge of the fields, where I figured someone would be hiding, afraid to come out and get their ball themselves. I could even feel their feet beating against the ground. However, they weren't getting any closer. It was like they were running in place, warming up to shoot out and steal their ball back once I reached for it.

"What is it, Ren?" Shikamaru asked me when he noticed I was sitting up. He propped himself on his elbow to try to see what I was looking at.

"Someone lost their ball," I muttered back, irritated. "They're not coming to get it. I'm going to go give it back."

Shikamaru's eyes darted to the ball at my feet. He shrugged and fell back to the earth. "Whatever."

Slowly, I stood, picked up the ball, and made my way to the perimeter of the field. "Helloooo?" I called into the trees. "Anybody here?"

The bushes rustled to my right. My defenses immediately shot up. Only people with hidden agendas would be hiding. If they weren't up to something, they'd come up to me and ask for their ball back.

I receded from the brush and said, "Who's there?"

When he emerged from the bushes though, I wished I hadn't asked.

Sasuke looked at me with half-dead eyes. They flicked from my face to the red ball that I had in my hands. Realizing that it was his, I handed it over quickly, but let go of it before he had his grip ready. It dropped to his feet and bounced away, under a berry bush. I shifted on my feet, unsure of what to do next. If we were in any other situation, I would have picked it back up for him, apologized, and promptly gone back to the fields to lay in the grass with Shikamaru. This, though, was _not_ any other situation.

There was something in his eyes—or _lack_ of something, I should say—that made me feel uncomfortable. Or maybe it was the fact that he was alone that bothered me. I mean, I had Shikamaru, whereas . . . well, I'd never seen him trailing anyone around before. On days where I ditched him to hang out with Shikamaru and Chouji, I was never sure of where he was. By the time recess was over, I would see him going back to class with all the other boys. He definitely had the company of the girls in our class, though I didn't think he enjoyed it much.

He was more than alone now. He was absolutely, resolutely, irrevocably broken.

I felt bad for him. I felt that, since we were in the same situation, we should at least band together or console each other. Be each other's support. But when I opened my mouth, I couldn't bring myself to invite him to hang out with Shikamaru and me. I think that was a big mistake on my part.

"Sorry," was all I managed to him before I scurried back to the field where Shikamaru was waiting for me.

[+]

"Ren?"

My head jerked up from my dinner plate, my spoon slipping from my fingers and clattering on the table. I made a point to pick it up and scoop something into my mouth before looking up at Yoshino t acknowledge her. She watched me expectantly, leading me to think that she'd asked me a question that I'd missed out on. I swallowed the food I'd been chewing on and said, "Sorry?"

"How was your day?"

"Good."

"You didn't fall behind in class did you?"

"No." We just went over some healing properties of flowers in the fields around the village, all of which I'd already learned from my mother. Which reminded me.

After my run in with Sasuke, I figured that I should at least be grateful that my mother was alive, even if she was barely breathing on her own. I mean, at least I still technically had a mother. Sasuke only had me. And that wasn't saying much. So maybe, I thought, I should—

"Reeeennnnn," Yoshino sang, waving her hand to distill the air in front of my face, catching my attention. I blinked, my eyes focusing on her again. "Are you all right? You seem distracted."

"Mmm," I answered, shifting my food back and forth on my face. "Sorry."

Shikaku and Yoshino exchanged glances and we finished up dinner without another question toward me. As Yoshino cleaned up and ordered Shikamaru to the bath, I sat at the dinner table, fiddling with my thumbs. Yoshino hummed a song—the very song that had come to my mind upon returning to Konoha, in fact—as she washed the dishes. Shikaku sat opposite me, drinking tea and reading the evening paper.

"Ah—mmm," I started, chickening out at the last minute. Nevertheless, my stumble didn't go unnoticed. Shikaku looked up from his paper and Yoshino glanced over her shoulder at me.

"Do you want something, Ren?" Shikaku asked.

I bit my bottom lip, lowering my head. My eyes shifted as I decided quickly whether I should ask. "I . . . ," I said, bringing my shoulders up as a kind of shield to keep from looking at him. "I—I want to see my mother again."

The dishes stopped clinking in the sink. I raked my bangs across my forehead, accidentally scraping my brow in the process.

"If," I started up immediately after no one said anything. "If it's not too much trouble or anything. I know . . . that last time I went, I was bad, and I, uh, I'm sorry, but I think that I'm okay now. I think that I can . . . I can do it."

I lifted my gaze from my lap. Yoshino regarded me carefully, wiping her hands on her apron. Shikaku went back to sipping his tea and reading his paper, seeing that this inquiry was out of his league.

"Are you sure?" Yoshino wanted to know, her eyes more downcast as though she were remembering what happened last time.

"Yes," I breathed, as though the word would burn my tongue if I made the wrong decision.

"All right then," she sighed, giving in more easily than I thought she would. I supposed it was because she thought that I had the right to see my mother, no matter what her condition, because of the current situation we were in. She turned back to the sink as she spoke her next words. "You won't mind missing school again tomorrow, would you?"

"No," I said gladly, deciding, whatever happened at the hospital, it couldn't be worse than having to see Sasuke as he was again.

* * *

Please review!


	7. Sparks

**BOUND**  
**Chapter 07: Sparks**

When we went to the hospital the next day, we were escorted to my mother's room by my mother's doctor. He told Yoshino that my mother's condition had not changed as though I couldn't understand him. He said that at this point, there was nothing they could do for her, what with the technology that they had, and the only person who would be able to do anything had left the village more than twenty years ago.

I watched the patterns in the hospital walls as we walked. Yoshino gave my hand measured squeezes every few moments. Finally reaching my mother's room, the doctor opened the door and welcomed us in as though we were home.

"I can go in with you, Ren," Yoshino reminded me.

I shook my head, pulling my hand out of hers. "I can do this."

She smiled at me. "I believe you," she encouraged. "Go ahead. And remember—"

"You'll be right here," I finished. I took small steps into the room and, before entering, I looked over my shoulder at her. "Thank you, okaasan."

Yoshino put her hand on my head and smoothed my hair down. "You're welcome, Ren."

I stepped into the room and the door clicked shut solidly behind me. This time, though, I didn't feel the need to run and get out as fast as I could or even a tiny flicker of anger. I felt an irrational calm.

I clambered into the stool beside the bed and didn't hesitate to stare at my mother's face. She'd paled from the last time I'd seen her. Her condition had definitely not gotten better.

I reached out and pressed my fingers to her neck, in the spot that she'd taught me I would be able to feel her pulse. Sure enough, there was a steady beat ringing out beneath her flesh. I leaned forward in my seat and swept her hair out of her face and moved her hands so that they rested in a neat pile over her stomach. Now, it looked like she was taking a nap instead of in an irreversible sleep.

I tuned into the vibrations and tried to see if the adults were still loitering around the hospital doors. I felt Yoshino shifting back and forth on her feet restlessly, but she was not right in front of the door as I suspected she would be. The doctor had gone, though. That's what mattered.

I flattened my hand out on my mother's forehead. The doctor had told Yoshino that it was a matter of my mother having dangerously used up all her chakra to heal herself that she was in a coma now, but I could see, with my trained medic eyes, that there was more to it than that. Much more to it.

Of course, the doctors and nurses had their medic eyes as well, but there were significant differences to the injuries of regular people and those of ninja. After all, with such different lives, one should expect that ninja and regular people would have different injuries, right?

My mother said that, sure, bruises, cuts, broken bones—those were wounds that both normal people and ninjas had in common, though the ninjas more often not had those injuries to a more critical degree. But ninja sometimes, for their own protection, took those injuries to a higher level. Sometimes they risked their injuries bringing them death in order to save their teammates, and thus their village.

Which was, I concluded, what my mother must have been doing. For my sake.

She might have been, in that moment, lying to me about being in a coma and not being strong enough to wake up—but because she had something she needed to protect. A secret she had to tell me without anyone else listening in on. And I had the key to waking her up. Hopefully.

I allowed my chakra to pulse through my arm, into my hand, and transfer into her. I focused on letting my chakra soak into her brain because I knew if I was able to stimulate her brain activity, it might be able to wake her up. Not only that but being able to feed off of the extra chakra, her body might regain some of its strength.

I found, however, that my chakra levels were not nearly enough to do what I wanted, and within a minute, I was breathing heavily and perspiring as though I'd finished a long, tiring run. I recoiled from my mother and sat back, holding onto the underside of my seat to keep myself steady. It had been, in theory, a good idea.

My head dropped forward, my eyesight going haywire. The room spun, but only for a second. I closed my eyes, wiped my brow, before leaning forward to examine the situation once more.

The solution had to be simple. All the puzzles my mother had handed to me were. But that was because she had warmed me up to each one bit by bit. So what was I supposed to do now when I couldn't have any help, when this puzzle was seemingly random?

"Come on, Mama," I muttered, running a hand through my hair. "I am helpless."

I had murmured that phrase to my mother on many occasions. It was usually my way of saying that I needed another clue before I could sufficiently solve the problem that she or my father had presented me with. All the other times that I'd said it though had not gained a reaction from her much like it had at that moment.

My mother's eyes snapped open, scaring me. I shot back in my seat, almost tipping over, but my mother was fast. She reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders, pulling me into her before I fell and stifling my scream on her shoulder. Her breathing was raggedy, as though she herself had been scared and was now trying to regain her breath. The heart rate monitor beeped at the same rate at which it had been before she'd woken up.

I pounded my fists against my mother, feeling the impossibility of that moment, or maybe it was the miracle of it. Either way, I knew that it shouldn't have been happening and was emitting the correct reaction to a woman who had technically been dead not a few seconds previous. I tried wriggling out of her hold, tried to scream to get Yoshino's attention, tried to beat her off of me, all of which were ineffective.

"Ren, Ren," she soothed, her voice wispy and tired. "You're okay, you're alive, I knew it."

"Let go," I whined, still trying to shove her away. "Let go let go let go of me _please_."

"Listen," she said instead, pressing close to my ear so that she wouldn't have to speak any louder than she was. In fact, she lowers her voice even further, so that even the mechanical beep of the heart rate monitor makes it hard for me to hear her. "Listen, listen, Ren. You have to get out of here before it awakens. Before the bond takes a hold of you and you can't get away. You have to get out."

"Let go," I said again.

_"Not until you listen,"_ she hissed in a tone that I'd never heard her use before. It shocked me and made me stop resisting. Was this really my mother? Was this really the woman who had birthed and raised me? For all I knew, she could've been possessed by some spirit that was driving her insane. After all, she was telling me that I had to leave, but I was only at the tender age of seven. I was, as I had said before, helpless. And what was it that I had to get away from? My bond with Sasuke? It was hardly anything to be afraid of. Or so I thought.

"Now are you ready to listen?" she asked me after I had stopped struggling, her voice switched back to soothe mode. I tried to turn my head away from her, but her strength was overwhelming, another thing that was odd for someone who just woken out of a coma.

"The bond that you share with Sasuke is not a little thing, Ren," my mother warned. "It is a burden that you will have to bear, and I'm sorry to say that it is yours to bear alone."

My mother released me, but cupped a hand over my mouth so that I couldn't speak. She glanced out through the window in the door to her hospital room nervously, biting her lips. For a second, I could see myself in her heart-shaped face, though her hair was significantly longer than my own and a light, mousy brown instead of a deep chestnut color. And she was, through and through, much more beautiful than I was, could ever be.

"No one will be able to help you, not with us all gone," she said. "I am still here for the moment, but I will not be here long." She managed a smile, and moved her hand off of my mouth to tuck a stray stand of hair behind my ear. It flopped back into place since my hair was still short and choppy from when I had rebelliously cut it off with my kunai one night. My mother sighed mournfully.

"Pay attention," she continued. "I don't have much breath left in me to repeat what I'm about to tell you."

I blinked at her, uncomprehending. I was still strung up over the line that she'd fed me earlier; the one where she told me that she was still there at the moment, but not for long. It was like she wanted to run away from me. Like we were playing some sick game of hide and seek, and since I had found her, she was going to have to disappear forever.

"You need to leave the village and find a way to break this curse that your father's ancestors have to left to you," she told me, oblivious to my confusion. "There are few resources in Konoha for that. After all, our clan has caused more trouble for the village than they care to retell. There is a family—a few families, actually, but one in particular—called the Kannagi that may help you, but _you must not let them know you are Kagiru_. Do you understand? While you are away, under no circumstances should you tell _anyone_ who you are. Because there are people out there who think of us as murderers," she said in response to my confusion. "And there are people out there who would do anything to hurt you. You must understand the world is not as kind and friendly as the people of Konoha have led you to believe."

"But if I break the bond," I said, "Sasuke will be alone. All of the Uchiha are dead except for him."

"As are all the Kagiru," my mother replied, "except for you. It is because of the Uchiha that this is so. And the Kagiru line will really go extinct if _you_ are to fall prey to the Uchiha-Kagiru bond as well."

"Why is it bad?" For as long as I had known about the bond, I had always fought against it. But I didn't think that it was _this_ bad. My father always told me I was overdramatizing things with the way I reacted to the bond. "This bond that Sasuke and I have, Father always—"

"Your father was wrong," she interrupted, anger flashing through her eyes. "If I had known how extreme this bond was, I would have never—" She stopped as though she didn't know how to put it nicely that she would have never given birth to me. She exhaled deeply, closing her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she took me by the shoulders and said firmly, her voice still a hoarse whisper, "This bond will consume you, Ren," she said, her tone begging me to heed her warnings. "It will take every other relationship that you have created with your closest friends and it will tear them apart. Your life will become nothing but a toy for Sasuke."

"Sasuke doesn't seem like such a bad guy," I cut in.

My mother's eyes grew grave, like she wanted to believe it. "After what has just happened, Sasuke will be ridden with revenge and guilt," she said. "But it's not a matter of what Sasuke is destined to do. It's _your_ life that I'm concerned about. I don't want you to be trapped in a life that you can't control. I don't want you to have a life where your purpose is to live for someone else you may not even care for or haven't chosen to live for. That is what this bond is."

"Ma—"

Suddenly, my mother clutched at her chest and gasped, her head dropping forward.

"Mama!" I cried, reaching for her. She took the front of my shirt, the whites of her eyes riddled with pink veins I hadn't noticed before.

"It's killed your entire family, Ren," she wheezed. "Don't let it ruin you too."

"Mama!" I shouted louder. Her eyelids fluttered haphazardly. I braced her up as best I could as she leaned all her weight against me. Or more like gave up all her weight on me.

"Break the bond," she muttered. "You must break the bond break the bond Ren before it breaks you."

"Wait!" I shrieked as the door slammed open. Nurses and doctors rushed in faster than I could count. They were yelling but I knew that no matter what they did, it wouldn't work. A nurse came up beside me, heaved my mother off of me, laid her back down, and told me, "It's okay honey it's okay. We're here we're going to take care of your mother everything is going to be okay."

"NononoWAIT!" I called to my mother, and someone picked me off of the bed and wrapped me up in arms. The medical personnel thought I was yelling at them though and the head doctor ordered the person holding me to get me out of there now because this was not something that I or any child should see, witness, should ever have to remember or hold in our tiny little brains.

But I kept reaching out for her, even as I was pulled out of the room and the tubes that were stuck in my mother were adjusted and a mask was placed over her mouth to force oxygen down her throat to keep her _alive_ alive instead of in that sick comatose state she had been in earlier. I reached out to her and screamed, "Wait wait wait wait wait!" over and over again until the word started to sound like nothing in my ears, until they closed the door and separated us for good, until I watched as they tried to beat my mother's heart back to life, knowing all the while that none of it would be any use.

"Wait!" was all I could manage, all that would sound from my throat for some reason, like if I shouted it loud enough or obnoxiously enough or in extreme excess than it would be _enough_ enough and my mother really would wait and the doctors would wait and the world would wait and I could finally get my answers, all the answers I needed to know what I would have to do next in order to not end up like her or like my ancestors or like any other Kagiru that had been burdened with what was now confirmed to me as a curse.

I had known it, known it all along that this bond would be nothing, nothing to me, and that it was something that would crush me with its weight. But Sasuke—I couldn't imagine Sasuke taking control of my life the way my mother had said he would.

No, not him. He wouldn't do anything.

It was the bond.

And I knew, at that moment, I would have to break this bond before it killed me.

[+]

My mother was dead within minutes.

[+]

I think that loneliness is the worst feeling in the world. Involuntary loneliness that is. The loneliness of not being understood or having no attachments to anything in the world when that's not what you want.

That is the loneliness I felt after my mother died.

Of course, I suppose the feeling of losing a loved one could one-up the feeling of loneliness, but isn't that the same thing? Because it isn't until you lose a loved one that you feel true loneliness.

That was probably how Sasuke was feeling, I realized, and what my mother had meant by saying that he would want revenge for his family. I definitely wanted revenge on the Uchiha for wiping out my clan, for taking control of my childhood the way they had, however inadvertently. And that night, while I was supposed to be sleeping, I concocted plan.

I was lying on my side, my hands under my pillow, watching with dull eyes as Shikamaru slept soundly beside me. He was facing me, unperturbed as usual. As he should have been.

It was late. Late enough for me to know that I shouldn't have still been awake. Shikamaru's parents had even gone to bed. But I couldn't bring myself to close my eyes, couldn't bring myself to put that day behind me. Not yet anyway. Not until I knew that there was a way for me to get out of there.

And so, as quietly as I could, without waking Shikamaru, I slipped out of the bed and through the shoji, and out into the night.

[+]

In my mind, I see myself running straight through town to the administration building without any kind of hindrance, but I know that wasn't the case. I remember trying to be really sneaky about it, to the point of an annoying over-caution. But everything's kind of going too fast for me to really catch up with, so before I know it, I've snuck into the Hokage's home and am standing before him in a hallway, holding my head up high. This part I remember perfectly.

"Hello, Hokage-sama," I greeted, bowing my head, slightly out of breath and surprised to have been able to catch him so easily.

He puffed on his pipe, looking down his nose at me. He didn't seem surprised that I'm standing before him, so late in the night. It's almost as though he'd anticipated it. "Ren," he replied after a long silence. "What brings you to my home at this ungodly hour?"

"I have a request," I said, trying to honey him up with good manners and words that I had heard my father use. "And I know how busy you are during the day, so I decided to come before you had anything to do. Also, it would have been hard to explain to Yoshino-san why I want to meet with you."

The old man closed his eyes, holding his pipe with his right hand, his left hand behind his back. He nodded slowly, his bald head gleaming in the artificial lights. "I see. And what is this request that is so important and so secretive that you must sneak into the home of the most powerful man in the village and risk all the consequences of getting caught?"

He was trying to psych me out. I bowed my head again, to show that I honestly didn't mean any harm. "It's just that, Hokage-sama," I start, "as you may have heard, my mother passed away this evening." I didn't give him time to respond to that because I didn't want any of his pity. I had enough of that at Shikamaru's home. "Before she passed away, however, she left me with an assignment, of sorts. Some last wishes, if you will, that she ask I perform in her honor."

The smoke of his pipe reached me, the scent of tobacco making me dizzy. The smoke made my eyes water. "Your parents had a will written up," he said. "Any last wishes of hers that she told you are probably written on there. It is nothing that we can't go over in the morning, Ren."

"Sir, I respect your logic," I said, "but I doubt that this is anything she would have been comfortable speaking out loud, or even write down, with anyone else but myself."

He quirked his brow at me, rolling his teeth on the bit of the pipe. "Is it?"

"Yes, Hokage-sama." I still had not lifted my gaze. "And I do not feel comfortable speaking it aloud as well. Not in this place at least. If we could move into more private quarters, I will explain it all to you."

He paused a moment, like he wasn't sure he could trust a seven year old. However, I heard his feet clomp across the wooden floorboards and toward me. He patted his hand on my head, signaling for me to be at ease and follow him. I allowed him to lead the way down the hall and to his office.

He got situated while I stayed standing. Once he clasped his hands together, he nodded for me to go on.

"Being the most powerful man in our village," I said carefully, staying close to the door, "you must know about . . . a certain bond that exists between my clan and the Uchiha."

At the mention of the name, he visibly froze. He blinked, massaged his brow, and leaned forward. "Go on," he muttered.

"It is," I said, "because of that bond that my family lies dead today. My family has, for as long as I know anyway, always been affiliated with the Uchiha and helped them on their rise to power and stayed loyal to them when they lost their power. So, knowing this, I can't say that I'm taking this recent betrayal very well. Especially after all that we've done for them in the past. It makes me wonder: Is this suffering the only thing we'll ever get from our bond with them? Which leads me to what my mother told me in the hospital.

"You must have heard about her having been in a coma for the past few days," I elaborated. "She had used all of her remaining chakra to heal the fatal wounds that had been inflicted on her, which led to her body shutting down. However, she'd also put a mental lock on her brain that was deactivated by a phrase—a phrase that I often used with her when we were training to ask for help. When the lock had been deactivated, she woke up and used her remaining energy to tell me the truth behind the bond and its parasitic effect on the Kagiru. Having the same kind of state of mind about our one-sided relationship with the Uchiha as I did, she asked me—practically begged me—to go out and find a way to break this bond with them, using whatever resources I could find. She even provided me with a few names of Kagiru relations in the Sound Village that I could go to for help.

"What I'm asking you, Hokage-sama," I said before he interrupted me by raising his hand. I shut my mouth immediately, thinking that he knew what I was going to say.

Instead, his reply was this: "There's no need to be so formal or professional, Ren. You are a child. Hard times have befallen you. It's all right to act your age."

I was taken aback by his words. After all that I'd filled him in on, this was the best he could provide me with? "I'm sorry," I answered, bowing my head so that I could hide my glower, "but this isn't the type of situation that I can take lightly. It is of grave importance that I am able to do as my mother asked of me before she died."

The Hokage sighed heavily and rested his chin on his clasped fingers. His pipe had long since stopped smoking, though he hadn't bothered to take it out of his mouth. "Go on, then," he said tiredly.

"What I'm asking you, Hokage-sama," I repeated, "is to let me go out and research this blood oath that has chained my family down for so long and allow me to find a way to break it. It was my mother's dying wish that I do so, and it is also something that I wish to do so that, in the future, if I decide to have a family, my daughters will not be burdened by such chains."

There was a long silence in which all I heard was the thumping of my own heart. I wasn't nervous or anything. It was the only thing I was really conscious of at the moment, the only thing I really tired to focus on. Because I knew that there was one less heart beating that night, and it kind of scared me. I can't remember why.

"Ren," he finally said. "You're only seven years of age. You haven't even graduated from the Academy yet."

"The man responsible for the massacre of my family and the Uchiha was my age when he graduated," I muttered then.

Another silence ensued. I diverted my eyes from the Hokage, waiting for him to dismiss me. That was, after all, the only argument I had really come in with, besides trying to push how much my mother had wanted me to run away and break the bond.

"We'll have to do this quickly, then," the Hokage sighed, pushing his seat back and getting up, "and quietly so as not to arouse the suspicion of the villagers."

My head whirled back to the old man, eyes wide. I was confused. "Do what?" I asked. "What are we doing?"

He smiled a little, maneuvering himself around his desk. He had his hands clasped behind his back classically, his pipe hanging from his lips. "We're going to prepare you to go out on your own," he answered. "Tomorrow, we'll take you in for some testing. We'll have to think of something to tell the Nara of course, but if you pass, you will go through another preparation course the day after, and then you may leave whenever you're ready to go." He took another breath, too deep and too loud to be a relaxing one. "When you leave, a lie will be fed to the villagers explaining your disappearance." He played with a pen on his desk, pushing it to one side and then the other. He leaned his head back and blinked at the ceiling. "Relatives," he muttered more to himself than me, closing his eyes and nodding. "We've found relatives for you to stay with in the next town over."

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, trying to think of something to say. All I could come up with was, "What if I fail the test?"

"Hmm?" he hummed, looking at me. "You'll have to wait until next year to take the test again then."

"This is . . . ," I started. "This is all okay with you?"

He bowed his head, taking the pipe out of his mouth and tapping it against his chin. "No," he said. "No. A seven-year-old should not be alone in a world like this, not even one as talented and blessed with a bloodline limit as you." He stuck his pipe back in his mouth and moved around the desk. He circled me once, then went to the door. "I think you may do well though, Ren. In my day, the Kagiru were the best at surviving. And your mother and aunts must have taught you a thing or two about medical ninjutsu, yes?"

I managed a nod here.

He patted me on the head and smiled before moving on out of the office. "You should get back to the Nara home before they notice that you're gone. Besides, you'll need your rest for tomorrow morning." He regarded me over his shoulder. "Good night, Ren."

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	8. Last Ditch Effort

**Bound  
Chapter 08: Last Ditch Effort  
**

Panic.

That was the first too overwhelming feeling that I felt.

Confidence.

That was the second feeling that I felt, although it wasn't quite as strong as the first. I was just glad that it was there at all, honestly, but there was no time for relief. I needed to get away.

Blurs of dark green leaves and the black of night rushed passed my view. I couldn't hear anything other than the sound of my own harsh breaths being drawn in and out. I didn't know if the footsteps were mine or theirs or if they were gaining or if I was in the lead. I couldn't tell if I was going to make it.

My legs wouldn't move fast enough. All right, it wasn't that they _wouldn't_, it was that they _couldn't_. I hadn't ever tried to run so fast before. I'd never had a reason to, and now that I did, it was terribly inconvenient that my legs weren't used to such strain, weren't used to being worked so hard. Not only that, but I felt as though I had run out of air. That I was done for.

I heard branches crack from behind me. _Someone_ was definitely catching up. Either that or it was some rabid animal jubilating off my scent and was now bent on hunting me down, tearing me to shreds, and then dining on me. It completely _sucked_ that my legs were already pushed to their limits. I was definitely going to be beat. And killed. And possibly eaten.

Branches bit at my arm, clutched to my clothes, the forest trying its hardest to keep me from escaping its treacherous stomach. I didn't know how long I had been running, but it had definitely been a long time. Hours, maybe. My throat burned for water, my lungs begged for a break, and my legs were protesting in every which way that they could for me to stop standing, stop moving, stop doing anything that would require them to work.

Suddenly, my foot caught in an upraised root and I fell on my face, mud jumping on me to demoralize me even more. I laid there on the forest floor and groaned before hearing another crack of a branch, feeling the stuttering vibrations of footsteps, many footsteps, all out of sync, like they didn't care to try hard to fight me, like they thought that I wouldn't have a chance fighting them anyway. I stumbled back to my feet, pushed through the arms of a tree in front of me and continued my journey of finding the forest's edge.

_Why are you running?_ a voice demanded then. _Only cowards run. And you're just proving to them that you _can't_ fight them. Stop. Turn around. Fight. Fight fight fight fight fight. Fight or never leave, fight or die._

_Fight, you worthless piece of _shit_._

Anger, anger, _flashes_ of so much _fucking_ anger bumbled through me brusquely, trying to aggravate me. And it worked.

I skidded to a stop, the mud kicking up under my feet as I pulled a one-eighty. I didn't see the darkness anymore. No, instead I saw strands of weaving vibrations, vibrations that flurry as my chakra spiked, vibrations that alerted me to the three men and one woman gaining on me.

I had eighty seconds.

And all I could think was: What would Shikamaru do?

_Goddammit,_ I cursed as the vibrations uselessly swirled around me. Formulate a plan, I thought. That's what Shikamaru would do. He would assess the situation and formulate a plan.

Well, there were four people after me; I'd already deduced that. I couldn't take them all at once. I mean, I was sure of my abilities, but I was doubtful that I'd be able to go four on one. So my best chances lied with splitting up the team. And when did situations usually call for divide and conquer?

When you can't find what you're looking for.

I clambered into a tree as fast as I could, the vibrations helping me keep track of how much time I had left to elaborate my plan. Once I was stationed on a fairly high and sturdy branch, I kicked off one of my sandals and dropped it directly below me. With that diversion planted, I hopped over to the next tree, closer to the squad chasing me, and thus shortening the time I had. But not without purpose. Never without purpose. Because I couldn't afford to mess this up.

Thirty seconds.

The vibrations around me picked up as the upper class Nin came closer. I hated how slowly they were moving. It was a pace that they wouldn't use on Nin at their level. But I was at their level. And I would show them now.

Taking what time I had left (which was approximately 25.42 seconds) I worked on herding in the vibrations within a meter and a half of my sandal. I pushed all but the thinnest strands of vibrations out of the cylinder that I'd made, since I can't completely rid an entire area of vibrations, and basically created a cone of silence. My fingers closed at the tips to tug the vibrations together and I pulled my hand back to make them slip out of the area and wrap around the cylinder.

Ten seconds.

There was no turning back.

[+]

The thing about my bloodline limit, the Genshindou, is that it's kind of self-destructive. Don't get me wrong: It's a hell of a lot better than the Shindouhaji, which is the original kekkei genkai of the Kagiru until our blood starting mingling with the Uchihas'. But it's not exactly a walk in the park either. All bloodline limits have to put stress on their users in some way. The Genshindou is no exception. And if it weren't for its major advantages in a fight, I wouldn't even bother with it. It is otherwise, as Shikamaru would say, only troublesome.

So as I sat at the base of one of the many trees in the forest, I was, I'll admit, more than a little numb from the vibrations that had kept rubbing up against me while the Genshindou had been activated. At least I couldn't feel the cuts that had been inflicted on my from the vibrations rubbing a little too hard. Still, the numbness was bittersweet because I couldn't feel pain, but then again, I wouldn't be able to feel it if someone attacked me either.

Which was what I had been expecting to happen when I felt the vibrations in the air shift to signal me that someone was nearby and ready to do _something_, otherwise their chakra levels wouldn't have been so high. They moved so quickly that I barely had time to reach into my holster for a kunai when they appeared at my side, poised with a knife at my throat.

I kept my chin as low as possible, so that if they attempted to slit my throat it would do minimal damage to my jugular and I'd maybe have a chance at surviving the attack.

"Reinforcements?" I muttered, my chest heaving with air that I was fighting to keep in my lungs. "That hardly seems fair when I can't even get any friends to help me myself."

"That's the way of the world," the man answered, the knife pressing closer to my throat. "You've lost. Give up, admit defeat, and you might just get away with your life, which seems like a perfect consolation prize to losing your dignity."

"I'd rather lose my life than get out of the forest alive and not be able to leave," I hissed, glaring at the enemy through the corner of my eyes, though I couldn't see his face due to the shadows that rained down from overhead and the porcelain mask he wore over his face. My eyes fluttered to a close involuntarily. Damn Genshindou for wasting me so fast.

"Your funeral," the man lamented, and I could feel his muscles tightening to finish me off. But instead of a swift pull of the blade against my flesh, my alleged attacker dropped their weapon of choice with a pained, "Ah!"

The vibrations in the air buzzed at my sudden chakra flare and swarmed to my hand like angry bees. I'd been able to cut the man slightly on his hand so that he'd release his weapon, but that wouldn't be enough to ensure my escape. I bit into the man's arm that he'd still had position right below my mouth. He let out a pained cry and jerked back. I'd been holding on to him tightly enough for him to yank me up with him.

Once I was on my feet, I stumbled to turn around and forced what vibrations I could to rush towards him and tighten around his neck. They weaved their away around his slender muscles and squeezed to restrict his airwaves.

I didn't plan on killing him, just as I hadn't killed the other four Nin that had been on my trail. I wanted to get away, yeah, but I wasn't ready to be a murder. Not yet, anyway.

The man clawed at the vibrations that were constricted around his windpipe. He started to turn an unsightly shade of blue, but showed no signs of giving up. That's when I realized that he wasn't human at all: Just a clone. But it was too late. In a puff of smoke, the kage bunshin disappeared. I had wasted what little of my chakra that I had on nothing.

Gritting my teeth, I glanced left, right, and above. There was no one. So I did what any good Nin would do.

I jumped.

And sure enough, the man erupted from the ground with a force that caused the earth to spider web the same way that glass does when it gets cracked.

My eyes were sore from watching the vibrations so much, and since I'd been using it for so long, my vision started to grow blurry, something that my father had warned against me doing. After all, it was critical that you be able to see your opponent in a fight.

I landed on a branch not too much out of the man's reach, but enough for me not to get caught. However, being in the weakened state that I was, my landing didn't take. My feet slipped from the branch and I fell to my certain untimely demise.

And as I blacked out, all I could think was, _At least the sky looks nice today._

[+]

I woke with a start a few hours later in what could only be, I deduced from the perverse white sheets, walls, and curtains, a hospital room. I was startled mostly because I hadn't expected to wake up. After all, I had been foolish enough to fall into enemy hands instead of just running away. But I supposed that I couldn't expect them to take out a _kid_. Of course they wouldn't. Not over something so trivial as a graduation test. Maybe if I had been a real threat to them—

I sat up slowly not wanting to think about how wimpy I'd been, my body achy from overexertion.

I wouldn't mind some of the numbness of the Genshindou at that moment.

I examined the bandages that they had wrapped over my arms to keep the cuts I'd gotten from getting infected. What a waste, I thought as I peeled them off, careful not to nudge the needles that they'd shoved into my forearm. Normally, I would've pulled those out too without any hesitation, but considering the fact that I could use the nutrition at the moment, I left them alone.

The cuts weren't so bad. I didn't understand why they had even covered them up in the first place. I mean, they'd scabbed over. And the bruises were hardly anything I couldn't handle. I pressed a finger to the longest cut on my arm—it ran from my elbow, over the back of my wrist, and rounded toward my thumb—and allowed chakra to pulse through to the cut. I dragged my finger along the scrape and, after a second of sizzling, it disappeared. I was, to say the least, quite satisfied with myself.

That was, until the dizziness kicked in.

My vision fuzzed over. I reached up to massage my temples, easing my vision back into place, just as the door slid open.

"Oh, Ren-chan. You're awake. You shouldn't be sitting up," my doctor chided.

I winced at the throbbing that rumbled up and down my spine. "I'm fine," I told her through clenched teeth. "What time is it?"

"Hmm?" She closed the door and made her way over to me. "It's two or three in the afternoon." Noticing the bandages that lay on either side of my bed, she tsked. "Ren-chan, you shouldn't have taken off your bandages."

"I'm fine," I repeated. "Where's the Hokage?"

"He'll be coming in shortly," she answered briskly, gathering up the bandages I'd discarded and pulling out new ones from the pocket of her fancy doctor cloak. "But really, Ren-chan, you should have just left the bandages as they—"

I stuck out my arms to show her an immaculate layer of skin. There wasn't a single cut in sight. I had seized the opportunity during which she had chided me to heal myself.

At that she blinked slowly, and put her bandages away. She tossed the bandages that I'd taken off into the trashcan beside my bed and checked the monitor hooked up to my heart. "Well, then, I guess everything is in order," she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. She sighed, seemingly peeved that I was okay. "Still, I don't think it's a good idea for you to be allowed to do what you're doing. You don't deserve to have all this strain put on you." She put a hand on her hip and waved her hand under her nose as though she couldn't stand even the fact of what she was going to say next. "After all, you're only a child."

My fists promptly rolled into fists when she said this. I wanted to beat her pretty little face in. "I'm fine," I felt the need to inform her for the third time.

"Yes, yes, so I've heard," she said dismissively.

I opened my mouth to retort. Unfortunately, it was then that the Hokage chose to come in. And I'm almost one hundred percent positive that what I was about to say would not have helped my case at that moment.

"Hokage-sama!" The doctor whirled around and straightened her posture. She bowed slightly at the waist.

I glowered at the woman behind her back.

The Hokage chortled, seeing my expression. He tipped his head at the doctor and said, "Good afternoon, Ren. Doctor, if you would—"

"Ah, yes," she said, understanding what the Hokage was asking. She shuffled out of the room and closed the door behind her.

"I hate that lady," I muttered. I reached up and pulled the bandages that were wrapped around my forehead away, letting my skin breath. "She doesn't know what she's talking about. I hate her." The old man sighed as I brushed my hair away from the rather large cut I had received from one of my attackers. I grimaced when I accidentally prodded it too hard. I laid a hand over it and said, "So, how did my report come back?"

The Hokage frowned at me when my hand started to glow the healing yellow light of my chakra. "Though there were holes in some of your methods," he said, circling around my bed to the window, "you were, as expected, excellent. With a little more training, you would be capable of going out on your own."

I froze. "But…?" I pressed.

The Hokage tapped his ever present pipe to his lips. "But nothing," he said, peering over at me curiously. "You will be released from the hospital by dinner time and out of the village by the end of the week."

"I-It can't be," I stuttered, "_that_ simple can it?"

He winked at me. "When it's in the hands of the Hokage it can."

I narrow my eyes at the old man. "Are you just trying to get me out of here?" I demanded. "If I'm not ready to leave, then I'm not ready to leave. You can tell me if that's the case. I can handle that."

He blinked at me coolly. "I wouldn't send you out if you weren't ready, Ren," he said. "That would be a death sentence. And everyone in this village is precious to me."

His pipe wasn't lit, but he put it in his mouth anyway, like he was going to take a long drag from it. It made me wonder why he even brought it in the first place. After all, smoking in the hospital is prohibited.

"Granted," he continued, "it looks like you can't handle fighting more than four people at a time. If any group of five gifted Nin were to go after you, you would die."

"Squads are usually only sent out in fours," I said automatically, like I was answering a question that had been asked in school.

"Usually," he agreed. "But what about reinforcements? Like the man that cornered you at the end of your field test?"

I didn't answer. My head fell forward, ashamed.

"I have," he said, "however, come up with an arrangement that I'm sure you won't be happy about, but will be absolutely necessary."

I looked up. "As long as I can get out of here," I said quickly, gripping the blanket over me. "And as long as it won't interfere with my mission. It doesn't matter to me."

He nodded dismissively, like he had more important things to deal with, which I'm sure he did. "Yes, well, I suppose you've had a long day. Why don't you go on home?"

Furrowing my brow, I asked, "But…she—that is, the doctor—hasn't dismissed me yet."

Briefly, he regarded me from over his shoulder and quirked his brow. "From this point forward, Ren," he said, "you're on your own. I think you're wise enough to call the shots. Especially when it comes to medical things. So, what'll it be?"

Quizzically, I stared down at my hands, realizing just how tiny they were. Was I really, as he said, wise enough to make these kinds of decisions? So far as I was concerned, I didn't think so. Honestly, I thought that I was so foolish, so absolutely out of my mind. Because this wasn't what I was supposed to be doing. I wasn't supposed to be stuck on hospital beds or fighting Nin way out of my league so that I could graduate and leave my village, my safe haven. I wasn't supposed to want to go out and travel on my own.

But then again, I was doing this so that I would know what I was supposed to be doing. What it would be like to have what everyone else can trust in so completely, so fully—lives of their own.

I released the smallest of sighs and yanked the IV from my arm. "I'm outta here," I mumbled, clambering out of bed. "I'll see you around, old man."

"Tomorrow afternoon, to be exact."

"Tomorrow afternoon it is then."

[+]

By the time I arrived back at the Naras (with one of the Hokage's men at my side as a kind of hall pass) it was time for dinner. I'll admit: Yoshino was curiously relieved to see me back that night. I don't know why. Maybe it was a mother's thing that had her worried about me. Whatever it was, I was glad that she hadn't been worried about me enough to ask me what I had talked to the Hokage about.

We ate dinner, washed up, went to bed, the usual. And as I lied on my side, in bed, next to Shikamaru, I felt like I shouldn't have been worried about so much, you know? I felt like, if I just stopped thinking about this, if I stopped caring about it and stopped acknowledging that there was a problem at all, it would just go away and I would never have to deal with it again, and I could just lay like that with Shikamaru at my side forever, and everything would just be all right.

Admittedly, that was a more than a little naïve of me, but I couldn't have helped thinking that if I had tried. There was just something about seeing Shikamaru next to me—so quiet and uncaring and tranquil in the darkness—that made me believe it. If only for a second.

I was careful with sneaking around him, so as not to wake him up, and reached for my sandals, which I had hidden underneath his bed while his parents were busy in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner and he was in the shower. I pulled my sandals on, shrugged my knapsack, which I had previously emptied after school, over my shoulder, and quietly slipped through the shoji doors in his room, and out into the night.

[+]

The first stop of the night was at the Kagiru home. If I was going to leave the village, I would have to be properly stocked with supplies, and my house had all the things I needed for that kind of travel. I made a mental list of what I would need as I pushed open my bedroom window and slid inside, seeing as though I had lost the key to my front door a long time ago.

I landed on my desk with a quick thump and jumped to the ground. I brushed myself off and looked around.

The house seemed gloomy in the darkness, like it knew that everyone who occupied it was either dead or never coming back. At least I hoped I would never have to come back. That was really wishful thinking, though.

I shuffled out of my room and to the end of the hall, where my father had turned our spare room into a training room with all the things I would need for my travels. I dropped to my knees in front of a chest of drawers and plopped my knapsack down next to me, before rummaging through it for my holster and hip pouch. Once I found what I was looking for, I placed them into my lap and opened one of the drawers and began to fill my holster and hip pouch with all the things that I would need—scrolls, knives, and shuriken.

But I wavered. It was just all so…surreal. I turned away from the tools for a second and looked out the window where the moon was starting to wane off. I propped myself up on my arms as I leaned back.

With my palm flat against the floor, I felt vibrations that shouldn't have occurred with me being the only person in the house.

Suspicious and sneering, I peered over my shoulder to the door. They were small footsteps. Light footsteps. They treaded slowly, cautiously, like they knew they weren't supposed to be there. Or rather, wasn't sure why they were there.

And I recognized these steps. I knew them all too well.

Sasuke hesitantly pushed the door open. He half hid behind it instead of coming in all the way when he saw that I was watching him.

"What do you want?" I asked, leaning forward to begin packing my things.

He only stood there and stared. Not at anything specifically. He had this dead look in his eyes. The kind of look that you inevitably end up with after your family has just been massacred by your idol, your older brother, I'm sure.

Just when I was about to give up on him ever saying anything, he whispered, "You're leaving?"

I stopped then, regarding him through the corner of my eyes. Hearing him say it, I decided, hurt a lot more than I would've liked or thought it could. He sounded so small, so fragile, so terribly wounded by my decision that I didn't want to admit it to him.

"You're scared," he told me. "I can feel it. I can feel what you're thinking. Through…the bond, right? That's what it is, isn't it? This…link between you and me."

I closed my eyes and breathed, "Yes."

"And you want to break it," Sasuke accused, though his voice didn't change from the monotonous tone I'd never heard him use before. I could, like him, feel through the bond how betrayed he was feeling. I chose to ignore it however. "You _want_ to leave."

_Me_, I could hear him choke back. _You want to leave _me_._

"Go away," I ordered, though it came out as more of a plea. I wanted him to leave so that he wouldn't change my mind. Because—

"Everything I say," he said, "influences you somehow. Right?"

"Shut up," I demanded, gripping a kunai I was packing into my holster. "Shut up and get out of here. Now."

"You wouldn't hurt me," he countered, smug though it didn't show on his visage. "You can't."

"Try me," I grumbled, glaring at him. "I'd just never had reason to until a few days ago. You're the reason my family is dead, Sasuke. I think that's enough to make me want to hurt you without thinking twice. Isn't that how you feel about Itachi?"

He winced and his gut writhed in anger, hate, pure, unadulterated loathing towards me. Finally, he broke. His face contorted into a mess of rage. "It wasn't my fault," he insisted, more to himself than to me, I could tell. "It's not my fault that everybody's—"

"It is, Sasuke!" I shouted, standing up. My fingers were still wrapped dangerously around the kunai."It is. Because without you, without this _stupid bond_ linking our families together, I would be living a normal life right now and my family _wouldn't be dead like yours_."

He lunged for me then, his hands aiming for my throat. And unfortunately, he caught it. As he pinned me to the ground with a dizzying and vision blurring thump, the kunai shot out of my hand and skidded across the floor.

"IT WASN'T MY FAULT," he screamed, pressing his thumbs into my jugular. I felt the oxygen wasting away in my lungs. "IT. WASN'T. MY. FAULT."

I didn't fight him. I didn't try to convince him that I didn't deserve to die. Hell, I thought, if I died right then, I wouldn't have to go through the trouble of trying to find a way to break the bond. It would just _end_. And at that moment, that sounded like the best solution.

"You were born to be with me!" he told me as though this hadn't been revealed to me before. "You were born _because_ of me! The only reason your parents wanted you at all was because _I_ was here. The only reason you're alive now is because _he_—" Sasuke hissed the word, as though mentioning the man who had killed our families even as a pronoun wasn't acceptable. "—thought that I would need you for my revenge. The only reason you're alive now is also _because of me_."

His words were a giant slap to my face. That couldn't be it, could it? Was I only still alive because Itachi thought that I would be useful for Sasuke too?

Well, why not? Every other point of my life had revolved around Sasuke—why wouldn't my survival be because of him too?

I figured I had at least a minute left of consciousness, but I allowed my eyes to close, allowed him to keep choking me. I held my breath to speed up the process of dying. Or maybe I was already dead. But no, I could still feel his hands around my throat, his heavy weight on my chest.

I could still feel the guiltangerregret flooding through him. Eating him away.

And I could feel his unwillingness to kill.

Just as I felt thought, yes, finally, my body was succumbing and my heart was going to stop, he let go of me, scrambling backward. Reluctantly, air rushed into my mouth, my lungs, and I bolted upright, coughing, rubbing where he had so tightly wrapped his hands around my throat. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, ridding myself of the saliva that had spewed through my lips. I glared up at him, hating him for ruling, ruining, saving, and then not taking my life when I had nothing left to live for but him. The selfish bastard.

He sat in front of me, staring, horrified, at his hands. They rolled into balls and he pounded his head with them, angry with himself for losing his cool, for being rash.

Because there was no way he'd be able to kill Itachi if he acted like that when they finally came face to face.

But I could also tell that he was angry that he hadn't been able to kill.

I wanted to smack him, to reach for a weapon, any weapon—because God knows all the stuff my father had stored in that room—and drive it through his skull. Did he think that he was the victim here? Did he think that he was the one who had to deal with all this pain and suffering and that he was the only one affected by this?

Hadn't I ever meant anything to him that he would regret not being able to follow through with killing me?

I was about to tell him off when I noticed his shoulders shaking and his face flooded with tears. He slammed his fists into the floor. The bang that sounded shook the contents of the drawers and my bones. Their power wasn't yet able to shake the window panes.

"I wasn't strong enough," he murmured. "I wasn't strong enough to protect everybody. It…it was my fault that Mother and Father and Auntie…But I'll get stronger." He raised his head to look at me with a new ferocity in his eyes. His face was still wet, but the tears were long dried up in his eyes. "I'll get stronger and I'll kill him. I'll kill him."

I was taken aback by the malice in his voice. It was malice that shouldn't have existed, not in the voice of a seven year old. Not in the voice belonging to a face so…innocent.

"Go," he spat, getting to his feet. He wiped his face on the back of the sleeve of his shirt. "Leave. I don't care. It'll be a relief to never see your face again. And I'll show you: I don't need your help at all."

And then he just walked out.

Just.

Like.

That.

[+]

After getting over the initial shock of Sasuke snapping on me like he did, I gathered up everything I needed and shoved them into my bag. I did some more sneaking around in not-so-random parts of the village before sneaking back to the Nara home and through the shoji doors with relative ease. I thought I was in the clear as I shoved all of my things under Shikamaru's bed where they'd been hidden before, but as I started to climb into bed, that was when the problem arose.

"Ren," Shikamaru hissed, and, surprised, I fell off the foot of the bed where I had been trying to crawl back into my spot by the wall. I cursed a random made up word as I rubbed the back of my head where it had hit the ground too hard. There would be a bruise there in the morning. I slowly got to my feet and pulled myself onto the bed.

"Shouldn't you be asleep, Shikun?" I muttered, lifting the covers and wrapping myself in them.

He glowered at me through the darkness, sitting up and tugging the blanket away so that he could see my face. I glowered back at him.

"Go to sleep," I said, jerking the sheet out of his hands, like we were playing a game of tug-o-war.

"What did you sneak out for?" he wanted to know as I turned on my side to face the wall so that I wouldn't have to look at him. "Ren, tell me."

"Shikamaru, just go to sleep," I said again. "It doesn't matter. It's none of your business anyway."

"You can't do that," he told me. "You can't just sneak out like that."

"Why not?" I demanded, bolting upright. "Why can't I, Shikamaru? It doesn't matter what I do _because there's no one out there to care for me anymore_. All right? So just leave me alone and go to bed. It's late and I'm tired and we've got school tomorrow morning. Good night."

I tucked myself back under the covers, hiding my head beneath the warm cotton. It muffled the silence, and it made it almost impossible for me to hear what Shikamaru said next. Almost.

He shifted on his side of the bed as he murmured, "I care about you."

My face contorted with sadness. "You shouldn't," I whispered into the pillow to be sure that he wouldn't hear me. Because I didn't want anything I said. I just meant it. "Please don't."

[+]

"…Ren, are you listening to me?"

I looked up at Yoshino, biting the inside of my lip and not wanting to answer. She had been lecturing me on the importance of informing someone of where I was at all times so that, if something happened, people would know where to find me. But I didn't care. And I think that, with her mother's intuition, she knew that, because she massaged her brow and sighed, like she didn't know what she was going to do with me.

She wouldn't have to worry much longer though. I mean, the whole reason I had disappeared earlier that day was because it had occurred to me that I hadn't check the local resources in our village to see if they had anything on blood oaths and how to break them.

They didn't.

That meant that my decision to leave was a valid one, and it made me feel a little less guilty for leaving. Which also meant that I would _have_ to leave in order to find what I was looking for and that Yoshino wouldn't have to worry much longer about me.

I dropped my gaze from Yoshino only to find myself being glowered at by Shikamaru from across the dinner table.

And let me tell you, I'd rather have spent the rest of my life inside the village, never finding a way to break the bond, than have Shikamaru look at me the way he did.

I lowered my eyes to my food, picking at it feebly, to avoid looking at either of them. Shikaku had gone out that day on a mission and wouldn't be back until who knew when, so I settled on the weak consolation of not having to face him too.

"Sorry," I muttered, shoveling a spoonful of vegetables in my mouth. "I wanted to be alone."

Yoshino took the empty seat beside me since Shikamaru had chosen to sit at his father's usual seat tonight. "I understand that Ren," she said, "but you still could've told me where you were going. And to think that the Hokage took you in for the afternoon!" She flustered at the thought. "The most powerful man in the village—I'd hate to think that I inconvenienced him or something like that."

_You didn't,_ I wanted to tell her, but then that would lead to me having to explain that the Hokage had really taken me under this wing that afternoon so that he could train me himself. Well, test me more than train me, but what did it matter? If I said it like he had trained me himself, it gave me more credibility, and I needed that.

Not that I could admit that to anybody.

"You two should hurry and get washed up," she said, getting up. I watched after her as she fluttered over to the sink. She'd hardly eaten anything herself. Admittedly, I felt a little responsible for that. On top of having to worry about her husband and child, she had to worry about me, a case that had gone way beyond repair.

Dinner went by ritually at that point. Shikamaru and I finished up, took our baths, and were herded into our beds. Yoshino tucked us in snugly, smoothed my hair back and kissed Shikamaru goodnight before leaving.

I rolled on my side, away from Shikamaru, and stared at the wall. I wasn't really looking for sleep. And it didn't really come. And I was pretty sure that it wouldn't be coming for a long time. I turned back to Shikamaru.

Surprisingly enough, he was facing me, although his eyes were closed. I nudged him slightly. His brow twitched and his face turned into a scowl. His eyes remained closed.

"Shikun," I whispered. "I know you're awake."

He opened one eye to look at me. "So?"

That stopped me. He was right. So?

In a way, though, I knew exactly what I was going to say. What I needed to say. What I was supposed to say. Otherwise I would never be able to leave the village.

"I'm sorry, Shikun," I whispered, tucking my hand under the pillow. "I'm sorry I was so mean to you last night. And thanks for not telling your mom that I snuck out even though you should have. And could have."

"It was none of my business," he answered smartly, closing his eyes. I flinched. "Besides, it doesn't matter, right?"

I paused, wondering if I had said the wrong thing, if I would ever really make up with Shikamaru. God, I thought. This was all my fault. The one thing I had that was mine—really truly mine—that I had created with my own hands, I had broken.

I was an idiot.

"It's okay, Ren," he said suddenly. "You don't need to be sorry. Just stop acting like you're all alone. My mom wants to help you, you know." His eyes opened again, this time looking serious and annoyed. "We all want to help you."

I stifled my face in the pillow. "I know," I muttered. "I know. I'm really sorry, though, Shikun."

"It's okay," he said again.

I peeked at him over the fluff of the pillow. "We're still friends, right?" I asked, embarrassed.

He grinned. "Still friends."

I sighed, relieved. "Good."

"…Ren?"

"Yeah?"

"Why're you calling me 'Shikun'?"

"What?"

"You haven't called me that since you found out that my family owns the deer park. You've been calling me just 'Shika', remember?"

I did. But I didn't really see how that was relevant to anything that was going on. "Yeah," I answered. "I guess…I guess I'm still used to calling you 'Shikun' is all."

"You stopped calling me 'Shikun' two years ago," he scoffed. He furrowed his brow then and looked at me. _Really_ looked at me. Like he was trying to figure out one of his puzzles. "You've changed a lot, you know."

Biting my lip, I asked, "Is that good or bad?"

He took a moment to think about this. Then he shrugged. "I dunno," he said.

"We should get to sleep," I said quickly, pulling the covers up to my chin. "Good night, Shi_ka_."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes. "Good night, Ren."

I did, of course, kind of know why I had called Shikamaru by his old nickname. I did it because I wanted things to go back to the way they were. You know, it's like how people revert to old habits because they've just gone through something so terribly traumatizing that they don't want to remember or think about it, so they go back to doing things they used to do before said terribly traumatizing thing happened so they can feel that false sense of security that comes with reminiscing and nostalgia. Or how, when old people lose their spouses, they keep living as though their love is still alive, talking to them and setting up that extra seat for them at dinnertime.

That's kind of what I was hoping to achieve by calling Shikamaru Shikun. I just wanted to be able to return to the point in time when I didn't know all the things I know about the bond now. I wanted to be able to lie there in bed with him and dreamsleeprelax, the way kids are supposed to when bedtime comes around. I wanted to be able to stay with him and breathe him in, breathe in the simplicity and ignorance and happiness and hope that it would rub off on me somehow, on my family, on my life, and that I would be…well, free.

That's what I wanted. But, as we all know, we can't always get what we want.

* * *

**Thanks for reading, please review!**


	9. Admittance

**Bound  
Chapter 09: Admittance**

"Ren?"

I open my eyes to find myself staring into a dusty box of books and clothes. Groggily, I lift my heavy head, blinking at the person at my front door.

"Shika?" I yawn, stretching my arms out high above my head. I drop my left hand into my lap and use my right hand to rub my eye. "What're you doing here?"

"I was looking for you," he says, eyeing my house warily. "When I couldn't find you in the park or in any of the other fields around the village, I just kind of figured that you'd be here."

"Here?" I echo. "How would you figure that I would be here of all the other places in the village?"

He shrugs. "It's your house. Why not? Anyway, what are you doing?"

"I was sorting through these boxes," I say, motioning to the sea of brown around me. "But I think I fell asleep before I could do much. And I had...the weirdest dream." I ruffle my hair, another yawn easing its way through my lips. I lick my lips, scratching my scalp. "Funny. I don't even remember what it was about."

Shikamaru crosses his arms, his body language telling me he's feeling uncomfortable. "When do you think you'll be done here?"

I smirk, leaning against a box that is conveniently behind me. "Shikamaru," I start slowly. "This is my house. Sure, it's a little dirty and a total medical hazard, but it gives me those warm fuzzy feelings inside. You can't really hate it if that's the case, can you?"

"Like I said the other day," he says, closing his eyes and frowning. "The offer to stay at my place still stands. You haven't been staying here, have you? And seriously now," he adds, his eye twitching.

"No," I sigh, shuffling through the books in the box in front of me. They're medical books, all out of date. _Family Medical Guide_; _Medical Terminology Demystified_; _The Medical Association's Complete Medical Encyclopedia_. I frown, my brow furrowing together. I stack the books on top of each other, figuring that I better keep them, just in case there's some ancient plague that comes back and I need to use these books as reference. "I stayed with an old family friend."

"Old family friend," Shikamaru repeats. By the tone of his voice, I know that he's expecting more. However, I'm not going to elaborate.

"Yeah," I answer, waving him over. "Take these will you?" I ask him, picking up the books and dropping them in his hands. "Put them on that table over by the wall."

He huffs, but does as I say.

"_Isha's Complete Home Guide to Symptoms and Remedies_," I read aloud. I roll my eyes and toss the book over toward Shikamaru just as he turns around. He catches it against his chest, surprised. "This is all junk, but I can't help feeling like I should keep it."

Shikamaru pushes Isha's guide against the other books and makes sure that they're all able to stand before turning back around. "You're not going to have enough room in your house if you keep it all."

"It fits now and it somehow fit before," I say, pulling out the clothes. I unfold them and give them a good shake. Dust thrusts out of the threads, but flutters out the open window instead of up my nose. The shirt I'm holding is more than a few sizes too small. I want to laugh as I throw it into the kitchen. "That can be a rag."

"You expect to go through all of this by tonight?" asks Shikamaru.

"Of course not," I reply, incredulous. "That would take way too much work. Work that I'm just not cut out for. Oh, look!" I burrow through the clothes and raise another book up into the light. I blow the dust away. It disperses and promptly flies out the window. "More medical books. _A Daishin's Quick Medical Reference_." I scoff and roll my eyes. "If he's just a daishin, I'm not sure I'd want any of his medical references to be quick. Head's up." I throw the book at Shikamaru who catches it professionally.

"Are you sure you want to be keeping all these?" he asks, thumbing through the pages. "They're all out of date. It'd be troublesome to have them taking up space when you can't even use any of it."

"Hmm, I don't know," I admit, pulling out a few articles of clothing that had been flattened by the weight of the book. "I feel kind of…_obligated_ to keep them all. Even though there's no one to really, you know…" I lower my eyes and rub the fabric of a royal purple shirt between my fingers. I close my eyes for a second and sigh. As I open my eyes, I say, "I'll throw it all out eventually."

I look to Shikamaru to see that he's scowling up a storm. My eyebrows knot together. "What?" I ask him.

He shakes his head and diverts his gaze. "It's almost lunchtime," he says, crossing his arms and leaning against the table on which he'd placed my books. "Since you're not getting anything done anyway, do you want to go get something to eat?"

It's my turn to scowl at him and open my mouth to retort, but find that I've got no argument. It doesn't keep me from balling up the shirt I had been holding and hurling it at him. It hits his face and drapes over his head. I harrumph and get up.

"Fine," I mumble, glaring at him as he pulls the shirt off. "Let's go."

[+]

I hang out with Shikamaru for the rest of the day, not bothering to go back to my house to see if I could do some real cleaning and fixing up. But most importantly, as we're watching the clouds together in our usual spot in the park, my dream starts to come back to me in pieces.

I remember how at noon the next day, I was packing my things to be sent to my 'relatives' in the next town and the Hokage was apologizing for not being able to tell Yoshino about it earlier. With my goodbyes to the Naras, I was off into the forest surrounding Konoha with four Leaf ANBUs on my trail so that I could go on my _real_ journey of looking for a way to break the blood oath. Not that I had known that there was a squad of ANBU following me around. No, it took me almost three years to realize they were watching me, taking care of me in a way, and sending reports on my travels back to the Hokage.

But, I mean, once I realized that, I immediately got them off my scent and went solo.

I never made up with Sasuke before I left.

I twine my fingers together over my stomach and sigh, the clouds overhead drifting kind of like they did on the day I finally got out of town. And every day before that. And every day after. I start to wonder if Shikamaru comes up with any deeply profound thoughts while doing this (seeing as though I was getting zero from it) but when I look over to spy on him a bit, I see that he's got his eyes closed. He has his hands under his head in a makeshift pillow and is breathing deeply.

To put it simply, he's sleeping.

I roll my eyes and sit up, getting to my feet, knowing that Shikamaru wouldn't mind if I left a little early without waking him.

I need to do something I should have done a long time ago.

[+]

"Hey, Sasuke," I call as I make it back to his house just as the sun's setting and dinner should be starting. I kick off my shoes in the entryway and poke my head into the next room over. "Sasuke?" I call again when there's no response. Like the other day, I feel no vibrations under my feet that indicate anyone else is in the house besides me, but I can feel through the bond that he's home.

Making my way up the stairs, I'm not willing to believe that he's already in bed. It's still early, after all, and for kids our age to turn in for the night so soon is embarrassing to me. But even as I open the door to his room, I already know that he's not there—I had felt it on my way up. Wherever he is, he's doing a good job at keeping it a secret from me.

I sigh and leave his room, not caring where he's hiding anymore. Instead, I stroll into his kitchen, looking for something to eat. His kitchen is as boring and bare as the rest of his house, and I realize that this is the first time that I've actually gone in looking for food. The first logical place that I check for leftovers or TV dinners or something is the fridge. He's hardly got anything in there however and I just close it.

I start to rifle through his cupboards, and am able to get a hold of a pack of soba noodles, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and a can of mixed flavored stock. Perfect.

[+]

Just as I finish making dinner, Sasuke appears out of nowhere, bordering the kitchen perimeter. He looks more tired than he had when he'd left me this morning.

"What're you doing?" he asks, unsure of whether or not he should come in.

I stand at the stove, adjusting the heat of the flame beneath the pot. "What does it look like I'm doing?" I counter, using a wooden spoon to mix the sauce. "I'm making something to eat. Although I'm generally a bad cook. I used to make this all the time with my mom though, so I don't think it'll be _that_ bad." I tap the spoon against the rim of the pot, making all the excess water drip off. I put a hand on my waist and turn my head towards him. Using the spoon, I motion to the other side of the counter.

"Noodles are over there," I tell him. "Help yourself. You know where the dishes are, I'm gonna go ahead and guess."

When he doesn't move, I roll my eyes and get back to the sauce, which I'd stirred and boiled for so long that it's lost most of its viscosity. It is sweet scented from the rice vinegar and has a tang to it from the soy sauce.

"Hey," I start. "Any idea where your sugar is? I don't feel like this dish would be very complete without it."

After a short pause, I hear Sasuke rummaging through his cupboard. He comes to my side and presents me with a container of sugar.

"Thanks." I drop the spoon into the pot and take the sugar from his hands. "Just a pinch of this and it'll be done."

After mixing the last ingredient in, I shut the stove off and smile. I have to admit, I'm proud of myself for remembering how to make these noodles, though there's really not that much to it. I brush my hands off and turn around to find Sasuke leaning against the counter next to the sink, staring at nothing.

"What?" I ask, frowning. "Have you already eaten? If that's the case, then I'll just—"

"You really want this bond broken, don't you?" he interrupts softly.

I'm taken aback by his tone. I catch a hint of sadness in it. But just barely.

"Yes," I respond. "I do."

His eyes come up to meet mine. They've got a darker tint to them now, and something flashes pass, but it disappears before I can grasp it. "Why?"

I narrow my eyes, furrowing my brow together, wondering why he's so pressing. "Look at it this way," I say. "Power. It's what you think is going to help you achieve a freedom of sorts, right?"

He doesn't give any clue that he's hearing me, but I go on.

"Well, my freedom," I say, "is my freedom. You probably don't get it, but it's not like you really need to understand. Our wants are our wants, and we don't need to explain it to anybody. Especially to people who don't really care."

I sigh, tugging at the headband around my neck that I'd forgotten about until now. "But enough of that," I say, going to the cupboard with dishes in it that I remember bypassing while looking for the wok to make the sauce. "We should eat, yeah?"

"Why," he starts carefully like I might attack him at any moment. I pull two bowls from the cupboard and hand one to him. He takes it slowly. "Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?" I ask, rolling my eyes. "Feeding us? I mean, I get that we're all gonna die some day, Sasuke, but I really don't feel like the way I should go to my next life is by starving. Besides," I add quietly. "I've got…stuff I need to make up for."

He lifts his head at this point to try to meet my eyes. I flush and shuffle over to the noodles, wanting this conversation to end now. "Whatever, doesn't matter, let's eat up and get to bed, what with the big day ahead of us tomorrow," I rush, piling noodles into my bowl. When I'm finished, I turn around and almost bump into Sasuke again. He's got this weird look on his face like what he's about to say is going to make him feel really awkward. And I'm sure it does, because he tells me, "Thanks."

I blink at him for a second before a smirk makes its way across my face. "You're welcome," I say smugly, and slip around him to the stove.

[+]

Another morning late.

"GODDAMMIT," I curse, pushing through the throngs of people that have gathered in the early morning streets. The villagers that I've shoved out of my way huff at me, annoyed, and mumble something about how kids these days have no respect. I don't mind them because I probably _look_ like a punk kid that would have no respect. I hadn't had much time that morning to get ready, so my hair is askew and my clothes are wrinkled. My headband is tied around my neck again, since I was too late to really put it on right. It beats against my chest, urging me to move faster.

I was late for graduation (and ended up not going at all) the day before yesterday, and now I'm late for orientation too. I wonder what kind of impression I've made for myself.

_Damn Sasuke,_ I think, but I guess I can't really blame him since he _did_ try to wake me up, though, in my defense, I had thought it was all a dream. I mean, I didn't think that it was possible for Sasuke to be nice enough to try to get me up on time. But when I got up and found that my pillow was across my room where I had thought I threw it at the Dream Sasuke, everything just kind of clicked together.

And now I'm late. Again.

When I arrive at the classroom where orientation was supposed to be held, I don't hear anyone talking. I poke my head into the room and look around. It's empty.

"Crap," I mutter, going in despite the fact that there's nothing in here that's going to help me. I drop into the closest seat and put my face in my hands. What would the Hokage do to me now, I wonder, that I haven't been able to hold up my punishment either?

"Hmm? Oh, Ren. Is that you?"

I look up to find Iruka standing at the door, clipboard under his arm, giving me a look that says, "You shouldn't be here."

"I, uh, woke up late," I explain sheepishly.

"I figured," he says. "Lucky for you, your team just got picked up by their Jounin. I think they're up on the roof right now, getting to know each other."

"Roof," I mutter, getting up. "Getting to know each other. Got it. Weird place to do that kind of thing, don't you think? But I suppose that's just the way Kakashi works." Without waiting for an answer, I slip past Iruka to get to where my team is supposed to be meeting. "Anyway, thanks, Iruka. I'll see you later."

"I should warn you, Ren," he starts as I jog down the hall to the stairs that will take me to the roof. "This isn't going to be as easy as you think it is."

I give him a puzzled look over my shoulder. "We're kids," I say. "How hard can it be?"

"You'd be surprised," he sighs, and waves me goodbye.

I scoff as I trot up the stairs. "If this is going to be hard, I wonder what the past five years have been," I grumble, pushing open the door leading to the roof. "Sorry I'm late," I say, pulling my headband up so that it's in its rightful place over my forehead. "If you'll believe it, I got lost on the way ov—what. The hell."

From three steps leading up to the greenhouse behind me, there are three kids my age staring at me. One of them is Sasuke. He's glaring at me, probably wondering the same thing I am: _What're _you_ doing here?_

"Ren!" someone shouts, catching my attention. It's Naruto. He's sitting on Sasuke's left, on the step below the one Sasuke's on. He doesn't look upset that I'm here, but he doesn't look happy either. He's this cute form of confused that makes me want to tease him.

"Kakashi-sensei," says another person. It's the girl from the other day, the one with abnormally pink hair who had been bombarding Sasuke with her posse. She's poised on Sasuke's right and is sitting on the same step Naruto is on. She doesn't seem to recognize me because, without giving me a second glance, she turns to the Jounin leaning against a rail that's wrapped around the perimeter of the roof. "What's going on? Who's she?"

Kakashi, naturally, takes his time answering his students. "Well," he says, "due to the odd number of students graduating this year, a team of four was decided upon, and that just so happens to be Team 7. Though having the extra member will hinder us in a few ways, I'm sure that we'll be able to make up for it by getting to know each other and all the time we'll be spending working together."

"B-but," the girl stutters. She points an accusatory finger at me. "I didn't see her at the graduation! And Iruka-sensei didn't announce her name when he was calling out the teams."

"Hey," I counter. "I've got a _headband_, right?"

"Yes, well, there were complications," Kakashi says, ignoring me. "Ren was homeschooled, so she had to talk to the Hokage about her graduation test." The girl withdraws her finger at the Hokage's title. "As for Iruka not calling her, he must have known that she wasn't there. He probably didn't want to confuse the three of you by calling out—so far as you knew—an imaginary teammate."

The girl still seems unsure about it, but doesn't say anymore. I, however, do her the favor.

"I thought you said that there were an odd number of people graduating," I say, remembering what the Hokage had told me previously. "That's why you put me on a team in the first place."

"Well," Kakashi shrugs. "Due to a series of unpredictable circumstances, our even number turned back into an odd number when one of our students belatedly graduated in a rather unorthodox fashion." The way he says this makes it clear that I'm to drop the subject. "Now, if you'll please."

Kakashi motions for me to take a seat next to my team on the steps. Reluctantly, I comply and take the seat next to Naruto on the same step as Sasuke.

"Since Ren arrived so late," Kakashi says, and the three students glare at him like he shouldn't be the one talking, "she's automatically volunteered herself to go first."

"Go first for what?" I ask.

"Introducing yourself."

I scowl at him, tugging on the hem of my sweater vest. "What do you want to know?"

"Your name," he says, "and your likes, dislikes, dreams, hobbies. Whatever. I've already provided an example for you, but you missed it. So wing it."

"Okay," I say, dragging out the word. "Well, my name is Kagiru Ren. I like doing whatever I like when I want, and I hate being told what to do. Uh, my dreams? My dreams are…" I bite my lip, unsure of what to say, and glance over at Sasuke, like he's going to help me answer it.

Unsurprisingly, he doesn't even acknowledge me. The girl, however, glares at me like I've got some underlying motive that will interfere with her plans.

"My dreams are," I repeat. "Well, _dream_, I should say, since I've really only got one. Er, well, my dream is to be free. And I haven't got any hobbies, really, because I never have anything to do," I rush to finish. "So yeah. That's me in a nutshell."

Kakashi hums thoughtfully and nods. "All right then. Next? You, next to Ren, if you please."

"All right," Naruto agrees, adjusting his headband and grinning. "My name is Uzumaki Naruto. I like cup ramen, but I like the ramen that Iruka-sensei buys me at Ichiraku's better. I don't like the three minute wait it takes for the ramen to cook."

I smile at Naruto, amused, and lean back, propping myself up on my arms. This is okay, I decide, stretching out my legs. The whole team thing is definitely not as bad as I thought it would be.

"My dream is to surpass all the Hokages and have the village acknowledge my existence!" Naruto announces with enthusiasm. Kakashi's eyes blank for a second, taking this in, as Sakura scoffs and rolls her eyes. Sasuke doesn't even flinch. I grin at Naruto and close my eyes, allowing my head to nod off to the side. Then, lamely, Naruto finishes with, "My hobbies are pulling pranks and practical jokes, I guess."

Kakashi's interest fades at this and he scratches his head. "Okay, next."

"My name is Uchiha Sasuke," Sasuke says, sounding irritated, like this whole thing is totally beneath him. "There are plenty of things I don't like, but I don't see that it matters considering that there isn't much that I do like."

I open one eye to look at him, annoyed, and see that the girl is visibly deflated by the last part of Sasuke's sentence.

"I don't like using the word 'dream'," he says, "that's just a word. I have an ambition. The resurrection of my clan and…to kill a certain man."

I'm able to find a loose thread hanging off the side of my sweater and play with it between my fingers. I catch Naruto inching away from him. I bump him with my foot to keep him from backing into me. He turns toward me and I shrug like I care about what Sasuke's just said. Kakashi's silver head moves in a way that it glints in the sun and catches my attention. I look at him, arching my brow. He returns my look, but there's something behind his visage that makes me divert my gaze quickly.

"Okay," Kakashi says, after a moment. "Lastly, the other girl on the end."

"I'm Haruno Sakura," she says, her eyes still on Sasuke. She's flushing like being put on the spot makes her nervous. "I like…well, the _person_ I like is…"

Seeing where this is going, I sigh, straightening out and propping my arms up on my knees so that I can cradle my head in my hands.

"Anyway, my dream is…" She spaces out for a moment before blushing like mad.

Even with two people between us, I'm still too close to Sakura. There is no such thing, I decide, as being too far from her.

"I dislike," Sakura says firmly, not finishing her preceding sentence and catching my attention, "Naruto."

I roll my eyes and look over our sensei's shoulders to watch some birds fly past as Naruto groans, disappointed.

"My hobbies are, well…"

Seeing as though we're not making progress on learning any more about our teammate besides how much she fancies Sasuke, Kakashi decides to intervene. "Okay," he says, crossing his arms. "That's enough of that. Tomorrow, we'll be starting our first mission."

"Yeah!" Naruto cheers, straightening up. "What kind of mission is it?"

"We'll do something with just the five of us, first," says Kakashi.

"What is it?" Naruto presses, not bothering to hide the excitement bubbling up inside of him. Seeing someone so pepped up lightens my mood.

"Survival training," answers Kakashi like it makes all the sense in the world.

"Survival training?" Naruto and I echo; Naruto, curious; I, disgusted.

"Why are we going to train when it's a mission?" Sakura adds.

I drop my hands so that they're crossed in my lap. "And I think we've all had enough survival training before we graduated." I know I had.

"But you'll have to survive against me," Kakashi says. "It won't be your typical practice."

"What kind of practice will it be then?" Naruto inquires, and Kakashi starts to chuckle. He's just trying to psych us out, I know, but that doesn't keep it from working.

"What's so funny?" Sakura demands.

"Nothing," he answers cheerily. "It's just that, if I told you, you'd probably chicken out."

"Chicken out?" says Naruto. "Why?"

Kakashi rests his head in his hand again so that his fingers are spread across his cheek. The way he looks at us makes chills run up my spine. "Out of the 28 graduates, only a maximum of 10, in this case, will become Genin. The other 18 will be sent back to the Academy. In other words, this training is going to be a test with a dropout rate of about 64 percent."

Naruto's mouth drops open. I allow my head to hang. This is all so troublesome, I whine in my head. Why can't they just let me pass? God knows I deserve it, right?

"See?" Kakashi says, the smile back in his voice, though I can tell that beneath his mask, his lips are doing the same. "I told you you'd chicken out."

"What was the final exam for then?" Naruto wants to know.

"That?" Kakashi asks. "That was just to pick out those who are qualified to become Genin."

"I knew that stupid test was too easy to be true," I mutter, remembering how Shikamaru had told me about what they'd had to do to pass, which was just produce three shadow clones of themselves.

Whereas _I_ had to run around in the forest being chased by four Chuunin before being pinned by their reinforcements and then go through a training course with the Hokage the day after.

I hate life.

"Anyway," Kakashi says, lightly moving on, "tomorrow you will be graded on the training field. Bring all your ninja equipment and show up at five AM sharp! Oh, and I wouldn't eat breakfast in the morning unless you want to see it come back up again. You're dismissed."

* * *

Thank you for reading. Please review!


	10. Bad Vibrations

**BOUND  
Chapter 10: Bad Vibrations**

Regardless of what Kakashi says, I eat breakfast in the morning anyway because it is the most important meal of the day and the idea of skipping out on a meal makes me depressed. And it seems to have been a good idea because as the hours pass by and Kakashi doesn't show, my teammates cringe and clutch their stomachs, which gurgle in their starvation.

I lie in the grass of the training grounds where Kakashi had told us to meet, my arms folded beneath my head in a makeshift pillow while my teammates stand diligently around me, watching either direction for our sensei.

"Where _is_ he?" Sakura grumbles for the umpteenth time. She's placed her bag down at her feet and has her arms crossed. Her head lolls to the side as she tries to keep from falling asleep.

Naruto, who is opposite me and watches for Kakashi from the other side of the field, looks as displeased as our pink-haired teammate. _He_, however, has the mind to sit down and lean against his knapsack to rest while waiting for Kakashi.

Sasuke hasn't, of course, budged from his stoic, straight posture. His arms are cross and he even still carries his knapsack on his back. He watches for Kakashi from my left, vigilant. But occasionally I catch sight of him closing his eyes, his head jerking forward then up again as he wakes up.

I sit up after hearing Sakura sigh again, pressing my palms to the earthy soil beneath me. My fingers pad through the mush, feeling the slight vibrations of oncoming footsteps heading in our general direction at a relaxed pace.

"He's about here," I say, getting to my feet and brushing my hands off on my pants. "Try to look presentable, Sakura. I know you've missed a lot of your much needed beauty rest this morning, but really. You three should know, though," I add as Sakura glowers at me, "that he's normally late like this. He can't help it."

Sakura opens her mouth to say something pointed, I'm sure, but just then Kakashi emerges from the brush, offering us a smile and a wave with his greeting of, "Good morning, class!"

"YOU'RE LATE!" Naruto and Sakura are quick to accuse, jabbing angry, impatient fingers at him.

"Yes, yes," he says, making his way over to a stump where he places a small clock that read a little after 11. Nearly six hours late, this one. The bastard. "A black cat crossed my path, so…anyway," he says when Naruto and Sakura turn their noses up at his excuse. "This alarm is set to go off at noon." He extract two bells from his pockets and hold them out for us to see. They glint in the sunlight, releasing soft jingles when he gives them a little shake. "I have here two small bells. Your goal today is to try to steal one of these bells from me before the timer sounds. Whoever can't get a bell, not only does not pass, but also doesn't get lunch. Not only that," he adds as the four of us groan, "but I'll tie you to one of those stumps over there and eat your lunch right in front of you."

_And that's why we weren't supposed to eat breakfast,_ I think, eyes slinking over to Sasuke as he seems to realize this too, as do our other teammates. Granted, I had eaten, so I'm not going to starve, but still. I treasure the food that comes my way.

I prop my hand on my fist, sighing. This is too troublesome.

"You only need to get one bell," Kakashi says like that's any consolation, "and there are only two, which means two of you will definitely end up tied to a stump _and_ the ones who are tied to the stump will also fail. So at least two of you will be sent back to the Academy."

_At least_. Which means that three of us could still pass. But how, given there are only two bells? What's the catch?

I look to my teammates to see if they've noticed Kakashi's choice of rhetoric, but there is no reaction. They are too concerned thinking of themselves, how they will fair. I drum my fingers against my chin, planning, trying to calculate how much energy I'll have to expend during this little test. How necessary is this, though? I'm technically already graduated, and I doubt Kakashi can revoke my status.

Kakashi jerks the bells up so they disappear into the palm of his hand. "You can, of course, use your shuriken. And attack as though you mean to kill, or else you'll never stand a chance."

"But that's _dangerous_," Sakura argues like she doesn't understand the fact that we're ninja.

"You couldn't even dodge a blackboard eraser," Naruto agrees, laughing, and I arch my brow, wondering what I'd missed. "You're going to get yourself killed."

"In the real world," Kakashi says, "only the weak speak loudly. Let's ignore the dunce and start on my signal."

Being called 'dunce' seems to trigger something in Naruto because, just then, he reaches into his holster for a kunai and takes it in his hands. He rushes toward the Jounin, kicking up dust, and wanting to do some damage.

However, faster than we can really keep track of, Kakashi grabs Naruto's hand and twists his arm back so that Naruto's kunai is pointed at the back of the blonde boy's head. Kakashi has his free hand firmly atop Naruto's muss of blonde and says calmly, "Not so fast. I didn't say go."

Sasuke and Sakura have taken cautious steps back, taken aback, I'm sure, by how quickly someone who seemed so lazy can move. He reminds me, briefly, of Shikamaru, but I don't think Shikamaru can move as fast as Kakashi just yet.

"At least you came at me with intent to kill," Kakashi says. "So maybe finally you've begun to respect me?" He releases Naruto and chortles. "Maybe—just maybe—I think I'm starting to like you. And now…ready? Set? Go!"

We all dart away from each other, hiding in the foliage lining the clearing. I take coverage in a bush, crouching close to the ground. I have a good idea of where Sakura and Sasuke have hidden themselves, but Naruto—it seems Naruto has decided to stay right in the middle of the field, face-to-face with our sensei.

I scowl at Naruto, annoyed by his recklessness. Shinobi don't rush into a situation without knowing what the enemy is capable of. Well, he has to learn somehow, I guess. At least this will be a good chance for me to reassess Kakashi's movements and come up with a battle plan.

Obviously I won't be able to take him on by myself. It _is_ Kakashi, after all; he has a reputation throughout the shinobi world, a reputation I heard about on my travels. Not to mention, he's two levels our senior. Knowing what I know alone, I'll have to double team him, maybe even triple team him if I could.

…then again.

Then again, I do have the Genshindou on my side, my kekkei genkai which allows me to see and manipulate the vibrations. Would it be easier if I use the vibrations to mute the jingle of the bells, then yank it off his belt? He'd be none the wiser, and I would have my food.

And I _do_ love my food.

So. I'll wait until he's distracted, then swoop in with the vibrations and steal one of the bells right from under his nose. I'll ace this stupid test, become a Genin, and get on with advancing through the ranks so I can get out of this town, break the bond, and be free.

I clap my hands together, beaming, proud that I have formulated a plan so quickly as Kakashi reaches into his hip pouch. Since I have missed the conversation between teacher and student a few moments before, I don't understand why Naruto stops completely dead in his tracks, especially when Kakashi pulls out a book. Though I don't understand the whole book part either, unless Kakashi plans on killing Naruto via paper cuts.

"Is there something wrong?" Kakashi asks when Naruto doesn't move. "I thought you were going to attack me."

"But, but, but," Naruto stutters. "Why do you have that book?"

"Why?" repeats Kakashi, like it's a basic ninja code to carry a book into combat. "I'm dying to see how this story turns out. Come on, now. It won't make a difference whether I'm reading this book, considering who I'm up against."

It takes a second for Naruto to understand that Kakashi has insulted him, but when he figures it out, he barrels forward, screaming, "I'll beat you to a pulp!"

And then a scene ensues of Naruto trying (and failing) to beat our teacher to a pulp. The only thing I really gain from the fight is Kakashi is fast, faster than I can keep track of. But that's because my eyes are made to watch vibrations.

So, if my initial plan of grabbing one of the bell via the vibrations doesn't work, I might have to recruit Sasuke to help me. With his Sharingan, his own family's special kekkei genkai, he might be able to keep up with Kakashi's speed. I don't know how experienced he is with it though. It's not as though he has had anyone to train him with it, given his circumstances. He would have had to, like me, figure it out and develop his kekkei genkai on his own.

I don't know how the Sharingan works, but I was able to awaken the Genshindou, my family's kekkei genkai which gives me the power to control the vibrations, around the same time I was first able to access my chakra. I had guidance from my father and older cousins then. Maybe Sasuke hasn't awakened his Sharingan at all without his family.

I purse my lips and shake Sasuke from my mind as quickly as I can. I zone back in on the fight and watch as Naruto delivers a punch that doesn't land. Kakashi does a reversal and ends up crouching behind Naruto with his fingers pressed together in the seal of the tiger.

"A ninja isn't supposed to be caught from behind, idiot," Kakashi says calmly as I try to figure out what technique he could be using. The tiger hand seal is normally followed by an extremely powerful move, but—

"Naruto!" Sakura's voice rings across the field. "Get out of there! You're going to get killed!"

"Too late," Kakashi says, and a freakish gleam lights in his eyes as he brings his fingers up and—

—jabs Naruto in the ass.

I slap a hand over my face, grumbling as Kakashi straightens, shaking out his book so he can see the pages better. I need to get to him before I run out of time, but Kakashi can't keep still for one second, especially not with Naruto attacking him without relent. I need Kakashi to be distracted and completely still for an extended period of time, since it'll take a while to prepare the vibrations.

Everything is turning out to be more complicated than I thought it would be. And now that I really think my plan through, I'm gonna need an extra set of hands to help me.

And Sasuke might be my only option.

As I'm about to leave to find him, more than a dozen Narutos erupt from the lake where he'd landed and launch themselves at the retreating Kakashi. But Kakashi maintains his cool, says, "Even with all these clones, you won't beat me."

He doesn't notice, however, the one Naruto sneaking up behind him. The clone latches itself to Kakashi's back, surprising him, and asks smugly, "Didn't you say ninja shouldn't be caught from behind, sensei?"

One of the Naruto poised in front of our teacher leaps up and pulls his arm back. When his fist makes contact with Kakashi, our teacher disappears in a cloud of smoke to reveal another one of Naruto's clones.

_Replacement technique_, I realize. I see that Naruto's clones aren't simple clones either, but real, physical clones. That punch is only going to end up hurting him now, since kage bunshin transfer all damage and knowledge back to the user.

But the Naruto don't realize what Kakashi has done, and beat each other up, deciding Kakashi has disguised himself as one of them. Understanding the hopelessness of this situation, I leave my hiding place and find Sasuke. Naruto would have been a good person to partner with, but I can't risk getting caught up in a battle with a fool like him.

It's easy to locate Sasuke, given I have the advantage of the bond to help me, but once I lower the barrier between us, I feel immediately that he doesn't want to partner with me.

_Bastard,_ I think. _You sneaked into my brain and_—

He disregards me and puts the barrier up with ease.

Of course it's easy for _him_ to do, stupid master clan. I sulk, stopping after moving only a few meters away from where I'd been hiding. I look back to Naruto to see how he's fairing and find that he's finally though to release his jutsu to find himself alone in the field. He spots something, though, and starts running toward it eagerly, reaching for the ground as it glints silver.

_No way._ It's a bell.

But Kakashi couldn't have just dropped the damn thing!

And sure enough as Naruto approaches the bell, he triggers a trap that has been set up around it. A rope camouflaged in the dirt snaps up and wrings around Naruto's ankle, yanking him heels over head.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?" Naruto demands as he swings back and forth upside down.

Kakashi hops out of wherever he'd been hiding and picks up the bell, throwing it up in his hands. I take my chance and activate the Genshindou. Vibrations flood my vision, fluttering in the slight breeze of the morning and blurring my line of sight. Kakashi and Naruto remain dark blue and orange blobs, but I have distance on my side, so my impaired vision won't be much of a hazard.

"Think before using a jutsu," Kakashi says, the vibrations making it sound like he's right beside me, "or it'll be used against you."

I feel more than see Kakashi reattach the second bell to his waist. I'm careful to swerve my vibrations around his fingers, letting them brush only the bells. "And don't fall for such obvious traps, idiot. A ninja must be able to read underneath the underneath."

"I KNOW."

"Uh, no, you don't. That's why I'm telling you."

_Gotcha,_ I think, finally able to wrap my vibrations around one of the bells, muting its jingle. But the vibrations brush against the other one, setting off a small tinkle. I don't think Kakashi minds it much, though, since Sasuke chooses that exact moment to critically embed our sensei with a number of kunai and shuriken.

The barrage shocks me into losing focus. The vibrations go haywire and start to slice my skin. The abrupt attack ruins my equilibrium and makes me trip forward, into the open field. I deactivate the Genshindou as I hit the ground, cursing myself.

What kind of kunoichi trips herself up and falls into the open, defenseless?

Naruto is shouting, decrying Sasuke's attack as over the top and unnecessary. While that may be the case, it doesn't matter because the Kakashi that was taunting Naruto turns into a log. Another replacement jutsu.

I groan, jumping to my feet. My position has been given away, as well as Sasuke's, and now I have to hunt him down and try to convince him—

"Ren! Hey, hey, Ren!"

I whirl around to find Naruto still hanging from the trap. He waves at me frantically, the biggest smile on his face. "Ren!" he calls again. "Hey, help me down, will you?"

I scan the perimeter of the field to make sure Sasuke hasn't stuck around to finish Naruto off or anything. Once I'm sure there's no one loitering nearby, I pull a kunai from my holster and fling it Naruto's way. It slices the rope neatly and, as he drops from the tree, he flips to land on his feet.

"Than—" His gratitude is cut short when another trap triggers beneath him and yanks him back into the same position he was in on moments before. I can't help but laugh a little, jogging over to him, as he fumes.

"I guess he was serious about the 'underneath the underneath' thing," I say, looking up at him. The trap has been tied to a much higher branch this time, dangling Naruto more than a meter above the ground.

Naruto cross his arms and pouts. "How are we supposed to beat this guy, anyway?" he complains. "He cheats!"

"Hey, Naruto," I say, pulling my kunai out of the tree where it had been impaled after cutting the previous rope. I hand it to him and he starts to saw at the rope above his ankle, grumble. "I have a plan that could land us both one of the bells. If you work with me, we can make both graduate this test!"

Naruto considers this a moment. "Well," he starts, "I wouldn't mind sending Sasuke back to the Academy, but Sakura-chan…"

"Oh, there are other girls out there, Naruto," I dismiss, waving my hand in the air as though to shoo a fly. "Anyway, come on. You'll be able to prove yourself to Kakashi and finally one-up Sasuke, and we'll both graduate. It's a win-win."

He pauses, considering. "I suppose—" His eyes widen for a second, and I think he's registering, at last, the glory that would come with beating Sasuke. But then he says, "No thanks. I've got this covered."

"G-got it covered?" I repeat, incredulous as he cuts through the last threads of the rope, landing without tripping another trap. As he lands, a shrike too high pitched to be Sasuke's slices through the air and catches our attention. We both stop, wondering what that could be about, but then get back to our conversation once it's clear the scream has nothing to do with us.

"Yeah," he grins, giving me back my kunai. I take it, still stunned by his response. He gives me a two fingered salute and says, "I've got it covered! Later!"

"Naruto, _wait_," I shout after him as he starts to sprint away. "Where the hell are you going?"

He stops, glances at me over his shoulder, embarrassed. "Oh, sorry," he says. "That is…I mean, since you helped me out, I guess I could…share with you. You're not as bad as that Sasuke."

"Share?" I ask. "Share what?"

He points toward the stumps where Kakashi had threated to tie us up. "Beyond those stumps over there are the lunches. I think Kakashi-sensei's distracted with whatever he's doing to Sakura-chan—" He motions around, referring to the ghost of her scream as proof. "—and Sasuke, so he probably won't see us if we try to sneak the meals. And there _are_ two of them, so we could split one if you like."

I blink at him. "You mean," I say slowly, "cheat?"

"It's not _cheating_," he says. "It's looking underneath the underneath."

"I don't think that's quite what he meant."

"Whatever," he says, whirling back in the direction of the stumps. "Forget it, then. I'll eat the lunches by myself."

I glare at him as he runs toward the stumps. I like Naruto, I really do, but sometimes he can be such an idiot.

As I think this, watching the brush rustle where Naruto had bustled through them, the air shifts. The vibrations tingle against my skin, warning of another presence.

"Ah, I've got you alone at last. You're the only one I haven't been able to corner yet."

"Don't play with me, Kakashi," I mutter, eye twitching. "I don't belong here and you know it. Pass me and this will all be settled."

"You may have graduated a long time ago, Ren," answers Kakashi as I glance at him over my shoulder. He has his book in his hands again and looks more engrossed in it than our conversation. "But you've hardly got what it takes to be a ninja."

"I have a will to live," I say, shrugging. "That should be enough, really, but it's so downplayed these days. What _has_ society come to?"

"Enough of this chitchat," he says. "Are you going to be like your teammates and disappoint? Or will you live up to the Kagiru name?"

"Ha, _what_ name?" I spit. "Just because we've supposedly got an impressive bloodline limit doesn't _mean_ anything. We're a bunch of mindless slaves who don't know when they're in over their heads."

"Well, here's your chance to prove," Kakashi says, "whether you're deserving of the freedom you crave so deeply."

"If you insist," I say. "But, I mean, shouldn't you take care of Naruto? He's going to steal the lunches you've so carefully hidden."

"I have it covered," he says as the bells tinkle at his side. "And stop trying to steal a bell with your Genshindou. That's not going to work."

My face falls, but I hold my ground. "I don't know what you're talking about," I say.

"Sure you do," he says. "It's why you're trying to distract me with all this talking, isn't it? So I'll hold still and you'll be able to steal a bell, and I'll be none the wiser."

I glare at him. "How did you know?"

"It's obvious: There's no wind. Why would the bells be ringing I've fought against the Genshindou before, Ren. I know how it works."

I scowl an position my feet. "I suppose there's only one thing I can really do then," I say, smiling. And then I turn on my heels and dart into the trees.

I don't know why I'm running. I know the objective is to _get_ a bell, not run away from it, but there's no way I can challenge Kakashi by myself. Even when my plan didn't include having any back up, it never had anything to do with direct confrontation. That's how I do things: passive-aggressively. And so I run. And it's a good idea, up until he catches up to me.

"It seems," he says, cutting me off. I skid to a halt, gasping for air. "It seems, the only thing you've ever been really good at is running away."

"It's kept me alive so far," I say lightly, managing a shaky smile.

Kakashi is not amused. "It can only work so well for so long."

I drop down and sweep my feet under him. He jumps, dodges, and as he does I reactive the Genshindou. I attach vibration strings to the leaves overhead and give them a violent tug, sending them raining over us. This blinds him only for a moment, but it's enough for me. I jump up and pull myself into the tree, situate myself among the branches as fast as I can and attach the vibrations to my fingers, making them easier for me to control.

Kakashi spins, effectively blowing the leaves away from him, clearing his vision, but by then I have my trap set up. Around his ears, I have calmed the vibrations o they create the illusion of absolute silence. Slowly, Kakashi scans the area for me. Despite not being able to hear anything, he must sense my chakra because his eyes shoot right toward me. I wave at him, grinning, and point toward the brush behind him. Using the vibrations, I make it sound like something—or some_one_—is about to sneak up on him. He whirls around quickly, thinking that the me in the tree is the illusion.

Naturally, I am wrong.

Something grabs my foot, yanking me from the branch. It breaks my concentration and sends the vibrations into a flurry of sharp cuts to my skin. I deactivate my hold on them and the pain stops, the buzzing of the vibrations in my ears coming to an end.

Kakashi dangles me by my ankle. "Not as impressive as I thought," he says. He has his book in his free hand. "You're even worse than Naruto. I'm extremely disappointed in you, Ren. I was looking forward to our rematch."

"Were you?" He's hold me too far away from his waist for me to make a grab at the bells. But, maybe…

I swing myself up, grabbing onto his arm like it's another tree branch I need to climb. His muscles tense and he takes his eyes off the book to see what I'm doing. I smile before jabbing my thumb in his eye.

His hand unravels from my ankle, dropping me. I roll to a crouch and once again sweep my feet under him, this time making him fall. The book flies from his hands and I kick it away from us before jumping back to my feet.

"Now," I say, positioning myself as Kakashi gets up. "I know it's hard to take a kid seriously, but don't let that keep you from trying your best to whip us into shape, _Sensei_."

I activate the Genshindou once more and increase the pressure of the vibrations on him. They coil around him, a few strands wrapping so tightly that they cut into his skin. I surge my chakra through the vibrations and use them to disrupt his chakra flow, tugging the vibration so they cut more deeply into his flesh.

This effort is wasted when the Kakashi in front of me turns into a pile of logs.

"_Shit_," I curse, releasing the vibrations. This allows me to feel even the most subtle shifts in the area around me, so his next move doesn't catch me off guard like it should. I jump back as he comes at me with a kick and work quickly with my hand seals as I skid to a stop. Seeing my hands move, he tries to come up with something to counter, but it's too late.

The vibrations go still around my ears, making it impossible for me to hear anything at all. The frequency of the vibrations around Kakashi, however, goes off the charts. They become a flurry of ribbons that unsteadily wave and dance, cutting into his skin slowly at first, catching him off guard. Then they start to close in on him, slicing his clothes and flesh faster than I can keep track. This is no longer a matter of getting the bells. I sincerely want to beat him. I want to show him I have improved, that I am not the kid he caught in the forest all those years ago, the one he had tried to scare into staying in the village.

But then the vibrations start to cut through the stillness I've built around myself. First, it's just a prickle on the back of my neck. But then they leech onto my arm. The vibrations swarm around my right hand, tearing through gloves I wear. I try to manipulate them away from me, but it is useless.

I don't know how it happens, honestly, how the vibrations leak through my safety shell. It's the worst part of using this technique, seeing as though it happens _every single time_ I use it. As fast as I can, I disperse the vibrations before I lose my focus and end up becoming a victim to them as well.

The entire glove on my right hand has been torn to nothing but scraps. I am ultimately unhurt, save for the scratches that are scattered over the back of my hand.

"Well," Kakashi says, his breathing labored. His mask that usually covers the bottom half of his face has been torn so it exposes his entire right cheek, which is marked up with cuts and blood. There is a sleeve of angry red scratches on his arms that slowly leak more blood. It's the same for his legs. He braces himself against a tree that seems to have gotten a beating from my vibrations too, with splinters jutting out like spikes. "That was interesting. But you still didn't get a bell. However."

My vision begins to fuzz over a bit, like the Genshindou has been activated, but I know that's not it.

"Goddammit,' I curse, clenching my hands into fists. "God_dammit_, Kakashi."

"At least you forced me to use my Sharingan," he says, his voice coming from behind me now. The image of the Kakashi in front of me disappears. The entire fight had been an illusion, and I'd wasted valuable time and chakra on a fake. "That's better than your teammates. But now…"

The sound of the alarm he had set nearly forty minutes ago goes off.

"It's over."

* * *

**Thank you for reading! Please review!**


	11. Getting Along

**BOUND  
Chapter 11: Getting Along**

My team and I sit in scowling silence.

Well, at least Sasuke, Sakura, and I are. Naruto is tied up to the stump as punishment for having tried to steal the lunches instead of fighting for them fairly. And, speaking of lunches, Kakashi has placed them right in front of us. Our stomachs groan, not liking the fact that we're being taunted, but we don't dare reach for the food we haven't deserved. Mostly because Kakashi intimidates us.

"Oh, you guys look hungry," Kakashi says, his voice lacking the appropriate sympathy that should be behind those words. He stands a ways away from us, about a meter from the stone slab that is lined by a semi-circle of brush. He has his arms crossed and a cool look on his face as he says, "By the way, something about the training: there's no need for any of you to go back to the Academy."

Sakura and Naruto cheer; Sasuke smirks. I glower at the food that is presently not inside my stomach, wondering how I can fix that without anyone noticing.

"Then, then, then," Naruto says, squirming with excitement. "We all…we—"

Kakashi smiles at us as he shoves his hands in his pockets. "You're all hopeless. More schooling would be pointless. None of you will _ever_ become shinobi."

Hearing this, my head jerks up. Naruto and Sakura deflate, their faces contorting with incomprehension. Sasuke glares at Kakashi, daring him to say that again.

"What?" I deadpan, refocusing my glower at the Jounin. "I sincerely hope you're kidding."

I say this mostly in regards to myself. I don't care about the other three on this supposed 'team.' Two of them hadn't even bothered to help me when I'd asked, when I'd had a good plan, even. Besides, this training aside, I deserved to pass. Five years of a solo mission at the age of seven to twelve doesn't count for nothing.

"Hmm? Actually, yes, I am." My teammates brighten again only to again deflate when Kakashi says, "Ren, you pass."

Thought so. I go back to watching the food, but my annoyance has derailed my train of thought, and I can't properly focus, no matter how much I want to eat.

"Anyway," Kakashi goes on, "you three should do as I advised before and quit being ninja all together."

"Quit as ninja?" Naruto repeats, angry. "What do you mean? All right, sure—we didn't get the bells, but neither did Ren! Why is it that _she_ passes and _we_ have to quit?"

The way he says it is reminiscent of the way he talks about Sasuke, which stings me. I glare at him too, not knowing how else to alleviate the pain that wrenches my gut besides redirecting it toward anger and irritation.

"Because you three," Kakashi explains, "are punks who don't deserve to be ninja."

I feel another surge of anger bubbling up from a place deep inside me, a place I know doesn't belong to me. My arm reaches out to catch Sasuke too late as he leaps to his feet and charges at Kakashi.

"Sasuke!" I shout, annoyed, at the same time Sakura does, although her voice voice is considerably more filled with concern.

Kakashi is quick to catch Sasuke and pin him to the ground so that he's sitting on the younger boy's back with his foot on Sasuke's head and Sasuke's arm twisted behind his back.

"See what I mean?" Kakashi asks as I tense, my fingers rolling into fists. "No-good, foolish punks."

"Don't step on Sasuke-kun!" Sakura snaps.

_Yes, wouldn't want to crush his pretty little head, would we?_ I roll my eyes. But, honestly, I am doing all that I can not to jump up and push Kakashi off Sasuke myself. The difference between Sakura and me, though, is that she genuinely cares for Sasuke's wellbeing, whereas I don't want to give into the pressure of the bond. Besides, Kakashi's not going to try to _kill_ Sasuke or anything. He wouldn't. Can't.

"Are you trying to make fun of shinobi with your behavior?" Kakashi asks as I try to figure out Kakashi's motive. "Have you even considered why you were put into teams?"

My teammates stare at him, uncomprehending, and Kakashi scoffs. "So you missed the entire point of this exercise, the point that determined whether you passed."

"But," Sakura says, becoming anxious as Kakashi doesn't seem to be any closer to letting Sasuke free. "You haven't explained it to us."

"I don't believe this," Kakashi says with a shake of his head. "_Teamwork_. Excluding me, there are enough of you to form a normal shinobi cell. If the four of you had come at me together, you might have been able to get the bells."

"But if we were expected to function as a team," Sakura says, "then why do you only have two bells? Even if we worked together, two of us still would have failed! You're preaching teamwork, but you turned us against each other!"

"Of course!" Kakashi says, unwavering as Sasuke struggles slightly beneath him. "This test was purposely set up to make you fight amongst yourselves. But it was to see if you could put your own interests aside and successfully work together under certain circumstance. Sakura, instead of helping Naruto who was right in front of you, you were only thinking about Sasuke, even when you didn't know where he was! Naruto, you thought that you could do this all by yourself, and Sasuke, you thought that the others would get in your way and tried to do everything yourself, too. On the other hand," he says, his voice softening. "Ren realized that she couldn't do this alone. She asked you for help, Naruto, but you dismissed it, and when she wouldn't cheat with you, you left her. And I'm sure she asked you too, Sasuke. But the two of you were too selfish to take her up on her offer. And though Ren didn't come to you, Sakura, I'm sure that if she had asked, you would have let your worry for Sasuke get in the way and dismissed her, too. That's why she is the only one who passes."

To be honest, I hadn't thought about it that way. I only wanted to get the bells, only wanted to pass to prove to the Hokage that I didn't have to be here. But, I suppose, if Kakashi thinks 'working together' and 'using people' are the same thing, I'm okay.

Kakashi sighs, massaging his forehead. "You are a team," he says. "Try to act as one! Yes, it's important to have individual skills, but what's even more important is teamwork. Individual play that disrupts the team can put your comrades in danger. For example."

He reaches into the pouch around his waist and extracts a kunai. "Sakura," he says, pressing the knife to Sasuke's throat and causing the hair son the back of my neck to bristle. "Kill Naruto or Sasuke dies."

"Hey!" I shout, bolting to my feet. "Don't you _dare_, Kakashi."

Though my teammates are panicked about Kakashi's request too, they stop to stare at me. Even Kakashi seems surprised at my outburst. But no one is more surprised than Sasuke himself. He has seemingly forgotten about Kakashi and stares at me, brow furrowed together.

I'll admit it: Sometimes I can't help this bond thing. It just happens.

"The day could come," Kakashi starts slowly, putting his weapon away, "when one of you may be taken hostage and you're forced to make such a choice. When you're on a mission, your lives will always be on the line." Kakashi gets off of Sasuke, letting him go, and walks over to the stone slab behind him. Sasuke comes back to us, sitting down on the other side of Naruto in the space he had occupied beforehand. He doesn't acknowledge me as he returns, but just as well I'm careful to inch over to the other side of the stump where Sakura is standing to avoid him.

"Look at this, the numerous names carved into this stone," Kakashi says. His tone has changed from before, grown quiet and melancholy as he stands before the stone. "They are all heroes of the village. Ninja."

Naruto's ears perk up at this, and he proclaims, "That's it! I made up my mind! I've decide that I'm going to have my name carved on that stone too! A hero! That's what I'll become."

"But," Kakashi says, "they aren't normal heroes."

"Oh yeah?" Naruto asks, like that's even better. "What kind of heroes are they?"

Kakashi stays quiet.

"Come on!" Naruto presses.

"The dead kind. The kind that died in the line of duty."

Slowly, this sinks into Naruto's head. His face falls, his body relaxing in his discomfort.

"This is a memorial," Kakashi explains. "The names of my best friends are on here."

I wince, considering the possibility of seeing Shikamaru's name on there, the possibility of staying here in the village, creating new bonds, only to have them die off and have nothing left of them but a lowly name carved onto a slab of rock. Or maybe having my own name carved on that memorial some day.

I really need to get out of here before anything like that can happen.

"I'll give you guys one more chance," Kakashi says, glancing at us over his shoulder. "You may split the lunches, but after you eat, I'll make it even tougher to get these bells. Oh, and don't feed Naruto. It's punishment for trying to cheat," Kakashi says in response to Naruto's frown. "And if anybody tries to feed him, I'll automatically fail you, _despite_ how well you've done." The last part is directed towards me. "My word is law. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," we answer weakly and he leaps away.

"Heh, don't worry about me," Naruto says, trying to be the bigger man. "I don't need any food, I'm fine!"

His stomach gurgles, announcing the contrary.

"There are only two lunches," Sakura says, looking between me and Sasuke.

"You guys go ahead," I grumble, sitting down. "I had breakfast, so I'm not as hungry as you guys are." My stomach, like Naruto's, begs to differ. I roll my eyes and plant my chin on my knees. "Seriously. Eat. I'm okay."

After a moment's hesitation, Sasuke takes one of the lunches, prompting Sakura to go ahead and do the same. They eat, Sakura glancing up occasionally in her discomfort while Sasuke stays focused on his food, but, after two straight minutes of hearing Naruto's stomach go on and on about how much it needs food, Sasuke holds his bento out to the blonde in offering.

"Ah, but Sasuke-kun!" Sakura says as I lift my head in wonder. "Sensei said—"

"Don't worry," Sasuke says. "I don't sense him near. After lunch, we'll work together to get the bells. Without food, he'll be in the way, and that will only hurt us."

Hearing sense in Sasuke's words, Sakura looks down at her own bento box before thrusting it towards me. It nearly knocks me back.

"What the hell, Sakura?" I ask, using an arm to brace myself against the ground.

"You should eat something too, Ren," she mutters, looking away sheepishly.

Naruto and I exchange a quick look before smiling to our teammates.

I'm about the take the bento when the winds start picking up around us. From it, Kakashi erupts, looking like he's about to blow. Sakura shrieks, throwing her food to the ground while Sasuke and I jump to our feet, ready to defend ourselves. The vibrations buzz closely against my ear, prepping for battle when the malice fades from Kakashi's eyes and he says, "You guys _pass_!"

We stare at him blankly, our postures sagging as his words his home.

"Pass?" I repeat, lowering my arms.

"Pass," Kakashi agrees with a smile.

"Pass?" echoes Sakura this time. "But why?"

"You guys are the first," he says. "Everyone else did whatever I told them. They were all morons. A ninja must see underneath the underneath. Those who break the rules and codes of the ninja world are considered trash. But you know what? Those who don't take care of their comrades are lower than trash. So." He gives us a congratulatory thumbs-up. "That ends the training. All of you pass. Starting tomorrow, Team 7 will begin working on its own missions."

"Yes, sir!" Sakura cries, jumping up and down as I scowl, displeased that he had made our situation seem so dire before delivering the news. The rotten bastard.

"I…I did it," Naruto says. "I'M A NINJA! I'M A NINJA, NINJA, NINJA, I'M A NINJA!"

Sasuke allows himself a self-congratulatory harrumph.

"Let's go home then, yes?" Kakashi says and we nod. Sakura follows after him, and I'm about to get up, but then Sasuke offers his hand before I'm given the chance. I quirk my brow at him and take his hand.

"Thanks," I say, brushing myself off.

"No problem," he says, letting go of my hand that buzzes from where his flesh had touched mine. "What happened to your other glove?"

"Huh?" I look down at my hands to find that my left one is still covered by a glove that cinches at the wrist before flaring out and that my right hand is bare and white. I tuck my hands sheepishly behind my back. "I lost it during my fight with Kakashi," I answer, shrugging. It's a good thing that I'd thought to heal my wounds and such before joining my team again, or else I might have had to explain exactly how I 'lost' it.

Sasuke blinks at me before turning on his heels and following after our teacher. Once he's out of earshot, I release the breath I'd been holding and groan.

Stupid trademark Uchiha good looks.

"Uh, hey Ren."

I turn around to find Naruto staring at me, looking annoyed. "Yeah, Naruto?"

"Would you mind untying me?" he asks. "I'm starting to lose the feeling in my arms."

[+]

"That wasn't so bad was it?"

I sit across from the Hokage with my arms and legs crossed. I frown at him, refusing to dignify his question about my earlier training session with my new team with a response. He flashes me a satisfied smirk as he sucks on his pipe, the sweet scent of tobacco making my eyes water. He settles back on the opposite couch and closes his eyes.

"Good," he says, "because this is just the beginning. From here on out, you are part of Team 7, and they are part of you. This isn't some solo mission anymore. You have a responsibility for and to these people, whether you like it or not. Also, please keep in mind that your presence here _does_ somewhat throw off the balance of things."

"Then maybe," I say, "you should let me leave. I would hate to mess things up."

The Hokage sighs, extracting his pipe from his lips. "While your spot on Team 7 is unorthodox, it was nothing that could not be explained away. Students were told that an odd number of students graduating this year forced our hand in this decision, and the other Jounin leaders have been told as much as we were able to tell them about your predicament."

"And? Don't they think it's unfair either to them or Kakashi to have four students on a cell instead of three?"

"They expect a team of four will be unsuccessful," he says and I scowl at their lack of faith, even though I shouldn't be concerned about how they feel anyway. "Four students to a Jounin has never been done before and five members total exceeds the number of shinobi that should be placed in a normal shinobi cell. But it is a challenge to you and your team and Kakashi to prove them wrong."

"Sure," I say with a roll of my eyes. "So? Is that it?"

The Hokage takes a long drag on his pipe. The cloud of smoke that he exhales nearly engulfs his entire head. He removes the pipe at last and says, "One last thing. I know you are more concerned about breaking bonds than you are about creating them, but when you are working this closely with people, sometimes it cannot be helped. You must realize there is more to having bonds than being burdened by them. You would be cheating yourself out of experience, out of what could be a lifetime of memories, if you do not give your bonds a chance."

I give the Hokage an imploring look, wondering why he continues to bother me with these kinds of lectures. "Okay," I say, standing from the couch. "Is that it?"

He nods.

Just as I'm about to leave the room, though, he stops me, saying, "Never forget that you are on a _team_, Ren. While you have that kind of responsibility on your shoulders, you cannot shirk your duties as a ninja and abandon your teammates, no matter how much you think they are going to get in your way."

[+]

Our teamwork is reduced to doing mundane tasks around the village, chores, basically, for everyone in the village who has enough money to pay. We pack our holsters and hip pouches, but never once do we unsheathe our weapons, unless it is to cut weeds out of an herb garden.

Every day, I seem to grow farther and father away from my goal.

The forest stands stoically around us. I slouch against a tree with a headset on, playing with the microphone that curves toward my mouth. This is as official as our missions have gotten lately, and still it is a sad one.

I sigh, watching the cumulus pass overhead, not believing that I have actually taken the time to learn the name of these cloud formations over the past few weeks. I have had too many chances to watch the clouds lately, even on missions as I am now. Honestly, who knew being a 'real' ninja would be so boring.

Finally, a crackle of static sounds in my ear. Kakashi's voice comes through the transmitter. _"What's the distance to the target?"_ he asks.

_"Five meters," _Naruto is quick to answer. _"I'm ready at any time."_

_"So am I,"_ says Sasuke.

_"Me too,"_ answers Sakura.

I sigh, straightening out. "Ditto," I say.

_"Okay…go."_

On cue, we pounce out of hiding and into the open where our target unknowingly waits to be captured. We have it surrounded—Naruto from behind, Sasuke and Sakura from the sides, and I from the front—so it can't escape.

There is a feral hiss, the sound of claws being unsheathed and digging into the dirt. Still, as ninja, we fearlessly attack our target head-on, because we have him outnumbered, and there's no way we can lose. After all: we're full-fledged shinobi now.

Not to mention, our target is a cat.

A small struggle ensues, one that I manage to avoid, letting Naruto tackle our target. Ultimately, he's able to grab the cat and Sasuke calls it in.

_"Remember, our quarry has a ribbon on its right ear that says 'Tora.' Make sure that it's no mistake."_

"Target confirmed," Sasuke says, a few seconds of delay over the headset makes his voice ring in my ear another time. Naruto fights with the cat a meter away from us, Sakura watching with amusement and admiring the adorableness of the cat.

_"Good. Lost Pet 'Tora,' search mission, complete. Let's bring it in."_

"Is this what we're subjected to?" I complain, turning off my headset after signing out with Kakashi and promising to meet back at our starting point. "Looking for pets, running lowly errands. WE'RE NINJA, NOT SLAVES."

"Relax, Ren," Sakura chides, plucking the cat from Naruto and petting it sweetly. It starts to purr and melts in Sakura's arms, much to Naruto's disbelief. "This is all building up to when we can do more things for our village. We're only Genin and—"

"Don't _lecture_ me," I say, rolling my eyes. "Jeez. I get it. Let's get back to Kakashi so we can go home."

We rendezvous with Kakashi at the edge of the forest where the cat was lost, and together, the five of us make our way back to the administration building to file our mission report and return the cat to its rightful owner. I feel almost sorry for it, the way it grows anxious as we approach the building, and downright pity it as soon as the daimyo's wife crushes the cat in her arms when we given it back to her. No wonder it ran away in the first place.

"Oh, my cute little Tora-chan," the lady says. "I was so worried!"

"Now," the Hokage says without further ado. "Team 7, your next missions are babysitting a council elder's grandson, shopping in the neighboring village, and helping with potato digging."

"No way, no thank you! That's all _boring_," Naruto says, shaking his hands in front of him to push all our assignments away. "Give us something different! Something important! Something amazing!"

I can't disagree with him. Unlike Naruto, though I have more sense than to argue with the Hokage. What he doles out, we get, as evidenced by how I am here in the first place. But, by god, if I wanted to do any of these things he's assigning us, I never would have signed up for this ninja business in the first place.

"You idiot!" Iruka shouts, standing in his seat. "You're all still rookie ninja! Everyone starts off with simple missions and works their way up."

"But, but, but," Naruto stutters classically. "We keep getting the crappiest possible missions!"

Kakashi chooses now to intervene. He smacks Naruto upside the head and hisses, embarrassed, "Be quiet you!"

"Naruto, it seems I'm going to have to explain to you what these missions are," the Hokage sighs. I sigh as well, propping my cheek on my fist tiredly. It seems that ninja protocol calls for a lot of lecturing, considering how many I've had to sit through since we've graduated.

I tune the Hokage out while he starts his speech, explaining the ninja ranks and how they divvy up the missions according to those ranks. Over his shoulder, the sky gleams through the window. I wonder what I could be doing now, instead of standing around wasting time. For one, I could get back to researching how to break the bond.

After the success of ten consecutive missions, Kakashi awarded us with gifts. He gave me a book, and I figured that it would be some stupid ninja manual, but it turned out to be a book on religious cults. At first, I didn't understand what he was implying by giving me something like that, but after skimming the table of contents, I found a section called _Blood Rituals_. It didn't tell me anything that I didn't know, but it kept me motivated for the next few days and got me back into researching and stuff. However, over the years I'd been gone, the Konoha library had, unsurprisingly, not stocked up on books about oaths or commitment rituals or the Kagiru-Uchiha-centric part of Konoha history, so there was no improvement to be made with the whole researching thing.

"HEY. LISTEN!"

Thinking that the Hokage is talking to me, I snap out of my thoughts and straighten up. No one is paying attention to me though—Naruto is still causing a riot with his disrespectful behavior—so I relax again, but decide to focus on the conversation at hand instead of shrinking back in the recesses of my mind.

"I…I apologize," Kakashi says, scratching his head. I can imagine him plotting Naruto's untimely demise for making him seem like a teacher who doesn't have his kids under control.

"All you do is lecture us!" Naruto shouts, despite how much he's embarrassing Kakashi. "But you know what? I'm not the trouble-making brat you still think I am!"

"Yeah, but you're still a loud and obnoxious brat," I say, cradling my head in a lazy hand. "Lower your voice, Naruto. Shouting isn't going to convince the Hokage of anything."

"…okay," the Hokage relents, much to everyone's surprise. He holds up a hand to stop Iruka's protests, says, "If you want it that much, I'll give you a C-ranked mission. It's a protection mission for a certain individual."

"Who?" Naruto wants to know, while we're still wondering how he got the Hokage to do something like this. "A daimyo? A princess?"

I scoff. What an optimistic kid. His happy-go-lucky attitude is what makes him so hopeless.

The Hokage is more amused by his behavior than I am though. "Calm down," he says. "I'll introduce him now. Will you call him in please?"

We all turn toward the door. It slides open slowly and an old man emerges from it, carrying a bottle of liquor and a slightly flushed face. "What's this?" he asks, his words not slurring, but his speech impeded, slow. "They look like a bunch of wet-nosed brats."

I roll my eyes at him as he takes a hearty swing from the bottle.

"Especially the midget," he adds, wiping his lips. "He's got the face of an imbecile. It's a joke, right? You kids aren't really ninja?"

"Ha, ha," Naruto laughs, looking between Sasuke, Sakura, and me. "Who's the midget with the stupid face?"

I can't help but to laugh a little, amused. He measures himself up to me to find that I'm nearly five centimeters taller than him. Sakura is the same height as I am and Sasuke is the tallest of the four of us, even slouching the way he is. We all straighten and glance toward Naruto as the boy in question finally registers that it's _him_ that the old man is talking about.

"I'LL KILL YOU!" Naruto screams, running towards the old man, but Kakashi catches him by the collar.

"Wrong," Kakashi says like Naruto's picked the incorrect answer on a pop quiz. "No killing the man we're supposed to protect."

"I am the super expert bridge builder, Tazuna," he says, putting his hands on his hips. The alcohol in the bottle sloshes around as he leans forward to make a point with his next words. "And so I expect you to provide me with super protection until I get back to my country and complete the bridge."

"Great," I mutter, massaging my brow. "I'm _super_ excited."

[+]

We don't waste time starting our mission. Kakashi sends us home to pack our things for travel, which isn't hard for me, considering I don't have much to begin with. I end up having to borrow a few of Sasuke's things, which irks him, although he doesn't verbally complain. It shows in the way he scowls as we walk to the village gates together.

Upon arriving, we meet up with Naruto and Sakura. Sakura, as per usual, gives me dirty look for turning up with her beloved, though I have to say, the intensity of it isn't as harsh as it used to be. Not that it annoys me any less. What is she trying to imply anyway by looking at me the way she did every time I'm at Sasuke's side? That I love him or have some irrational crush on him like she does?

As if.

Kakashi and Tazuna show up as I'm thinking this. We're all surprised by Kakashi's timely appearance, but we don't bring it up because, as soon as we step outside the village gates, Naruto starts to jubilate.

"All right!" Naruto shouts, pumping his arms in the air. "Let's go!"

"What are you so excited about?" Sakura asks, propping a hand on her hip, irritated.

"I've never been outside the village before," Naruto says, looking to and fro for something interesting. Unfortunately, there's not much to the immediate area outside the village besides trees.

"Am I really going to be safe with a kid like that protecting me?" Tazuna wants to know, jabbing a finger at Naruto.

"Well, I'm a Jounin," Kakashi consoles. "So don't worry about it."

Naruto makes a face like he wants to punch Tazuna. "Hey, old man!" he shouts, whirling around to address Tazuna. "Don't mess with ninjas! I'm incredible! One day, I will take on the elite title of Hokage! My name is Uzumaki Naruto! Remember it!"

"Hokage is the village's number one ninja, right?" Tazuna asks, pressing his bottle of alcohol to his lips like he has something stressful he doesn't want to deal with. "I don't think a guy like you will ever get there."

"Shut up!" Naruto shrieks. "I am prepared to do anything to become Hokage! And once I become Hokage, you will acknowledge me!"

Tazuna lowers his bottle for a moment, considering this. "No, I won't, you brat," he says, taking a drink. "Even if you do become Hokage."

I groan, irritated with the argument already. I march on ahead of my teammates, Sakura and Sasuke following slowly after.

"I'LL KILL YOU!" Naruto proclaims again.

Kakashi catches him by his collar like last time. "I said stop, idiot."

This is going to be a long trip.


	12. Thickness

**BOUND  
Chapter 12: Thickness**

"Hey, Kakashi? Do you think it's possible to master the art of sleepwalking?"

This inquiry comes from me, who has had only minimal amounts of sleep ever since becoming a part of Team 7. And now with all the walking to the Land of the Waves and having to listen to Naruto and the old bridge builder bicker, the tiredness that I haven't been able to shake eats at my consciousness. I think my question is a legitimate one, but apparently, that's not the case, seeing as how Sakura scoffs and rolls her eyes at me.

"The art of sleepwalking?" she repeats, voice full of disdain. "Come on. Get real, Ren."

"It's a reasonable question!" I argue, crossing my arms. "I mean, I don't know the specifics of sleepwalking, seeing as though I haven't ever done it before—at least, not so far as I know—but I know that when someone sleepwalks, they can function normally and _see_ things because they have their eyes open. So, why can't it be possible for someone to push themselves into a sleeplike state, allowing their body to recover, and keep functioning normally?"

"It…it doesn't make any sense!" Sakura says. She turns to Kakashi. "Sensei, tell her that she's out of her mind."

"Actually," he says instead and I smirk at her, but Sakura doesn't let him finish when she knows that she can't win.

"Tazuna-san," Sakura says, turning to the old man. "You're from the Wave country, right?"

"What of it?"

"Now, here's a reasonable question," Sakura says pointedly, glaring at me. "Kakashi-sensei, do they have ninja in that country, too?"

"No, not in the Wave country," he answers. "But in most other countries, the culture and customs may be different, but hidden villages exist, and so do ninja. See, to the many countries of the continent, the existence of a shinobi village means military power. This is how they hold and maintain advantages over each other. But it's not that the villages rule the countries; they merely stand equally with the countries' government. A small island country like the Wave country doesn't receive much interference from the larger countries and may not need a shinobi village. Within the many shinobi villages—Leaf, Mist, Cloud, Sand, and Stone—are large and powerful and thus are referred to as The Great Five Shinobi Countries. And these are the only countries whose leader receives the name 'Kage'."

"And if I had the art of sleepwalking mastered, I could've zoned through that entire thing and gotten a good nap," I say, smiling at Sakura. She and Kakashi ignore me.

"The five Kage are the Hokage, Mizukage, Raikage, Kazekage, and Tsuchikage, and they reign over the thousands of ninjas in the world."

"Wow," Sakura gushes. "The Hokage must be a great man."

"You obviously don't think so," Kakashi says. But he smiles and pats Sakura's head. "Anyway, don't worry. There won't be any ninja combat on a C-rank mission."

"Then we won't have to worry about any foreign ninja?" Sakura asks, evidently relieved.

"Of course not!" Kakashi says with a hearty laugh.

Sasuke, who walks to my right glances over at me. I look back at him, only to find that he's actually looking at Tazuna. I follow his gaze and see that the old bridge builder seems anxious about Kakashi and Sakura's previous conversation.

Which is more than a little suspicious.

Kakashi slows his pace suddenly, catching my attention. I peer over my shoulder to watch him. He shrugs at me and goes to observing the surrounding trees.

"What a weirdo," I mutter, turning back around. "I swear, Kakashi is—"

A chill runs up my spine and makes my hair stand up on ends. I freeze as the vibrations alert me of a sudden spike of chakra behind me, one I don't recognize. Sasuke comes to a stop at my side and throws me a questioning look. I don't bother explaining it to him. I whirl around to find two men with large metal gauntlets on opposite hands and a shuriken chain running between them. They already have the chain wrapped around Kakashi, much to his own and my dismay.

"You guys," I call shakily, and everybody stops to see what it is that I want. They can see with their own eyes, though, the misfortune that's about to befall our teacher.

"One down," the two men say together, and with a tug of their chain, they dismember Kakashi in a splash of red.

I take a moment to curse before swiveling on my feet to keep track of the two ninja that have caught us off our guard. They make way for Naruto and I find myself muttering, "Sasuke Sasuke Sasuke, quickquickquick." I hold my hands together and jerk my head towards the two Nin who are poised for attack. Sasuke doesn't hesitate. He runs forward and props a foot in my hand, and I promptly project him into the air.

Neatly, he pulls a kunai and a shuriken out of his holster and throws them at the chain. The shuriken pins the chain to a tree, and the kunai pierces through the hole in the center of the shuriken, sticking the chain to the tree firmly. The attackers tug fruitlessly on the chain, trying to make it come loose, and don't notice Sasuke until he lands on the gauntlets. Using his hands to grip the gauntlets, he kicks his feet back. They make contact with our attackers' faces. The two men are smart enough to detach from their chains though and allow their momentum to carry them toward Naruto and Tazuna.

Although the mission is to protect Tazuna, I run to help Naruto. Besides, I can feel Sasuke rushing to help Tazuna and Sakura, so there is nothing to worry about except my own teammate.

The man going for Naruto pulls his fist back, his claws pointed to fatally stab my teammate. I lunge for Naruto's feet and drag him down to avoid the attack. Once we're both down, I roll off of Naruto and get up, only I see that the man is no longer anywhere near us. No, Kakashi has both of our attackers in a headlock.

Wait a—

_"Kakashi?"_ I ask, stunned, and my body goes slack. "But you—how did you—? You were—!" I point to where he had been taken down and say, "You were dismembered—_dismembered_—just, I mean, right over there!"

"A perfect example of when the replacement technique comes in handy," he says as I see that where Kakashi had been attack lays a cluster of logs. He glances over at Naruto who I'm helping to get up, a scowl on my face. "Sorry for not helping you right away, Naruto. I didn't think you'd freeze up like that. I didn't mean for you to get hurt."

"Hurt?" I repeat, and give Naruto a once over. He looks fine, just a few smears of dirt here and there, but I don't see any—

Oh.

The hand that Naruto has offered me has a cut on the back that is flushed pink and oozing blood. It looks like it's infected with some poison that had been in the claws of the two nins' gauntlets. I sigh and reach into my pouch for some bandages that I'd thought to bring with me.

"It's nothing big," I announce. "I'll take care of it, Kakashi."

"Hey," Sasuke says, and Naruto and I glance up at him. "Are you all right?"

I furrow my brow at Sasuke's concern, wondering why he's being so nice, but then he adds, "…you big chicken."

Naruto stiffens, and I shout, "Hey!" ready to defend my friend, but Kakashi says, "Ren, Naruto—save it for later. These guys' claws were soaked in poison. If you move, Naruto, the poison will circulate through your body faster. We have to open the wound and let the blood flush it out itself."

"I've got it," I snap, sticking the roll of bandages under my arm. After sending Sasuke another glare, I reach into my holster, pull out a kunai, and begin to cut into the wound. "I don't understand how this happened," I grumble to Naruto, switching my kunai to the other hand as I reach for the bandages. I tear a piece off, use it to dab Naruto's wound. "I thought I got to you before the other guy did."

Naruto doesn't answer.

"These guys are Hidden Mist Chuunin," Kakashi explains after he's finished tying up the men with their own shuriken chain. "These shinobi are known to continue fighting no matter what."

"Obviously you were watching and waiting for us. How did you know?" one of them asks.

"On a sunny day like this," he explains, "when it hasn't rained it days, there isn't going to be a puddle on the ground."

_Puddle?_ I wonder. I hadn't noticed any puddle.

"If you knew that," Tazuna says, "then why did you let these brats fight?"

God, I'd like to wring my hands around his neck. We'd saved his life and he's still calling us brats.

"Oh, I could've killed these two instantly, but there was something I needed to find out: who they were after." Kakashi peers over at Tazuna.

"What do you mean?" the old man asks nervously, shifting from foot to foot.

"Well, I wanted to know if they were after you"—Kakashi narrows his eye at Tazuna, who diverts his gaze pointedly—"or one of us. The answer to that is obvious now, though we hadn't heard that there are other shinobi after you. Our mission is to simply protect you from thieves or gangs. This has now become at least a B-ranked mission."

Once I'm finished clearing the blood, I drape the stained bandages on Naruto's forearm and take the kunai again. I continue picking at the wound, thinking how strenuous this is. I could use a medical ninjutsu to pull the poison out, but—

I pause for a moment to see how Naruto's holding up. He has this frustrated look on his face. I'm not sure why. I carefully go back to fixing his cut.

"If it was known that there were ninja after you," Kakashi goes on, "this mission would have been set as a more expensive B-rank mission. I'm sure you had a reason, but it causes problems when you lie about missions. We're currently operating outside of our rank."

"It's clear that we aren't ready for this mission," Sakura says, panicked. "Let's quit! We'll need medicine for Naruto's wound anyway; let's go back to the village and get a doctor."

"I thought I told you that I had it covered," I groan, rolling my eyes. "It's a simple poison and a standard wound. It'll be fine before you know it."

Still, Kakashi seems to consider Sakura's suggestion. "What do we do?" he asks, propping his chin on the palm of his hand. "Do we go through with the mission? Or go back and get Naruto treated?"

I stop picking at Naruto's cut and say, "I've already—"

I cut off when Naruto yanks my kunai from my fingers and lifts his injured hand. He proceeds to use my kunai to stab his wound and open it further. Blood spurts from his wound, some of it splattering on my face because of my close proximity to him. I flinch, wiping it from my skin with my shoulder. Sighing, I reach for the kunai, but Naruto jerks away from me.

"Naruto," I chide.

"Naruto, what are you doing?" Sakura demands.

"I vow to the pain in my left hand," he says, grinning, though he's shaking and sweating from how much it hurts, "that I will protect this old man! Naruto, reporting fit for duty, Kakashi-sensei!"

I sigh, plucking the kunai from his grip and tossing it aside so that he won't get any more ideas. "You're not going to be fit much longer," I tell him.

"Ren is right, Naruto. It's good that you're dedicating yourself to this mission so spiritually," Kakashi says, coming forward, "but you've exceeded the need of blood loss doing that. You could bleed to death. I'm serious," Kakashi feels the need to add with a smile.

Naruto blanches and becomes jittery, dancing on his toes as he screams, "NO! THAT'S BAD! I CAN'T DIE FROM SOMETHING LIKE THIS! NO, NO, NO, NO!"

"Ren?" Kakashi says. I exhale noisily and hand him the roll of bandages I had taken out earlier.

"NO, SAVE ME KAKASHI-SENSEI! SAVE ME!"

"What are you, Naruto? Some kind of masochist?" asks Sakura, propping her hands on her hips as I wipe away the blood. "Do you get off on pain?"

Kakashi kneels down and begins to wrap Naruto's hand. He hesitates for a moment, and I peek over his shoulder to see what's wrong.

"Hey," I start, seeing that the wound has stopped bleeding and has almost healed over. "It's already—"

"Ren," Kakashi interrupts quietly.

"What?" whines Naruto. "I—I'm going to be okay, aren't I?"

"Fine, Naruto," Kakashi assures as he ends the bandages in a knot. "You're going to be okay."

"Sensei…," Tazuna says, and we all turn away from Naruto to look at the bridge builder. "There's something I should tell you."

[+]

This boat is way too small to be carrying six people. I hardly have any room to myself and all the mist makes me feel even more claustrophobic. I clutch my head, the bobbing of the boat in the water making me seasick, reminding me why I had avoided crossing large bodies of water when I had been traveling on my own.

"How're you holding up, Ren?" Kakashi inquires, noticing the way my eye is twitching with all the effort that I'm using to keep from vomiting.

"Ahughfuk," I mutter, massaging my temples and closing my eyes, like that will help. If only I could make this boat stop rocking so much.

"This is some fog," Sakura muses. "I can hardly see a thing."

"We should be able to see the bridge, soon," the man rowing our boat for us says. The pole he's using to push us through the water sloshes with each stroke as he guides the boat forward. "On the other side of it is the Land of the Waves."

"WHOA!" Naruto yells as soon as the bridge comes into view, startling me so badly that I reach out and hold onto the side of the boat. Bad move because the sudden movement makes the boat rock harder. I groan as Naruto shouts, "WHAT A HUGE BRIDGE!"

"Shut up!" the man steering the boat and I hiss at the same time. Naruto's voice echoes around the area and the man's eyes dart back and forth. "Why do you think I've turned off the engine? This mist will keep us hidden, but if Gato finds us, we're dead," he says, referring to the man that Tazuna had only bothered to tell us about now.

As it turns out, Tazuna's bridge building is interfering with the great shipping magnate Gato's plans to use the Wave Country to do illegal dealings through its sea traffic. If the bridge is completed, then the people of the Wave Country will be able to go freely to and from the Fire Country to trade, thus improving their impoverish state and returning them to their former prosperous glory. Tazuna, being lead bridge builder and all, is a main target of Gato's, and he'd known that there would be ninja coming after him all along. The reason he hadn't included that in the mission report though is because the Wave Country is poor, and he doesn't have enough money to pay for a B-rank mission.

He then continued to guilt us into going through with the mission by telling us about his daughter and eight year old grandson who would miss him terribly if he were to die and would hold a grudge against our village for the rest of their lonely lives.

"We'll reach the docks soon," the man says. "It looks like we've avoided detection so far, but we'll take the route through the mangroves, just in case."

"Thanks," Tazuna says as the man rows us through a tunnel. The slapping of the water against the boat becomes louder and bounces off the walls of the tunnel, somehow managing to make me even more tired. When we emerge on the other side, we catch sight of the mangroves that the man had spoken of, weaving around each other, their roots getting lost on the way to the soil under the water and roping through other roots.

They look kind of creepy to me, the way they don't seem to have a solid foundation to settle on and kind of just sprout from the middle of the water. They cluster together so tightly, it makes me wonder what kind of things could hide in there, living without being known.

"Wow," Naruto admires, looking at the town built completely over water.

And I have to admit: as much as I don't like boats, the town does look nice and quaint.

The man pulls up to the dock and I'm the first one to clamber out, beating even Naruto.

"Sweet land," I say as Naruto rushes on to see what's ahead. I fall to my knees and embrace the moist soil, unheeding of the bacteria that could be crawling onto my skin. "I never thought that I'd prefer walking over sitting so much in my life."

Sakura scoffs as she steps onto the dock and brushes herself off, waiting for Kakashi and Tazuna. Sasuke is standing a ways in front of us, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious. I straighten to my feet, a blissful smile of security on my face and watch as Naruto scans the area, seemingly taking after Sasuke and at the same time trying to outshine him.

"Okay!" Tazuna says after he finishes thanking his friend for taking the risk of transporting us. "Get me home safely!"

"Yes, yes," Kakashi sighs, and we follow after Naruto.

Sasuke increases his speed so that he's walking at pace with Naruto. I roll my eyes, wondering what kind of testosterone war they're up to now. Honestly, _boys_.

Naruto notices that Sasuke is a threat to his ego because he suddenly stops, looks around and pulls out a shuriken, screeching, "There!" and tosses it into a cluster of bushes, stunning the entire group.

I furrow my brow, looking around to my teammates to see if they had sense anything. Kakashi didn't seem to have, nor had Sasuke or Sakura. And after a moment of dead silence, I ask, "Uh, Naruto. Are you sure you felt something?"

"Heh," he says, adjusting his headband and smirking. "I guess it was only a mouse."

"Oh, god," I mumble, planting my forehead in the palm of my hand.

"STOP TRYING TO ACT COOL!" Sakura scolds, jabbing an angry finger at him. "There was nothing there!"

"Please," Kakashi says nervously, holding up his hands. "_Please_ don't play around with your shuriken. They can be a _teensy_ bit dangerous."

"HEY MIDGET!" intervenes Tazuna, obviously shaken. And I don't blame him. There are some serious guys after him at the moment and he's supposed to be in the hands of a kid that's playing around with his tools to try to impress his peers? "STOP MESSING WITH OUR HEADS. DON'T GO SCARING US!"

Naruto brushes the warnings off and continues looking around, like he sees someone. Something rustles in the brush nearby. Without even considering the possibility that it could be anything other than the enemy, Naruto pulls out a shuriken and vaults it toward the noise, declaring, "There!"

"I told you to quit it!" Sakura shouts, punching Naruto in the back of the head.

"Ow!" he groans, rubbing his new injury. "There was somebody there! I swear!"

"Yeah right!" Sakura leaves Naruto's side to go over to the brush with Kakashi to stake out our enemy. It turns out to be a white snow hare that has been shocked into paralysis from Naruto's attack.

"Naruto!" Sakura shouts. "Look what you've done!"

"Why couldn't I have been put on a normal team?" I complain, pressing my fingers to the bridge of my nose as Naruto grabs the rabbit and hugs it, apologizing to it over and over. "I cannot _believe_ this right now."

"Everyone get down!" Kakashi suddenly shouts. Sakura and Sasuke are quick to tackle Naruto and Tazuna respectively, and Kakashi ducks, but I freeze, uncomprehending.

"Wha—?" I ask. "I don't—"

"He said," Sasuke says, grabbing my ankle, _"down!"_ He yanks my foot out from under me and I fall on my face, as something flies over us, slicing the air.

I lift my head as a giant blade, which is what presumably had soared over us, impales itself into a tree and a man of Kakashi's age lands on the handle of the blade, his back to us. The man has camouflage arm- and legwarmers, with bandages covering the lower part of his face. He has pinstriped pants on and no shirt. The only thing that covers the upper part of his body is straps that crisscross over his chest and back for his sword.

Sasuke and Sakura are the first to get up, helping Tazuna and Naruto to their feet. Naruto brushes Sakura off and runs up to Kakashi's side as our teacher says, "Well, well, if it isn't the Hidden Mist's missing-nin, Momochi Zabuza."

Sasuke takes me by the arm and pulls me to my feet without my asking him. I'm still in a daze, honestly, from almost being decapitated by the sword.

"Next time," he spits at me as I knot my eyebrows together, "pay attention, or else you're dead meat." He lets me go and turns his attention to the enemy.

I blink at him, wondering if he'd actually been worried. But, no, why—

Abruptly, Naruto bolts forward, catching my eye, only to be stopped by Kakashi.

"Everybody, get back," orders Kakashi. "This one is on a whole other level." He then proceeds to reach up and make like he's going to pulls his headband up. "It will be a little tough," he says, more to himself than to us, "unless I do this."

"Kakashi of the Sharingan, I presume?" the man says, so friendly and casually that it freaks me out. "If it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you surrender the old man?"

Now, I've heard a lot of things about a lot of things, considering I've gone many places over the past few years. I've heard stories about missing-nin like Zabuza and of what they're capable. I've heard stories about massacres that have taken place in other countries for reasons not unlike the Uchiha one. I've heard about the nine bijuu and their jinchuuriki, the human vessels into whom they were sealed. I've heard about the legendary medic who can heal wounds that most others would deem impossible. But I swear, whenever I came to a shady place to find information, I would always hear stories about the infamous Copycat Ninja Kakashi, whose head carried an insurmountable bounty. So I'm not as surprised as Sasuke is when he hears Kakashi's name, the title that is attached to it.

"Assume the manji battle formation," Kakashi orders, still holding onto his headband. "Protect Tazuna-san. Do not enter the fight. That's the kind of teamwork this situation demands."

We know better than to argue at this point, but don't make a move to do as we're told, too stunned by the new enemy to move.

"Now, Zabuza…" Kakashi finally lifts his headband to unveil his left eye. It's crimson red with three tomoe surrounding his pupil. A scar runs from his eyebrow to the apple of his cheek, evidence of the surgery he had undergone to receive the eye.

While this isn't the first time I've seen a Sharingan, it has been years since I've come face-to-face with one. I glance at Sasuke to see how he reacts to the sight of the eye, but he remains stoic, not acknowledging me in the slightest. Again, I wonder how his own abilities have developed. _Whether_ they have developed.

"Ah," Zabuza says, turning to face us. "To face the famous Sharingan so early in our acquaintance—it _is_ an honor."

"You keep calling it Sharingan," Naruto interrupts, annoyed to be left out of the circle. "What the hell _is_ it?"

"Shinobi," Sasuke starts slowly, "who have the Sharingan are said to have mastered a type of ocular ninjutsu. It allows them to penetrate and see the reality behind any illusion or spell and project the power back on those who cast them. A Sharingan is one of the several types used by the masters. But that's not all."

"What?" Naruto presses.

Zabuza chuckles. "Exactly," he agrees. "That's not all. What's even scarier is that you can copy your opponent's techniques once you've seen them. When I was a member of the Hidden Mist's assassin team, I possessed the usual bingo book—a who's who of our enemies. It had quiet the extensive write-up on you, Kakashi, including a mention of your impressive record: The man who has copied over a thousand techniques—Copy Ninja Kakashi."

Although, I notice Zabuza and Kakashi don't bring up the fact that the Sharingan is unique to the Uchiha clan selectively, and even then it only appears in a few members. And while Sakura and Naruto idly stand by and bask in our newly discovered awesome of Kakashi, Sasuke stares intently at the Jounin, wondering if he could possibly somehow be an Uchiha.

"You're letting your guard down, Sasuke," I sing quietly when I realize I can tell what he's thinking. By that I mean that he's letting his feelings leak to me through the bond, and frankly, I don't take kindly to it. I build up a barrier between us myself when he doesn't answer me.

"Enough," Zabuza says, crouching on his sword. "As pleasant as this conversation has been, the time for talking has ended. I'm on a very tight schedule to polish off that old man."

At this threat, my team and I are quick to remember our previous orders from our captain. We each extract a kunai from our holsters and back up so that we've formed a tight, guarded circle around the bridge builder. Sasuke takes his position in front of the old man, Naruto and Sakura cover the sides, and I bring up the rear. Judging by the way Tazuna is still shaking though it doesn't seem to do much to comfort the poor guy.

"But Kakashi," Zabuza says, straightening out. "It seems I'll have to kill you first."

"Because of course _we_ aren't threats," I grumble.

"Hush!" Sakura chides, swallowing hard.

"Sorry," I say, wary of the fact that I accidentally psyched out my own teammate.

Zabuza is quick to move. With what seems like little effort, he pulls his sword out of the tree that it'd been stuck in with a neat crack. He disappears and reappears, standing on the surface of a body of water not far from where we're standing. He's from the Land of the Mist, I realize. The water will only play to his advantages.

Sure enough, he has his hand seals ready to go. He holds half of it in the air above his head and the other in front of his lips, like he has a secret that he'd kill to share.

"Is he _walking_ on water?" Sakura asks, and I notice the shake she has in her voice.

I'm about to answer her and tell her how it's constant chakra release through the soles of his feet that make it seem like he's walking on water, but then I feel a sudden shift in the vibrations around me.

"The finest of the ninja arts," Zabuza explains. "The kirigakure jutsu." A tendril of mist swirls around him, enveloping his entire body, and he disappears, a leaf falling in place of where he once stood. I wonder if this it's some bad omen for us Leaf Nin.

"He'll come for me first," Kakashi says like that's any consolation. I would rather he not go after any of us, as I'm sure we all are. But that's wishful thinking. "Momochi Zabuza, as a member of the Kirigakure assassin corps, is a famous master in the art of silent killing. Dropping your guard around him buys you a direct trip to heaven. I haven't mastered every aspect of the Sharingan, so all of you, stay on your toes!"

"What's with all this _fog_?" Naruto wants to know as the mist caresses us and veils everything. His question is answered by a haunting voice that makes us break into sweats.

"There are eight targets," Zabuza says. The fact that we can't see him multiplies the creep-level by at least 300%. "The larynx," Zabuza lists. "Spinal column. Lungs, liver, the jugular veins, the collarbone, kidney, heart."

I know where this is going.

"So many choices," gushes Zabuza. "What vital, vulnerable places shall I choose to strike?"

I gasp when the air suddenly fills with such intense bloodlust that it makes me shake. I'm sweating like I've been sitting in the hot springs for too long, and my kunai slips from my hand. I fumble with it before catching it again and gripping it as tightly as I can. A feeling of dread washes over me, like, because of that screw up, Zabuza is going to think I'm the weakest, target me, kill me first. And, though this will probably be a bad move on my part, I close my eyes.

My breaths come out easier. I don't feel such pressure on me. The bloodlust doesn't get to me as much when I'm pulled back in my own mind.

In my own mind.

_Sasuke._

My eyes snap open when I realize that it's Sasuke that's freaking out and it's leaking through the bond into me to try to relax him. And what sucks is that I can't see him because he's on the other side of Tazuna. I can't comfort him. I can't do anything to help him.

_Do something,_ the bond urges. _You gotta do something to help him, Ren._

But what? My eyes flick back and forth. I bite my bottom lip. I can't see anything. I can't pinpoint Zabuza's chakra to a certain place.

_So feel it,_ the bond tells me, irritated.

Feel it!

I close my eyes, concentrating, as Kakashi says, "Sasuke, don't worry. Even if he gets me, I'll still protect you."

My eyes open, the vibrations in the air becoming visible. There's a heavy pressure on my chest. My gaze flicks over my shoulder.

"I will never let my comrades die!"

"We'll see about that!" Zabuza says, suddenly appearing between Sakura and Sasuke and Tazuna. I can see the monstrosity of his sword over Tazuna's shoulder. Quickly, I grab Tazuna by his backpack and tug him away, as the rest of my team gets knocked back by something. Once Tazuna is in the clear, I turn back to see the blurred figures of Kakashi and Zabuza. Kakashi has a kunai stabbed into Zabuza's abdomen, but the wound leaks water instead of blood.

"A water clone," I mutter as I deactivate the Genshindou, seeing as how the mist has cleared out and I can see the enemy.

"Sensei, behind you!" Naruto points out as another Zabuza sneaks up behind our teacher. The warning doesn't come fast enough though, and Zabuza is able to swipe his sword through Kakashi, cutting him in half. Sakura shrieks, horrified, but Kakashi simply melts away in splashes of water, much like Zabuza's previous clone.

"Don't move!" says Kakashi, somehow appearing behind the missing-Nin. Kakashi has a kunai held to Zabuza's throat. "Game over."

Zabuza chuckles. "You think it's over?" he asks. "You don't get it. It's going to take more to defeat me than mimicking me like an ape. A lot more. But that was impressive of you! To copy my water doppelganger in that short amount of time and having your clone say words that you would've said yourself, you ensured that my attention would be focused on it, while the real you hid in the mist and watched me."

I'm feeling a little cheated at this point. I know that swearing to not let us die is a typical Kakashi move and that he sincerely meant it, but…but I don't know.

"Nice plan," Zabuza compliments. "Too bad for you, I'm not that easy to fool."

The Zabuza in front of Kakashi turns into a pool of water, and the real thing materializes behind Kakashi. The Jounin, wide eyed, whirls around to Zabuza and ducks as Zabuza swings his sword at Kakashi. The sword clashes into the ground and gets stuck, but Zabuza, an experienced handler of the kubikiri hocho, uses it to his advantage. He spins around, switches the sword to his other hand, and the kicks his leg out. His foot comes in contact with a recuperating Kakashi, sending him flying across the way and into the lake.

Zabuza grips his sword and pulls it out of the ground and starts on his way over to where Kakashi's landed, only to waver. There are caltrops scattered across the ground. It doesn't do much good to keep Zabuza at bay though. He jumps over spikes and lands on the water, behind where Kakashi is struggling to resurface, like the water is pushing down on him.

Chortling, Zabuza proceeds to do a number of hand signs before holding his hand out over our teacher. The water around Kakashi swirls up and surrounds him in a blue sphere, and seems to be held together by the fact that Zabuza has his hand clutched to it.

"And this," Zabuza laughs, "is my inescapable water prison. With you trapped, things will be easier to finish up. I'll take care of you later. But first things first." Zabuza turns away from Kakashi and looks at us. The look on his face makes me sick.

"You guys," I say, backing up as Zabuza produces another water clone that comes for us. I'll admit: I'm panicked. Because if there's one thing being alone on the road all those years hasn't taught me, it's how to protect my friends.

And that, I realize with a gut-wrenching surprise, is all I'm concerned about.


	13. Always a Surprise

**Bound  
Chapter 13: Always a Surprise**

Zabuza chuckles haughtily, as his water clone straightens up and looks at us with the same fearsome face.

"Little wannabe ninja," it says. "You're trying so hard to be the real thing. You even wear forehead protectors. But you know what? A real ninja is someone who has survived numerous brushes with death. Basically, once you're good enough to be listed in my handbook, _then_ you can start calling yourself a ninja. In fact, we don't refer to you as ninja at all," the clone says, slowly fading until he disappears completely in a mist that has somehow meandered its way into the surrounding area.

"Tazuna," I say, extracting a kunai from my holster, "please stay behind us." Sakura and Sasuke, who are still close by, do the best they can to cover Tazuna from all sides along with me.

Naruto suddenly shoots back, Zabuza's clone having reappeared in front of him and kicked his forehead protector off. The clone smothers Naruto's headband underneath his foot.

"Naruto!" cries Sakura, and I freeze, wondering when Zabuza had had the time to move like that. I carefully look from the threat to my friend, who has skidding to a stop some distance away.

"We call you brats," finishes the main Zabuza.

"Everybody listen!" Kakashi pleads from his place in the rippling sphere that contorts his image like he's a hologram. "Take Tazuna-san and run away! This is a fight you can't win! If he wants to hold me in his water prison, he can't move from his place. If his water clone gets more than a certain distance from his body, he'll lose control of it. So just get out of here!"

But we can't leave him behind! I don't think he realizes that. I grip my kunai, trying to see if there's any other way out, when Naruto, who is on his back from being attacked earlier, rolls to his feet. He winces when he puts too much pressure on his injured hand and looks at it, seeming to remember something. He grits his teeth and gets up, facing Zabuza, which surprises us all. Even more so when he dashes for the water clone.

"No, don't!" Kakashi cries.

"He's…," starts Sasuke, but is unable to finish.

"NARUTO, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?" Sakura yells, clutching her head.

Naruto just barrels forward. Zabuza scoffs and doesn't hesitate in kicking him again, back to us. Naruto skids to a stop, holding his stomach. Or so I think.

"What are you doing jumping in all by yourself?" chastises Sakura. "We Genin have no chance against—"

"Sakura," I silence. She looks at me, wondering if I've lost my head as well. I don't look at her. Instead, I keep my eyes on Naruto and grin. She turns back to our teammate as well and her eyes widen.

In his injured hand, Naruto is holding his scuffed headband. Though blood slips through his lips, he smirks and says, "Hey, what's life like without eyebrows, freak?"

As Naruto straightens up, the vein in Zabuza's forehead pulses, annoyed.

"I've got a new listing for you in your hand book right here," Naruto declares. "A guy who's going to be the next Hokage-sama of Konohagakure!" He reaches up and ties his headband back over his forehead and finishes with, "Uzumaki Naruto!"

I smirk. The audacity of this kid.

Naruto positions himself and calls, "Sasuke, listen up!"

"What is it?" he says, surprised.

"I have a plan."

"Hmph," Sasuke mutters. "So it's time for some teamwork?"

I nearly laugh out loud the relief of it all, glad for having something to do, having _someone_ do _something_. "I'm feeling left out here, Naruto," I admit cheerily, spinning my kunai deftly in my right hand. "But I suppose Sakura and I can stay behind and protect Tazuna, right Sakura?"

The pink haired kunoichi looks over at me, her face contorted with confusion.

I wink at her and stick my tongue out. "What? We can't leave all the crime fighting to the men, can we?" I ask, adjusting my headband.

She reaches up to touch her own before her face fills with determination. She nods at me and takes her place at my side, in front of the old bridge builder, unsheathing her own weapon and holding it at the ready..

"Good," Naruto approves, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. "Now. Let's get busy."

"That's a lot of arrogance," Zabuza notes. "But do you really think you stand a chance against me?"

"What's the matter with you?" Kakashi demands, not very kindly, I might add, considering how we've just elected to stay behind and risk our lives to save his. "I thought I told you to run! This fight was over the moment he caught me! You have to do your duty; keep that in mind! We're here to protect Tazuna-san!"

I harrumph as we all turn peer over our shoulders at the old man.

"Gramps?" Naruto prods.

"Well," he starts. "I planted this seed myself by lying to you guys. I've had a real long life, and it would be wrong to let you kids get killed trying to save me. So go ahead, do what you like." He grins at us. "Give this fight everything you've got!"

"And besides, Kakashi," I say, propping one hand on my hip and holding up a finger with my free hand to make a point as we all turn back to face our opponent. "I once heard some guy tell me that ninja who break the rules are trash, but people who abandon their teammates are worse than that. What kind of ninja would be if we left you behind then? You're our teammate too, you know."

Sasuke scoffs. "So that's it!" he says.

"Are you ready for this?" Naruto agrees.

Zabuza's body shakes with amusement as he laughs. He shakes his head. "You guys will never grow up. You're just going to keep playing ninja, huh?" He holds out his hand, palm up, and reminisces. "When I was about your age," he says, "these hands were already dyed red with blood."

This statement takes my team aback. I narrow my eyes and grit my teeth, holding onto my kunai that I'd forgotten I had until then, disgusted with what is inevitably going to follow. After all, if we're going to face this guy, then my teammates deserve the right to know the real story.

"The demon, Zabuza," Kakashi mutters.

Zabuza makes a noise, pleased. "You know?"

"Long ago," Kakashi explains to us, "in Kirigakure, also known as the 'Village of the Bloody Mist', the final test toward becoming a ninja was the most inhumanly difficult test imaginable."

"So you've heard about our little graduation exercise," Zabuza says, impressed.

"Graduation exercise?" Naruto repeats. Zabuza chuckles. "Wh-what graduation exercise?"

"I wouldn't call it a 'graduation exercise so much as a blood bath," I say when Zabuza does nothing more but keep chortling. My friends look to me, puzzled as to what I could mean.

"Fights to the death," Zabuza nods, as though it's worth being nostalgic like this so that he can see our reactions. My friends swivel back around to keep their eyes on the enemy.

"Wh-what?" Sakura stutters.

"Yes," Zabuza says, seeming to revel in the horridness of it. "A kind of 'killing-spree' amongst students. _Friends_ who had trained and eaten at the same table are pitted against each other and go at it until one of them loses his life. Think about it. These are friends who helped each other and shared dreams."

"That's…that's terrible," Sakura comments weakly.

"Ten years ago," Kakashi adds, "the Kirigakure graduation exam was forced to perform a sweeping reform of the barbaric ritual because of the appearance of a human fiend the previous year that made the reform essential."

"What reforms?" Sakura inquires. No one answers her. She persists though, and asks, "What changes? What did this human fiend do?"

"Without," Kakashi answers finally, "pause, or hesitation, a young boy who had not even qualified to be a ninja butchered over a hundred students of that year's graduating class."

"Ah yes, good times," Zabuza says, getting this twisted gleam in his eyes. Beneath the bandages that masked the lower part of his face, his lips turn up into a smile. "I used to have such fun." His eyes glint with a killer malice as he looks at us.

He moves so quickly then that by the time I can see what he's doing, he's already got Sasuke pinned under his arm. He has elbowed Sasuke in the gut and proceeded to smack him against the ground until blood spewed from his mouth.

"Sasuke-kun!"

It takes all that I have in me not to go charging after Zabuza myself as the Nin stomps his foot over Sasuke's stomach and makes a grab for his sword, singing, "Time to die."

I know it won't help if I rush in now, so I settle with yelling, "Naruto!" After all, the blonde boy _did_ say that he had a plan.

"I've got it!" he reassures, and makes a hand sign. In a giant poof of smoke, dozens of Naruto appear, all poised with kunai in their hands.

"Shadow clones," Zabuza muses, seemingly losing interest in Sasuke seeing as how he removes his foot from him. "And quite a lot of them."

"Here I come!" announces Naruto, leaping onto Zabuza so that the guy is covered by a large mass of orange. Once the Narutos have completely enveloped Zabuza, I leap in and pull Sasuke back just as Zabuza throws all the Narutos off with a single swing of his sword. Naruto is thrown back as the other shadow clones disappear, and as he skids against the ground, he reaches into his knapsack and pulls out a closed Fuma Shuriken. "Sasuke!" he calls as he tosses it at the raven haired boy.

Sasuke catches it professionally, a look of understanding passing over his face, though I don't see why. He rolls so that there's some distance between him and Zabuza before sliding to a stop and fanning out the shuriken.

"Ren," he says, nodding at me, and I return his acknowledgement, knowing what I have to do, before he states, "Demon Wind Shuriken: Windmill of Shadows!"

I clasp my hands together and give him a boost as he plants his foot in my hand. I launch him into the air, and the extra lift gets him much too high to properly hit the water clone Zabuza. Which is just fine by me.

"Shuriken are useless against me!" the water clone declares, but then the shuriken swoops past him and toward the real Zabuza who is holding onto our teacher.

"Smart of you to aim for the real thing," Zabuza compliments, "but that's still not enough!"

Zabuza is able to catch the shuriken by the hole in the center, but then a second one comes flying out from under the first one. It boomerangs and goes for Zabuza again, but the Nin merely jumps out of its way.

"It missed!" I groan, but Sasuke smirks. I look at him like he's crazy.

"Watch," he tells me and so I do and I see that as the second shuriken flies past Zabuza, it transforms into—

"Naruto?" I say, flabbergasted. He has a kunai in his hand which he throws at Zabuza. The kunai comes close to impaling itself into Zabuza's cheek, but at the last minute, the Nin pulls away from the water prison so that he only gets away with a small scratch on his cheek. Angry at being outsmarted, Zabuza takes the shuriken he still has in his hand and makes way for Naruto who is defenseless.

What he doesn't realize, though, is that he's accidentally freed Kakashi, who is quick to block Zabuza's attack with the back of his hand.

"Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura cheers.

"Good plan, Naruto," Kakashi commends. "You guys have grown up. All of you."

I feel a brilliant spasm of satisfaction hearing this and smile.

Naruto laughs as he treads water. "The aim of the shadow clones," Naruto explains, "wasn't to defeat Zabuza, but to hide the fact that I had transformed into the Fuma Shuriken. Of course, I didn't think that I could beat him, but I figured that we could at least break you free from the water prison!"

Zabuza harrumphs. "I see. You made me fly into such a rage that I got distracted and released the jutsu—"

"No," Kakashi argues. "You didn't release it. It was broken by these Genin." Zabuza glares at Kakashi, who warns, "I'll tell you: I don't fall for the same jutsu twice. Your move."

The two Nin jump back and they perform a series of hand seals I can't keep track of that causes the water around them to swirl viciously and take the form of dragons. The water serpents collide with each other, creating a makeshift rainstorm. When the water clears, Zabuza and Kakashi are at a stalemate in the center of the lake; Kakashi with his kunai cancelling out Zabuza's kubikiri hocho.

The pair glides away from each other, flipping through hand seals again.

"God," I note, perspiring from the intensity of the fight. The two are moving in such harmonious sync that it's like this entire fight has been choreographed for our viewing pleasure, with Zabuza leading the dance. However, Kakashi's performance is just as impressive. There's no delay, no hesitation, in Kakashi's movements as he mirrors every flicker that Zabuza makes. He even goes so far as to finishing Zabuza's sentences.

"Heh!" Zabuza spits. "You're a pale imitation."

"I'm the genuine article. No mere copycat stands a chance against me!" he and Kakashi finish at the same time.

Zabuza is noticeably freaked out by this and tries to finish his set of hand signs first. "Damn you!" he curses. "I'll make it so that you can never open that mouth again!"

Just then, behind Kakashi, air seems to shimmer and take the shape of another Zabuza. At first I think it's another water clone that Zabuza's created, but it flickers and disappears in an instant. This seems to be enough to make Zabuza freeze up and not be able to finish his jutsu, and Kakashi goes ahead and does it for him.

The water in the lake becomes a thick tendril and spirals toward Zabuza, washing him out of the water and flooding the immediate area around the lake. Once the water settles, Zabuza is slouched against a tree, four kunai embedded in his body: one in each of his arms and legs. Kakashi is crouched in the branch above Zabuza.

"It's over," he repeats.

"How…?" Zabuza wants to know. "Can you see the future?"

"Yes," Kakashi answers, holding up a final kunai. "And I foresee your death!"

Just as Kakashi's about to make his move, two needles fly through the air and puncture Zabuza's neck in a crisscross position. Zabuza collapses to the ground with a heavy thud. My eyes widen, surprised, and, involuntarily, I run forward, toward Zabuza's body. I fall to my knees beside him, putting my fingers to his neck.

No pulse.

"He's dead," I state.

Someone chuckles lightly, and says, "It seems that your prediction came true."

We turn our attention to a nearby tree where a person stands dressed in traditional clothing and a porcelain mask over his face. The mask has the symbol for Kirigakure carved on the forehead with red swirls painted from the right cheek over where the mouth and nose of a face would be.

Kakashi jumps from the tree to my side where he proceeds to press his fingers to the man's neck as well, to verify, I guess, what I've just concluded. By the way he glances up at the stranger in the tree it seems that the prognosis is that Zabuza is definitely dead. I can't help but to scrutinize the body though. There's something about it that just doesn't seem quite right. I bite my bottom lip, trying to figure out what's so strange about Zabuza's untimely death. I reach out and finger the needles. For some reason, they feel familiar.

"Thank you for your help!" the stranger says, bowing his head respectfully. I startle, recoiling from Zabuza, before looking up at him, glaring daggers, though I know I should be thankful considering what he's just done for us. "I hope you don't mind my interfering, but I wanted the satisfaction of putting Zabuza out of his misery myself!"

"That mask is familiar," Kakashi says. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you a Kirigakure Hunter-Nin?"

The boy takes a moment to answer. "Well," he says, slightly teasing. "Aren't you the smart one?"

"Hunter-Nin?" Sakura asks as Naruto, having pulled himself out of the lake, dashes up to us.

"I am, indeed," he answers, "a member of the elite tracking unit from the Village Hidden in the Mist. It is our duty—and our art—to hunt down and deal with rogues and outlaws."

Naruto stops beneath the tree where the stranger is perched and looks back and forth between him and Zabuza. He jabs an angry finger at the Hunter-Nin and demands, "What the _hell_? Who _are_ you?"

I poke Zabuza's arm, disgruntled, as Kakashi stands. He makes his way over to Naruto and says, "Relax, Naruto. He's not an enemy."

"_That's not what I'm asking!"_ Naruto shouts. "He _killed_ Zabuza, who isn't exactly a pushover. He was taken out by a guy who's only about _my_ age, like it was nothing at all! What: do we just suck or something?"

"Well," Kakashi says, glancing at his pupil. "I know how you feel, but in this world, there exists kids younger than you, yet stronger than me." He pats Naruto's head as he passes and adds, "Ren. Get away from the body and let the Hunter do his job."

"B-but!" I start to argue, but it doesn't matter. The Hunter-Nin is already crouched next to Zabuza's body ready to get rid of it. He acknowledges me with a nod before he pulls Zabuza's arm over his shoulder.

"Your battle is over for now," he says. "I must take these remains and dispose of it, lest they give up our secrets to our foes."

"Wait, what?" I ask, afraid I'd misheard.

"Ren," Kakashi calls. "Come away. We need to be getting Tazuna-san home now."

"But—!"

"Farewell," the hunter says before I can get another word in, and in a whirl of dust and leaves, he's gone.

I stare at the spot where they'd disappeared from, dumbstruck. I thought—

Kakashi sighs, pulling his headband back over his Sharingan. Tazuna laughs heartily, adjusting his hat.

"Super thanks, guys!" he says. "Although you must be humiliated right now! But never mind, you can lick your wounds at my house."

I glare at him over my shoulder, annoyed that he would still be so rude when we'd just saved his life. Again. I roll my eyes and stand up, brushing my pants off and wondering where the hell the Hunter-Nin had gone off to. From all the stories I'd heard about Hunters, they always—

There's a thud of a body hitting the ground, not unlike when Zabuza had collapsed earlier. My head jerks up to find that Kakashi has collapsed, face first, spread eagle.

"What's going on?" Sakura cries, rushing forward to Kakashi's crumpled form.

"Kakashi-sensei!"

I sigh, annoyed. "Relax. He's fine," I say, making my way over to them.

"What are you talking about?" Sakura demands. "Our sensei just _collapsed_ and—"

"It's nothing," I tell her, kneeling beside Kakashi. "It's some side effects of the Sharingan. He—well, it's not so much _him_ as it is his body—is having a hard time coping with some of the physical strains of using the Sharingan, considering how it's supposed to be specialized to the Uchiha clan only. Help me turn him over."

Sakura does as I ask, and when we've got him on his back we find that his normal eye is still wide open and blinking at us. I frown at him and refrain from slapping his face for overexerting himself to such an extent.

"Anyway, we just need to get him back to the house and let him rest. After a few days, he should be functioning normally again. Right, Kakashi?"

I think he mutters something along the lines of "Yes."

I turn to the old man. "Tazuna, you think you can help us out here?"

He harrumphs, coming up to Kakashi's side and picking him up. He slings the Jounin's arm over his shoulders and says, "I'm paying you guys to protect me, and here I am, taking care of you. How does that work out?"

"Oh, shut up."

[+]

We get to Tazuna's house without any more problems. Upon seeing Kakashi's shabby condition, the old man's daughter, Tsunami, goes into a rant about how we shouldn't have pushed ourselves so much, like her father's life hadn't depended on us trying our hardest to get out of the situation we had been in.

Once we've got Kakashi settled on a futon in the main room with us all gathered around, Tsunami bustles in, her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face, asking, "Are you all right, sensei?"

"No," Kakashi says. "But I will be in about a week."

"The Sharingan _is_ incredible," Sakura says, perched at Kakashi's side, "but doesn't the strain it puts on your body make you wonder if it's worth it?"

"Well, considering that we've been able to get away with our lives, Sakura," I say pointedly, pulling my knees up to my chest, "I'd have to say that, yes; Kakashi using the Sharingan _was_ worth it."

Sakura glowers at me.

Tazuna laughs, wiping his brow with a towel thrown around his neck. "This time," he agrees, "you've defeated your strongest foe yet, so we can probably relax for a while."

"I can't get my mind off that masked guy," Sakura admits, rubbing her chin thoughtfully.

"That mask is worn by the Hidden Mist's special Hunter-Nin team," Kakashi explains. "They're unit is code named 'The Undertaker Squad' because they dispose of corpses so thoroughly it's as though they've never existed. They do this because a ninja's body has within it secrets of their village's ninjutsu, information on different chakra types, herbs, and other things that will reveal the secrets of the village. For example, if I died, the secrets of the Sharingan could be revealed. If you don't be careful, there's the danger that the enemy will steal your jutsu. A ninja's body can reveal important information, so by killing and disposing of the missing-Nin who have abandoned their village, the hunter-Nins protect the information from getting out. They are specialists who guard their village's secrets. Silently and without a trace—that is how a ninja leaves the world."

"That kind of sounds like how we're supposed to live in it as well," I note.

"So Zabuza's corpse will be dismembered and destroyed? That's so creepy!" Sakura shudders.

"But you know, Kakashi," I say, leaning up against the wall. "There's something about the Hunter that took Zabuza away that doesn't sit right with me. I mean, I've never personally seen Hunter's do their thing, but it just…it doesn't seem okay, the way he dealt with the situation."

"It's probably because it was your first time seeing something like that take place," Kakashi says. "As you get older, Ren, and more experienced, you may someday end up witnessing an event like this again, or maybe even performing it yourself. It won't seem so strange to you then."

"Yeah, well, here's to hoping that I won't ever have the pleasure of doing either of those things."

* * *

**Please review!**


	14. Knowing Your Fears

**BOUND  
Chapter 14: Knowing Your Fears**

"Really, I'm not sure you guys should do that," I sing, peeling off my gloves and shoving them into my pouch. Since I'd lost half of my favorite pair of gloves in the early stages of the formation of Team 7, I'd been using a pair of black gloves that I'd found in one of Sasuke's drawers. When I asked him if I could have it, he harrumphed as he usually did and dismissed me. I took this in an "It's all yours" kind of way. Already, though, the gloves are wearing out and fraying, which irks me. I wish for my old gloves back. "I swear: you're going to wake him up."

Sakura and Naruto are leaning over Kakashi's face as he sleeps. Sakura glares at me over her shoulder, her index finger hooked as she's about to pull Kakashi's mask down. "Come on, Ren," she says. "Stop acting all high and mighty. You can't tell me that _you_ don't wonder what his face really looks like beneath the mask. Today was the first day we ever saw what his eye looked like under his headband, and it turned out to be something remarkable. Who's to say that there isn't something that he's hiding from us by always wearing this mask?"

"Maybe he's got chronically chapped lips," I offer, shrugging, "and he doesn't want to gross people out."

Sakura rolls her eyes and turns back to Kakashi. "Whatever, Ren. You're the one that instigated this in the first place."

This is true. But in my defense, I had to wonder how Kakashi managed to breathe correctly with that mask always covering his airways. My only mistake was voicing this thought out loud. To which Sakura asked, "Do you think we should take it off for him, considering the condition he's in?"

"Well," I said, "if he wanted it off, he probably would've taken it off before he fell asleep. Just leave it."

"But isn't he temporarily paralyzed?" Sakura countered. "What if he wanted to take it off but _couldn't_. And the thought of asking one of us to do it for him embarrassed him so much that he didn't want to do it?"

"No," I said, propping my elbow on my knee so that I could rest my chin in the heel of my hand. My fingers curled toward my lips, and I bit into my nails, a bad habit I'm still trying to break. "I don't think that's it."

"Have any of you guys ever seen Kakashi-sensei with his mask off?" Naruto inquired.

"Now that you mention it," Sakura said thoughtfully, "I haven't."

"Ren?"

"Nope."

"Sasuke?"

"Hmph."

"That would be a no," I clarified.

"So?" Naruto said, clambering over to Kakashi's side. "Why don't we see what he looks like under the mask now? While he's sleeping. We'll take it off, put it back on, and he'll never know it."

Which brings us to where we are at the present.

"And if he wakes up before we can put it back on," Sakura says smartly, "we'll just tell him that we were clearing his passageways so that he would be able to sleep better."

I sigh heavily, exchanging a look with Sasuke, who is, as usual, remaining neutral. "Fine," I cave, throwing my hands up in defeat. "I don't care anymore. Don't say I didn't warn you though."

Sakura inches her hand along at snail's pace. Suddenly, as she's about to lift the mask, she and Naruto shriek in unison before flopping backwards. Slowly, Kakashi shifts in his bed and gets up, putting a hand over his face. He has this serious look in his eye, one that often comes hand in hand with a revelation.

I smirk and stick my tongue out at Sakura as she and Naruto recover from almost having a heart attack. Tsunami, who had, I guess, heard my teammates' screams, comes into the main room and, seeing Kakashi sitting up, says, "Oh, Kakashi-sensei, you're awake."

He rubs his hand over his face and doesn't say anything. Instead, he cups his hand over his mouth and gets this distracted look about his eyes.

"Hmm?" Naruto hums, noticing our teacher's troubled state. "What's wrong, sensei?"

Kakashi brings his fingers up to his forehead, before looking up at us and saying, "Well. Hunter-Nin who manage corpse disposals are suppose to destroy the bodies of those they kill at once, right on the spot."

"So what?" Sakura asks as I internally groan. Less than a minute awake and already Kakashi is taking us back to work. Shouldn't _we_ get to rest too?

"Don't you get it?" says Kakashi. "How did that masked boy disposed of Zabuza's body?"

"How are we supposed to know?" Sakura says, shrugging. "He took the body with him."

"Exactly," Kakashi says. "If he needed proof of his work, he could have just taken the head. And then there's the weapon that he'd used to kill Zabuza."

I think back to when I'd examined Zabuza's body for myself. The needles that had pierced through Zabuza's neck—they were sleek, simple, thin. Then I remember why they'd felt so familiar.

"Those acupuncture needles," I say, blinking. My teammates turn to me, their faces twisted with confusion and curiosity. "My mom used to use them all the time," I explain quickly, "to help people with pain and stuff. But what—" My eyes widen as it comes to me.

Sasuke, having heard my explanation, gets it too. "No way," he mutters, mirroring my expression.

"Yeah," Kakashi says, rubbing the back of his head. "Exactly."

"What nonsense are you guys talking about?" Tazuna, who had been sitting nearby and had overheard everything, wants to know. The worry lines on his face become even more prominent.

"It's likely that," Kakashi says, "Zabuza is still alive."

The mouths of Naruto, Sakura, and Tazuna drop open in horror. Tsunami, not understanding the threat, having not been there for the fight herself, scowls at us, confused.

"What the hell do you mean?" Naruto bellows.

"You checked to be sure that Zabuza was dead, didn't you?" Sakura adds.

"He did," I interject. "I did too. But it's easy to stage a death if you know what you're doing."

Kakashi nods. "The acupuncture needles that Hunter-Nin used," he says, "can be deadly. If they hit a vital spot. If not, the mortality rate is surprisingly low. And remember, as Ren said, senbon were originally designed as medical treatment tools. And Hunter-Nin and all members of a village's corpse disposal unit are supposed to have a thorough knowledge of the human body. It'd be easy for them to put a body in a death-like trance."

I cross my legs, wanting to burrow my face away in my hands as our current situation begins to soil and become messier as our sensei explains his theory to us.

"I mean, let's consider," Kakashi continues. "One: the masked boy carried away the body of the much heavier Zabuza; second: he used a weapon that has a low probably of killing. These two points indicate that his motive was not to _kill_ Zabuza, but to, in fact, save him. We could be over thinking things, but we can't ignore that possibility."

"So aren't you complicating things by over-thinking them?" Tazuna seems to complain. "Hunter-Nins are supposed to hunt missing-Nins, right?"

"Usually," Kakashi admits. "But ignoring something this suspicious is bad on a shinobi's part. We must always be prepared, no matter the situation." Kakashi sighs, a new thought occurring to him. "Plus, whether Zabuza is dead or alive doesn't assure that Gato hasn't hired even stronger shinobi to come after you."

God. I knew it. I _knew_ it. Zabuza's death couldn't have been that simple. It couldn't have been so _easy_. Not for us at least.

"You say a shinobi must always be prepared," Sakura says, "but right now, you can't even move. What are we supposed to do?"

Kakashi laughs as though the answer is obvious. "I'm going to increase your training schedule."

"Wha—_training_?" she echoes. "But, sensei, what will a little training matter now what with who we're up against? Our opponent is a ninja so power that even with your Sharingan he almost defeated you!"

"And when I was in trouble," he says curtly, "Sakura, who was it that saved me? You four are all maturing, progressing rapidly. Especially _you_, Naruto!" Kakashi grins at the blonde boy by his feet. "You've grown the most."

He had been the one to think of the plan, I agree, smirking as Sakura gives Naruto a dubious look. Naruto doesn't seem to notice though. He's too busy beaming at the compliment that's just been paid to him.

My head perks up when I feel a sudden disturbance in the floorboard beneath me. Small, cautious footsteps. Before I can think much more of it, though, Kakashi speaks again.

"That being said, the skills I teach you now will only be an interim thing, to tide us over until I've recovered enough to take over again."

"But sensei!"

I groan. Sakura has an argument for everything, it seems. Why can't she just _go_ with it for once?

"If Zabuza is alive, how can we just train without knowing when he'll strike again?"

"It takes a while for a body to recover from having almost died, Sakura," I say. "By the time Zabuza's recovered, Kakashi will probably be well enough to take him on again."

Sakura gives me a "How do _you_ know?" look only to divert her gaze when Kakashi says, "Ren's right."

"So we train until then!" Naruto cheers, clenching his fists and grinning. "Sounds like it could be fun!"

"Not for _you_," a childish voice says blandly. We turn our heads toward the voice to find a small boy around eight-ish years old. He's wearing green overalls over a tan shirt, with a hat that has two stripes running horizontally across it. The hat almost engulfs his head.

"Who the hell are _you_?" Naruto remarks, glaring at the boy.

I remember how Tazuna had brought up the fact that he'd had a grandson when he'd been guilt-tripping us into going through with our mission. This, I decide as the boy kicks off his shoes and clambers toward Tazuna, is probably him.

"Inari!" Tazuna greets enthusiastically, opening his arms for a hug. "Where have you been?"

"Out," he answers. "Welcome back, Grandpa."

"Inari, greet our guests properly!" scolds Tsunami. "They're the esteemed ninja who brought your grandfather home safely!"

Inari blinks at us before turning to his mother. He points a finger our way and says, "But Mama, they're just gonna die."

"WHAT DID YOU SAY YOU LITTLE BRAT?" Naruto exclaims, bolting to his feet.

My brow furrows together with confusion, my lips twisting in a knot as I watch Inari stand placidly by, despite the way Naruto fumes just in front of him.

"No one can beat Gato and his men," Inari mumbles hopelessly, making Tazuna squirm.

"You _brat_!"

Sakura jumps up to restrain Naruto. "Pull yourself together!" she orders. "He's just a little boy!"

"A little boy with a bad attitude," I say and prop my chin on my fist to watch as the scene goes down.

"Right!" Naruto agrees. He stabs a finger at Inari, a vein pulsing on his forehead. "Pay attention, little guy! I'm a super hero who will one day become an incredible ninja called Hokage! I don't know this Gato guy, but he's nothing against me!"

Inari scoffs, his face screwing up in a sneer. "What are you, stupid?" he asks. "There's no such thing as a hero!"

"WHAT?" Naruto sizzles.

"I said, _stop it_!"

"If you don't want to die," Inari says as he turns away from us and makes way for the door, "you should leave now."

"Inari," his grandfather calls after him. "Where are you going?"

"I'm gonna go look at the ocean from my room," he says, and slams the door behind him.

"Well," I say into the stunned silence of the company around me. "That was interesting."

"I'm…sorry," Tazuna mutters feebly for his grandson.

Naruto jerks out of Sakura's hold just then and stomps after Inari, fuming about being doubted.

"Naruto!" Sakura cries, exasperated.

"Just leave him," I say, waving my hand in order to calm Sakura. I can't take anymore drama than what's already gone on. "Naruto will know what to do."

[+]

When Kakashi has recovered enough to stand with the help of crutches, he takes us out to the woods by the house for training. Naruto is stoked to be able to do some real training, but when it's revealed that he doesn't know much about chakra usage, Sakura goes into this lecture about how chakra is the energy a shinobi needs when performing jutsu per Kakashi's request.

"Chakra has two points," she explains as my head lolls to the side. I hadn't gotten much sleep again, and this fact mixed with this lesson is making me drowsy, since I already know about chakra and chakra control. I'm a medic for God's sake. Not that any of these guys know that. "The body energy that is in each of the billions of cells and the spiritual energy gained through training and other experiences. By bringing out and releasing chakra, you can use a jutsu. This is done through the process of performing a seal with the hands."

"Exactly," Kakashi praises. "Iruka-sensei had _some_ good students at least."

Sakura flushes and grins smugly.

"Well, I didn't understand that complicated explanation," Naruto says and I laugh while Sakura fumes, "but isn't that something you learn with your body anyway?"

"Naruto is right," Sasuke agrees. "We can already use jutsu."

"But none of you yet have full mastery of your chakra," Kakashi says and I give him a knowing look that he doesn't notice or ignores. "Just because you can use jutsu doesn't mean that you're using your chakra to its full potential. Listen, as Sakura said earlier, to release chakra means to bring out physical and spiritual energy and mix them together within your body. Based on what jutsu you use, the type and amount of chakra that is released will be different. Right now, none of you"—I sigh heavily and roll my eyes. Again, Kakashi doesn't acknowledge me.—"are using your chakra effectively. Even if you are able to release a high amount of chakra, unless you control it properly, the jutsu will be weakened or not work at all, and by wasting energy, you won't be able to fight as long. These kinds of weakness will appear."

"So what do we do?" Naruto asks, muffing his head .

"Learn how to control it, of course," Kakashi says, "through very tough training."

"What," Sakura starts hesitantly, looking anxiously around to see if anyone else is as nervous as she is, "are we going to do?"

"We," Kakashi says, "are going to climb trees!"

Our faces drop. I tug on the hem of my headband, bristles of my hair irritating my skin.

"Tree climbing?" repeats Sakura incredulously. "What kind of training is _that_?"

"Just listen," Kakashi says. "This isn't going to be normal tree climbing. We're going to be climbing without our hands."

Naruto immediately brightens at the thought. Sasuke arches his brow at Kakashi like he's doubting our teacher's sanity. I bite my lip, abandoning the act of trying to adjust my headband and tugging instead at the tuff of hair that's sticking out from under my headband. Damn this hair for growing so fast.

Sakura crosses her arms behind her back and asks, "How?"

"Watch," Kakashi says, and presses his hands together into the sign of the ram. There's a surge of chakra in the air before Kakashi slowly makes his way over to a nearby tree and props his left foot on it. Then his right foot. Then his left again. He continues this until he's just walking up the trunk of the tree.

Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura stare after him with wide eyes. Naruto smiles like he can't believe it.

"He's climbing," Naruto mutters.

"Vertically, without his hands," Sakura verifies.

"You both have a very firm grasp of the obvious," I spit, my anxiety making me snap at them. I give my hair another tug, shifting on my feet. I accidentally bump Sasuke. "Sorry," I mumble, keeping my eyes on the ground. "I, uh. Aha. You know. Sorry."

Sasuke furrows his brow at me as our sensei says, "Do you understand now? Just gather your chakra to the bottom of your feet and climb up a tree. This is something you can do once you can use your chakra efficiently."

"Wait a minute!" Sakura says. "How is learning to climb a tree going to make us stronger?"

"Well," he answers, "first, it's going to teach you how to control your chakra; to bring out the proper amount to the proper area. As I said earlier, this is the most important aspect when using jutsu. This can be difficult for even a skilled ninja. The amount of chakra needed to climb a tree is small, but it must be exact. To add to that, it's said that the bottom of the foot is the most difficult area to gather chakra. Theoretically, if you learn this control, you should be able to master any jutsu."

"Although I don't really need to do this, do I?" I almost blurt, crossing my arms. I mean, it's a good work out and stuff, sure, but _climb a tree_? As in "Go-climb-up-a-tree,-any-tree,-and-get -as-high-as-you-can-on-said-tree-so-we-can-measure -your-skill"? Is that really the only way to measure how well my chakra control is? Why don't you get something lodged in your arm and I'll use my chakra to cut it out for you and then seal it up all nice and neat? Wouldn't that be easier? And not so high up?

I know that I'm supposed to be on this team to make myself seem normal and all that jazz, but _I don't want to climb a tree_. Especially not trees so tall and massive.

Three kunai strike the ground, one in front of each of my teammates, causing me to jump, since I hadn't been paying attention. Also, because I had already been freaking out about having to climb a tree, the added surprise of the kunai almost hitting me makes me yelp. My friends give me queer looks as I flush bright red.

"Use those kunai to mark how high you make it up a tree," Kakashi orders, motioning to the trunk of the tree that he's on. He pauses, and then directs a finger at me, saying, "Except Ren."

I breathe a sigh of magnificent relief.

Sakura, glaring, shouts, "What! Why does Ren get to skip out on our training? She probably needs it as much as we do!"

"Actually," Kakashi says, "Ren is a kunoichi who is specialized in chakra control. She comes from a family of renowned medic-Nin."

"The moment it's revealed that a child of the Kagiru clan can be a shinobi," I explain quickly so Sakura doesn't have time to convince Kakashi to get me to climb a tree as well, "we're put through rigorous chakra control training sessions so that we can start to learn how to perform medical ninjutsu at once because medical ninjutsu takes precision. If you're performing surgery or healing a fatal injury, one screw up in your measurement and you could kill your patient."

"So there's no need for Ren to go through with such a training course," Kakashi explains. "I have complete confidence in her ability of chakra control. Besides, I hear she's dreadfully afraid of heights."

_Damn_ him.

"Whatever!" I announce, crossing my arms as heat rushes to my face. Sakura and Naruto snigger together, these sly looks on their faces. They have their hands covering their mouths as though I won't be able to tell that they're laughing at me that way. "I'm leaving. Have fun catching up to me."

This makes both Naruto and Sakura glare daggers into the back of my head as I exit the scene. I hear Kakashi call their attention again before there's silence as they concentrate their chakra.

Glad to not have to put forth effort for the rest of the day, I reach up and pull my headband off so that my hair has some time in the salty sea air. I muss it up before tying my headband back over my forehead, only this time, the way Naruto and Sasuke have theirs. As I tighten the fabric, I notice Inari walking in the same direction I am, back to the house. I furrow my brow, wondering if he'd been watching us. I consider calling out to him to ask him, but then remember the bad attitude he'd had yesterday. He obviously had something against people trying to give others a hand.

I briefly wonder why.

[+]

I'm lying on a pile of planks of wood the next morning, trying to find shapes through the fog. I can't. It makes me almost homesick, not being able to see any clear skies and curlicue clouds. Although you can really do that anywhere. Except for here, it seems.

Kakashi's assigned me to Bridge Builder Watch again, while the others went back to the training area to perfect their chakra control. From the stories I'd heard the other day at dinner (and judging by the size of the bumps on Naruto's head plus the number of bruises he'd collected) it hadn't been as easy as they'd thought it was going to be.

"Aren't you supposed to be protecting me?" Tazuna says as he comes by.

"Something along those lines, I think," I answer, waving my hand around to see if I can manipulate the mist. All it does is flutter a little more.

Tazuna scoffs. "What are you ninja kids good for if you're not even going to _try_ to provide me with super protection?"

"Hey, old man, this is what you signed up for when you posted that mission as C-rank: No good kid ninja who sit on their asses all day. And I understand that you can't afford any better, but we are doing our civic duty as ninja by even being here you, given the current circumstances." I heave myself up and regard him blankly. "Besides, I don't sense anything or anyone other than your men walking around the bridge and banging away at nails. It actually kind of hurts my head."

"Can you be so sure of that?" Tazuna scowls, picking up a board of wood from the pile beside me. "You're a kid. You can't expect me to believe that you can sense everything going on along this massive expanse of a bridge."

"Don't act so haughty. We've—well, _I_ have a lot more experience than kids my age should."

Tazuna rolls his eyes and walks away as I blink a few times, the vibrations that I've set up around the area of the bridge shifting with the chakra of a ninja. It's nothing alarming though.

"Sakura," I announce, surprised as her figure emerges from the fog. "What's up? Have you got news on Zabuza for us?"

"Hmm? Oh, no." She shakes her head, coming to a stop in front of me. "Kakashi-sensei sent me here to help you out with protecting Tazuna."

"Why?" I ask, though I don't mean it the snarky way it comes out.

Sakura rolls her eyes and crosses her arms. "Because I aced that training that Kakashi put us through."

"What about Sasuke and Naruto?"

She smirks. "Naruto hardly got a meter above the ground and Sasuke-kun was only able to go half as high as I did."

I laugh, leaning back, holding onto the planks beneath me to keep myself from falling over. "Wow, who knew about you, Sakura?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" she snaps.

"Nothing! Really," I reassure, grinning. I throw my feet back over the planks so that I can lie down. "Good job," I praise before closing my eyes and clasping my hands together over my stomach. "I'll bet Naruto and Sasuke probably aren't very happy about being beaten by a girl."

Sakura sighs. I feel her leaning up against the plank pile as well. "Yeah," she says miserably. "I mean, I don't care what Naruto thinks so much as I do Sasuke-kun, and he seemed really upset at me. And to add to that, Kakashi-sensei started teasing him to provoke him into trying harder."

This piques my interest. "What'd he say?"

"I'm not going to speak a bad word against Sasuke-kun!" Sakura says, scandalized.

"Oh, come on, Sakura. It's just you and me here. No one will ever know."

"No way," Sakura says firmly. "Anyway, Ren, I was wondering, all that stuff that Kakashi-sensei said about you yesterday—about your family and stuff—was that all true?"

I open one eye to regard her curiously. "Why wouldn't it be?" I ask.

"Well, I just thought," she says hurriedly, shrugging, "that because sensei knew about your fear of heights that he made all that stuff up and you played along so that you wouldn't have to do it."

"Uh, no," I say, sitting up. "Kakashi's not the kind of guy to send people out on a mission unprepared. Besides, if I didn't have proper chakra control, I would have sucked it up and gone through with the training, despite my fear of heights. That's what it means to be a shinobi, right? Overcoming your fears to do what you need to do to help people, to become stronger so you can better protect people."

Sakura looks at me as though she's never seen me before. "Yeah," she agrees slowly. "Okay. And I know Kakashi-sensei is super perceptive and all, but how did he know that stuff about your family?"

"Kakashi," I answer, "has known me for a long time. We go back. Anyway," I say quickly, deciding to bring an end to that subject so she won't be able to pry any further and I won't risk revealing something that I don't want her to know. Like the bond. "You'd better find something to occupy your time with. It's boring out here. Nothing's on the move and it's basically a bunch of sweaty old men clogging by every few minutes to pick up equipment."

Sakura looks around. "I can hardly see anything in this fog," she notes. "Is it really safe to be working like this?"

"Tazuna told me that the sun burns it all up by noon," I answer. "Besides, they're used to it, I guess. All this mist has mutated their eyes and now they have fog vision or something. I'm sure they're fine."

That's the last piece of conversation we have for a few hours. Tazuna is right. By noon, the sun has burned away all the fog and the coast is clear. However, it's really starting to get hot. The men had finished using all the wood in their current pile and moved on to clearing mine, so I had to move off of it and sit beside Sakura on the cement seat where the railing has been placed. I stick my legs through the bars and look down over the water sloshing back and forth beneath us. I swing my legs, my head lolling to the side wanting me to fall asleep. It's not just me, either. Sakura throws up her arms in a stretch and allows herself a massive yawn.

"You were right," Sakura tells me, leaning against the rail. "This completely sucks."

"You're telling me."

"Hey," Tazuna says. Sakura and I look up at him. This is the first time he's walked past since Sakura had arrived, so naturally, his first question is, "What're _you_ doing here now? Where are the blonde kid and the one with the serious face?"

I scoff at the way Tazuna refers to Sasuke and Naruto. "Thanks for learning our names, old man," I say.

Sakura, however, chooses to reply politely. "They're still training."

"What? And you two don't have to?"

"Well, since I'd done so well in training," Sakura says as I turn back to the rolling waves, "Kakashi-sensei asked me to come here and help Ren protect you."

"Does that make you feel better now?" I ask. "You know, having a kid ninja here that actually knows what she's doing?"

Tazuna harrumphs, dropping a piece of wood he'd been carrying at his feet, just as someone calls, "Hey, Tazuna!"

Tazuna peers over his shoulder, wiping his brow with the towel he has thrown around his neck. There's an old man, about Tazuna's age that I'd seen speaking with Tazuna on friendly terms the other day. He has this serious look on his face that usually accompanies bad news.

"Hmm? What is it Giichi?"

"I've been doing a lot of thinking lately," he says. Another sign of bad news. "And I was wondering…can I stop working on the bridge?"

Sakura and I look to Tazuna to see what his reaction. The old man's mouth drops open and he exclaims, "_What?_ But—but _why_? This is so random! I hope the other guys haven't gotten to you too."

"We've been friends for a long time now, Tazuna," Giichi answers as Sakura and I whirl our heads to look at him. "I want to help you, but if we continue, Gato will put notices out on us, and if you get killed during this bridge project, then what's the point of it? We should just…quit now. This bridge isn't worth it."

Tazuna lowers his eyes. He pauses for so long that I think he's actually going to go through with it. "I can't do that," he says at last. "This bridge is belongs to all of us. This is the bridge we started building together, believing it would bring resources to our poor country."

"But if we lose our lives—"

"Look it's already noon," Tazuna says, walking away. "Why don't stop for the day? And Giichi? You don't have to come back to work tomorrow."

Giichi clenches his fists and turns his back on his friend as well, throwing his towel down, like he's angry that he couldn't save Tazuna.

"Wow," Sakura says, staring after Giichi as he leaves.

"I know, right?" I say, propping my chin on the railing. "When I got here yesterday, Tazuna was in the middle of an argument with another guy who wanted to quit. By the end of the shift, two more people had talked to Tazuna about quitting. He just let them go. They're dropping like flies, these workers."

"Well," Sakura says, "they can't help it. They're scared."

"Yeah. Scared of being killed because of the only thing that's going to save them."

[+]

On the way home from work, Tazuna informs us that he needs to go pick up some groceries for Tsunami. Sakura and I follow along obediently, as is our duty, and end up seeing for ourselves what a poor state the Land of the Waves is in. There are people running around, robbing each other blind, people wearing signs that beg for work, anything for food. There are even little children on the side of the road, begging for scraps.

No one is willing to share.

I guess when you live in such a shabby place though, being selfish is what keeps you alive.

Inside the grocery store, the variety of vegetables is lacking, and the quantity of them is even smaller. It makes my stomach whine seeing how little food there is. It also reminds me of how, when I had been out on my own, I'd always have trouble finding food to eat because I felt guilty about killing game and I usually couldn't tell poisonous berries from safe ones (and now that I think about it, I hadn't had so much trouble getting lucky with finding food or money the first three years I was 'alone', most likely thanks to the ANBU that the Hokage had assigned to me). That's probably the reason why I never take food for granted and love it so much.

Sakura shifts uncomfortably behind me as I watch Tazuna pick up a head of cabbage without even examining it first. Not that there's anything else to compare its freshness to. I take it for him and roll it around in my hands, deciding that its quality isn't so bad. He picks up a few other things and hands them to me as well before we head to the cashier to pay for it.

Suddenly, Sakura whirls around and delivers a roundhouse kick to a man wearing a trench coat and a cap and looking all around shady. "PERVERT!" she screeches before the man can explain himself.

Sakura fumes as the man scrambles to his feet and runs out of the shop, keeping his terrified eyes on Sakura to make sure that she won't follow him.

A few seconds of silence ensue. The townspeople stare wide eyed at Sakura before lowering their heads to avoid looking at us any further.

"What the hell?" I ask, my face contorting with disbelief.

Sakura doesn't answer me. Instead, she sulks as Tazuna pays for the food. By the time he's finished, she's calmed considerably, but she still won't tell me what happened to her in the store.

"Well," I say, shrugging as Tazuna secures the groceries over this shoulder, "whatever he did, way to stick it to him."

"You sure surprised me in there," Tazuna agrees.

"What is _with_ this town?" Sakura mutters, scowling up a storm. "I swear, it's—ah!" She readies a glare and peers over her shoulder. Tazuna and I turn to look as well, only to find a small child grinning broadly. She's wearing clothes way too big for her and her hair is a messy mane. She holds out her hands, and though she doesn't say a word, we know she wants food or money or something that will help her survive.

Sakura's face falls. She reaches into her side bag and extracts four colorfully wrapped, round candies and drops them into the child's hands. The girl absolutely beams. This had obviously been a lot more than she'd been expecting. She runs away without a word of thanks, but I don't think that really matters.

"It's been like this since Gato came," Tazuna explains. "All the townspeople have lost hope. That's why we need this bridge. It's a symbol of courage. We need for the people to lose their fear and regain their desire to stand up and fight for themselves. If the bridge…is completed, the people will return to the way they once were—the way we once were—and all will be well again."

These people are all so scared, so afraid of dying for something that they once supported wholeheartedly, but don't find is worth it anymore because the one thing that could save them is turning out to be more hassle than it's worth. They're starting to retreat into their shells, hold onto themselves and everything they've got in this life because it's better than being dead and not having anything. But they don't realize that hiding, losing hope: it's the same as having someone finish you off in the long run.

They'd rather burn bridges than face the problems that come along with building connections, finish them and see what's on the other side. I want to call them cowards, want to think myself better than them, but I'm not so different, really.

We finish the walk home in silence.

* * *

**Thanks for reading. Please review!**


	15. Reminiscing

**Bound  
Chapter 15: Reminiscing**

"You know," I say to Sakura, my elbows on the table and my chin propped up on my hands, "normally, I would be eating too, but this scene is just an appetite killer."

Sakura's brow twitches in agreement as we watch Naruto and Sasuke scarf down their meals as though they've never eaten in their lives.

It's dinnertime and we've all gathered around the table. Sakura and I sit beside each other at one end, with Tazuna sitting opposite us. Starting from my left, the order in which we sit goes Naruto, Kakashi, Tazuna, Inari, and finally Sasuke, with Tsunami at the sink, washing the pans she'd used to make dinner.

Naruto and Sasuke have yet to change or clean up before sitting down at the table since they'd gotten back so late, and their muck-matted, torn clothes and the smudges of grime on their faces are evidence of the training that they'd done today. Their bowls are filled to the brim with the soup that Tsunami's just passed out for us. Naruto tears into a piece of bread while Sasuke reaches for his drink and gulps it down.

"Well, this is super fun!" Tazuna laughs, scratching the back of his head. "I can't remember the last time we had so many people over for a meal."

"I'm not so sure that we're the kind of company you'd want for dinner, though," I point out, as Sasuke and Naruto lift their now empty bowls in unison and demand, "More please!"

They catch each other's eyes and exchange glares over the table. Suddenly, their eyes bulge and they lean over the side of their seats. I'm grateful that they decided to turn away from me as I hear a distasteful sloshing smack the ground, cuing us that they've regurgitated the contents of the dinner they'd just downed.

"Uh," I say, raising my gaze to the ceiling as the sickly aroma of vomit starts to waft into the air. "Ew."

Sakura slams her hands on the table and shoots out of her seat, exclaiming: "Stop eating so much if you're just going to throw it back up again!"

"No," Sasuke says, wiping his mouth and straightening up. "I have to eat."

"Yeah," Naruto agrees, giving us a wicked grin as he mirrors Sasuke's movements. "Yeah, we have to. No matter what. We have to get stronger."

"All right," I cede placidly, holding out my hands, "but I don't think you get stronger from throwing up your source of energy. You'll just damage your esophagus and wear your pretty little teeth to shards. If you really want to provide for your body, eat slower so that, you know, it can actually digest it and stuff."

"Good advice, Ren," Kakashi praises, nodding intelligibly, to which I reply, "It's not advice. It's common knowledge."

"Um, if you don't mind me asking," Sakura says when we've finished up dinner and I've forced Sasuke and Naruto to clean up their mess. "Why is that picture torn?" She points at the wall adjacent to us. Sure enough, there's a picture hanging there in a frame of Tazuna, his daughter, and his grandson smiling grandly. There seems to be another person in the picture with them, standing behind Tsunami with a hand on Inari's head, but their face has been ripped out. "Inari-kun was staring at it all through dinner. There's a whole portion of it gone—is that deliberate?"

The mood of the room immediately falls apart. Tsunami is the first to speak up.

"It's my husband," she says plainly. "Inari's father."

"And," Tazuna adds, looking frustrated, "a man once called the hero of the city."

At this, Inari pushes his seat away from the table and, without a word, stalks across the kitchen.

"Inari, where are you going? Inari!" Tsunami calls after him. He doesn't answer. He just slams the door shut behind him as he leaves. "Father!" she reprimands, whirling around to glare at Tazuna. "I have told you time and again not to talk about him like that in front of Inari!" She rushes across the kitchen to follow after her son. The door bangs shut behind her as well, making me flinch.

"Well," I say, turning back to face Tazuna.

"What's wrong with Inari-kun?" Sakura asks, afraid that she's said the wrong thing.

"It sounds like there's a story there," Kakashi agrees.

"The man in the picture," Tazuna explains slowly, "was not Inari's birth father, but they were as close and as loving as any biological father and son. That was when Inari was a laughing, smiling child."

I learn forward in my seat and cross my arms, looking back to the picture, furrowing my brow at Inari's gleaming face, unable to imagine him looking like that now.

Tazuna starts to shake. His eyes well over with tears. "But," he continues, "Inari has, as you can see, changed after what happened to his father. Ever since that incident occurred, the word 'courage' has been stolen from the people of this island."

"Incident?" Kakashi repeats. "What incident could've happened to change Inari-kun so much?"

Tazuna sighs, takes off his glasses, and rubs his eyes of the tears that have glossed his vision. "Before I get to that, I need to tell you about the man who was once called the hero of this village."

_Dramatic,_ I can't help but think, twirling my hair around my finger. I stretch out my legs, hunching over in my seat and settling my chin on my crossed arms. If we're going to hear a story, I might as well be comfortable.

"It was about three years ago," Tazuna tells, replacing his glasses. "Inari was being picked on by a group of boys who had stolen his dog. They threw the dog into the water and then shoved Inari in after it. Inari almost drowned, but then he was rescued by the man in that photo."

My eyelids droop, and it isn't long before I've shut myself in the darkness that begins to morph and create there but not there images of a pier, a group of bullies, a whining pup, a miniature Inari, a gloriously uniform blue sky appearing to him as the realization that he hadn't drowned hits him.

"His name was Kaiza, and he was a fisherman who came here to follow his dreams. After Kaiza saved Inari and cheered him up, they became very close. It may have been because Inari's real father died before he got to know him, but he and Kaiza were inseparable, like a real father and son. It was only a matter of time before Kaiza became part of the family. He was just what the village needed as well."

_Need, needed,_ I think as Tazuna's story flashes through my mind in snippets of made up memories for my entertainment. _We all need someone, something._ Only it never comes so easily.

"That year, the rain came down so hard it flooded the riverbanks and forced open the dams. Kaiza risked his life to save us all from drowning. From then on, Kaiza was called a hero by the people of this city and Inari could not have been prouder of his father. But then…Gato came."

"And," Kakashi pieces together, "then the incident, right?"

We cast Tazuna questioning looks when he doesn't answer.

"What happened?" I prod, slightly irritated that the flow of the movie in my head had been disrupted.

Tazuna starts trembling again. Grimly, he says, "In front of everyone, Kaiza was put to death by Gato."

This makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up on ends, and immediately, the pictures in my head stop, not wanting to venture down the gloomy road of death.

I can imagine it: Kaiza fighting against Gato, and the old money shark killing him because he had that kind of power, wanted to teach these people a lesson. I can imagine the struggle, imagine what must have happened, but I can't see the outcome that Tazuna has described.

"Inari had the misfortune of witnessing it first hand," Tazuna sighs, shaking his head, "even though Tsunami tried her hardest to keep him away from it. Ever since then, Inari has changed, along with Tsunami and this entire village."

My hands clench into my arms as my lips press into a straight line. I blink into the light, but keep from looking directly at anyone once my vision has focused. I sit up, determined to pretend that this story isn't bothering me as much as it is, isn't making my stomach fold in on itself, isn't making my heart writhe. Because these people have got nothing to do with me. They're my problem for the time being, but before this and when this is all over, I'm done with them.

That's the life of a shinobi. That is what's expected from us. We're not supposed to get involved, not supposed to have any other goal in mind beside what our mission calls for. So what are we even doing here, what are we digging so deeply into these peoples' lives for?

I hear Naruto's chair scrape backwards. He gets up, but then loses his footing and trips, falling on his face. I turn my head to the side slightly and watch as he gets up.

"Naruto, what are you doing?" Sakura asks, exasperated.

"If you're thinking of training," Kakashi says, "don't. You've released too much chakra; anymore and you could die, you know."

"I'm going to do it," he mutters. Sighing, I get up and take him by the arm, heaving him to his feet. He staggers as he shrugs me off, trying to act macho.

"Do what, Naruto?" I ask him, propping my hands on my hips, irritated. "Kill yourself?"

He shakes his head, waving me off, dismissing me. "I'm going to prove to him," he says, his eyes set with determination and his lips curled up, smug, "that in this world, heroes do exist! Just watch."

"That's all _fine_ and _dandy_, Naruto," I say, exasperated, "but do you think you could wait until morning? You've exhausted your body today."

Without seeming to have heard me, Naruto scuttles out of the room, letting the door swing shut behind him. I drop back into my seat and groan, and as if we were on a see-saw Sakura stands up, declaring that she'll go after Naruto and bring him back.

"Doesn't he ever get tired?" I complain, pressing my fingers over my eyes. "Just watching him wears me out."

"Although you could learn something from him, Ren," Kakashi says brightly.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" I snap, lifting my head. I slam a fist on the table, making the teacups that we'd been drinking from rattle. "I am _damn_ motivated!"

Tazuna scoffs and gets up from his seat. "We should get to bed. We've got a big day tomorrow."

[+]

I close the bathroom door behind me, my fingers stretched over my yawning lips, when I notice Sasuke standing by the window. He has his hands shoved in his pockets and is staring out over the water. I furrow my brow, wondering what he's doing there. He seems oddly engrossed by the ocean because, even as I walk past, he doesn't notice me, but I still ask, "What're you doing?"

I feel like he hasn't heard or even sensed me, though, because even when I'm right beside him he doesn't acknowledge me. I peer out the window to see if I can see what he's watching so intently, but there's only the moon against an inky blue backdrop, half of which is stark and still, while the other half gleams and stirs.

"The moon," he points out after a moment. I glance over at him, my lips pursing together. I don't get it. My eyes flick back to the moon. It's in full bloom and absolutely radiant.

"Looks nice, doesn't it?" I mutter, cocking my head to the side.

"It reminds me of that night," he says, and I don't need to ask him what he's talking about. I straighten up and take a step back. He closes his eyes, lowering his head.

"You should go get some sleep," I say quickly, and walk away, toward the room Sakura and I are sharing. "I'll see you in the morning."

"You were thinking about it earlier," he says, stopping me. "You may not have realized it, but you were."

"How would you know?" I shoot back, agitated.

"I felt it," he answers simply and walks to the other end of the hall where he disappears.

And later as I fall back into the futon that Tsunami had set up for me, my eyes are wide open, thinking about what Sasuke had said, my head buzzes and it all begins to makes sense: The sick feeling in my stomach, my reaction to the story, to hearing that Inari had witnessed his father's death.

Sasuke was right. It reminded me of the night we had stumbled onto the Uchiha compound and found our families slaughtered, although we'd had the fortune of arriving _after_ everyone had already died. The story Tazuna had told reminded me of the death, the misery, the daggering depression of loneliness after the massacre. Of watching my mother die before my eyes a week later.

I'm angry that Sasuke had prodded inside my brain, but I'm more annoyed by the fact that he had known what I was thinking before I did.

Unless he had been thinking the same thing too.

I turn onto my side and bite my lip. Closing my eyes, I pray for sleep the rest of the night.

[+]

Things don't pick up again until our seventh night in the Land of the Waves. Kakashi's body seems to be recovering quite well according to the check-up I'd given him earlier—he'll be ready to be out on duty again tomorrow—and the bridge is near completion.

Our days have been a repeat of sitting around, overlooking Tazuna's bridge building, coming home, eating, watching Naruto and Sasuke train, and sleeping, and its redundancy is finally getting to me. I'm regretting all those times that I'd said I'd be happy if all our missions required us to do nothing more than sit around relaxing.

"Should we be worried that Naruto-kun and Sasuke-kun aren't back yet?" Tsunami asks as she brings the dinner to the table.

"No," I answer, taking a sip of my tea. "They should be back any minute now. I can feel it." Kakashi gives me a look and I grin at him. "Really," I say, using my cup to motion toward the door. "In three, two, one—"

The front door clicks open and Sasuke comes stumbling in, scowling. Naruto has his arm over Sasuke's shoulder for support. His breathing is labored. They have a layer of dirt smeared over their skin, giving them a musty smell, not to mention their clothes are absolutely filthy; Sasuke's white shorts have turned a nasty shade of tan and Naruto's orange suit is practically brown.

Inari gives me an inquiring glance. I wink at him, setting my cup down. "It's a ninja thing," I shrug complacently.

"Oh!" Tazuna says. "You guys are finally back! Albeit looking super dirty and worn out."

Naruto chuckles, his teeth contrasting with his filth as he grins. "The both of us," he pants, "made it to the top of the tree."

"Then," Kakashi says. "Naruto, Sasuke—starting tomorrow, you two will also help protect Tazuna-san."

"All right!" Naruto cheers as Sasuke deposits him in his usual seat beside me, before walking around the table to sit next to Inari. Naruto slumps against the table, letting his chin rest where his plate would go, and it's not long before he falls asleep.

I sigh. "This kid," I mutter, propping my face up on the heel of my hand and prodding Naruto awake with my free fingers. "How're you going to work tomorrow if you're this tired? You should've thought about that before you pushed yourself so hard!"

"At least that's one thing we have in common," Tazuna laughs. "I'm worn from today's bridge work too. At any rate, the bridge is almost complete!"

"Naruto-kun, Father, don't overdo it, okay?" Tsunami pleads.

Tazuna hums dismissively and Naruto grunts. I smile at him, petting his head. Who would have thought that Naruto would have turned out to be such an impressive ninja?

Naruto frowns and swats my hand away, lifting his head. Something across the table catches his attention. "What?" he asks. "What's wrong?"

I follow his gaze and find myself looking at Inari. There are tears streaking down his face in steady streams. Inari slams his hands against the table and, glaring, demands, "Why do you guys bother to try so hard? No matter how hard you train, you're still no match for Gato's men! No matter what _glorious_ claims you make or how hard you work, when facing the strong, the weak will only end up getting killed!"

We're all shocked into silence by Inari's outburst. Well, everyone except for Naruto.

"Whatever kid," he scoffs, laying his head back down in his arms. "I'm not like you."

"Well I'd hate to be like you!" Inari shouts across the table. "You don't know _anything_ about this country, yet you run around acting like you do! What the hell do you know about me? I'm different from you! You're always clowning around and acting so cheerful, you don't know how hard life can be!"

"Inari," I sternly try to cut in because I know for a fact that Naruto has probably had a much tougher life than he lets on, but Naruto doesn't let me continue.

"So it's okay for you to pose as the star of a tragedy and cry all day?" Naruto says, slowly lifting his head to reveal the fiercest glare I'm sure he's ever produced. "It takes a _really_ big man to sit around and cry all day, idiot! You're such a baby."

"Naruto, you went way too far!" Sakura chides as Naruto extracts himself from the table. He harrumphs in response and disappears into the corridor. "Honestly, he never knows when to stop!" Sakura huffs once he's gone.

"Well in his defense, I think he had a right!" I snap back at her, pushing away from the table as well.

"Wha—hey, Ren!"

"You know, Inari," I say as I leave the room. "I'm sure Naruto doesn't mean to be rude, and I definitely don't either. But the thing is: who are _you_ to be assuming things about _us_? Stop being a hypocrite and open your eyes. There's a world of hardships out there kid. Consider yourself lucky."

Without another word, I follow after Naruto, shoving my hands in my pockets. I find him upstairs, sitting in the room that he, Kakashi, and Sasuke are sharing. I'm about to go in when I realize that I don't know what to say. I've always been a poor comforter. I'd had years spent alone to thank for that. So I just kind of stand in the doorway, watching him like a creeper as he stares out the window, wishing that I knew what to do.

[+]

The next morning, I sigh, rubbing my cheek against my shoulder because I'm too lazy to reach up and scratch my face with my hands. Kakashi, Sasuke, Sakura, and I are already out on the docks that surround Tazuna's house, ready to go, with the old man himself in the lead. Naruto had been in such a haggard state last night that he hadn't been able to wake up. Kakashi decided that, considering how much he's trained, he deserved a day off and let the boy sleep in.

"I can always stay back and watch over Naruto," I say as Tsunami bids us off. "To make sure he's recovering okay and stuff."

"No, Ren," Kakashi says, pushing me along. "When Naruto wakes up, he'll just be angry at you for not getting him up earlier so that he could leave with us. Besides, I have a feeling that we'll need all the extra help we can get today. It has, after all, been a week."

"So do you think that Zabuza could be coming back?" Sakura asks as we head through the forest to the building site.

"It's possible," Kakashi answers. "But that's only if he's survived the Hunter-Nin escapade."

I frown at this, hoping that, if he had survived the attack, Zabuza wouldn't come today, mostly because sleep has not been my friend and I'm generally too lazy to want to deal with him. It seems unlikely though that the guy will waste any time trying to kill the old man, especially after we humiliated him last time.

Well, at least Kakashi did.

And if I know one thing it's how much people will want to avenge themselves after being put through something like that.

My gaze slicks over to Sasuke who's flanking my right. He has his usual stoic visage on with his hands stuffed in his pockets. He notices me watching him and quirks his brow. "What?" he asks.

"Nothing," I reply, looking away before he thinks it'll be a good idea to go poking around my head. "You're looking…uh, well, is all. Healthy and stuff." I immediately want to lean over the side of the dock and dunk my head into the water for saying something so stupid.

Sasuke rolls his eyes at me before returning them to the path we're walking on. I reprimand myself in my head for saying more than was needed. Sakura gives me a funny look over Sasuke's shoulder. I fidget with my hair in response. Kakashi watches this interaction between the three of us like we're animals on display at a zoo. I cross my arms and scowl ahead.

The thing is I never know what to say to Sasuke because I don't know of what he's already aware. Being from the master clan that controls the bond, no matter how many barriers I put up between us, he'd still be able to see, feel, and know exactly what I'm thinking whenever he wants. And, sure, I can lower the wall that I put between us and take a glance at what's happening on the other side of the bond, but really, I couldn't care less, although it does put me in quite the predicament because not knowing what he knows is a bad disadvantage.

"Hey—what the hell happened here?" Tazuna cries as our group comes to a stop. We've reached the bridge that juts out of the cliff and is a mere 200 meters from the other side. However, at the end where they're supposed to be building, Tazuna's men lay scattered, blood smearing down their faces and discoloring their clothes. Tazuna rushes to the side of one of his men who seems to be barely holding on. Kakashi nods at me to follow and I do so obediently.

As Tazuna props the man up in his lap, I lean over the others to check their pulses. Once I reach the last man, I press my fingers to his neck and confirm, "They're all dead."

"What happened?" Tazuna asks his last surviving employee desperately.

"A—a monster," the man manages. He reaches up to grab the old man's shirt. "Tazuna, you must…you must leave before he gets you too!" The man grimaces, his hands flying back to his abdomen which he clutches. I get to my feet, realizing that he's dying, but before I'm able to do any more, the man's eyes flutter to a close. He doesn't move again.

Still, I hurry to Tazuna's side and pull the old man to his feet. "Come on, Tazuna," I say, leading him back to our group. "It's not okay for you to be separated from the group anymore."

Just as I reach the safety of my team, a thick fog starts to roll in.

"Here they come!" Kakashi announces, and we surround ourselves around Tazuna. I'm quick to take out a kunai and grasp it in my hands. Then, taking a deep, calming breath, I reinforce the barrier between Sasuke and me so that he can't mess me up like he did last time.

"Kakashi-sensei," Sakura says. "This is his hiding in the mist technique, isn't it?"

And sure enough, the slick voice of our enemy shifts through the haze and bothers our ears. "Long time no see, Kakashi," it says. From beside me, I can see Sasuke trembling, although it's not with the same manner as before. "I see you're still with those brats. Poor kid; he's shaking again."

In the blink of an eye, there are a number of Zabuza clones surrounding us. I clench the kunai in my hand, not taking kindly to the fact that we're trapped.

"I'm shaking," Sasuke explains, calm as can be, "with excitement."

I keep from rolling my eyes as Kakashi says, with a smile in his voice, "Go ahead, Sasuke."

There's a blur of Sasuke's blue shirt, and then a splash of water as he cuts through all the clones with his kunai. The water glistens for a moment, suspended in air, before splattering gracelessly across the pavement as Sasuke retakes his position stylishly.

"Well done!" Zabuza praises. "My doppelgangers were no match for you. It seems that these brats have matured into worthy opponents, wouldn't you say, Haku?"

"Indeed!" answers another voice and the fog clears enough for us to see that Zabuza has himself situated so that Sasuke has a full frontal of him. As we turn to reposition ourselves, we notice that beside Zabuza's massive frame is a much more petite person. He has long strands of black hair framing the white porcelain mask that shields his face.

"It seems that I was right," Kakashi says, nonchalantly shoving his hands into his pockets. "Our mysterious masked friend is playing on Zabuza's team."

"He has some nerve," Sakura declares, propping her hands on her hips, "showing up like this!"

"This one's mine," claims Sasuke, readying himself for assault. "Tricking us with his stupid act—I hate bastards like that the most!"

"You're so cool Sasuke-kun!" Sakura swoons, and my head droops forward, exasperated.

"No time for flirting, Sakura," I say as the boy at Zabuza's side disappears in twirl of wind. "The enemy is on the move."

I hear the patter of footsteps, and then Sasuke skids back slightly before leaning forward to block a low blow from the boy, who seemingly was able to teleport right in front of him. Sasuke is smart enough to lead the boy, who is now using his senbon to counter Sasuke's kunai, away from us.

"Sakura, Ren," Kakashi says, catching our attention. "Cover Tazuna-san and stay close! We'll let Sasuke handle him."

"All right!" Sakura agrees for the both of us, but I can't help keeping my eyes on Sasuke's battle. They're currently at stalemate, with Haku's senbon offsetting Sasuke's kunai.

"Ren," Kakashi says again. I turn to him, unable to comprehend why he's distracting me. "We might need your medical skills later," he explains. "You especially need to try not to get involved in the fight. Do you understand?"

I take a sharp breath in. "Fine," I agree sullenly, and turn back to watch Sasuke.

"I don't want to have to kill you," Haku says, holding half of a hand seal in front of his face, "but you won't stand down, will you?"

"Don't be stupid," Sasuke smirks.

"Just as I thought," Haku seems to lament. "But you won't be able to match my speed for long, and I've just laid the ground work for two attacks. Firstly, there's water splashed all over the ground, and secondly, I've trapped one of your hands with this parrying move. You will now only be able to run from my attacks!"

But what can _he _do with only one hand that Sasuke can't? I think, just before Haku starts to flip through a number with hand seals with his only free hand, making my eyes widen. Haku raises his left foot briefly and stomps it on the ground.

Promptly, the surrounding puddles around them flies up into the air inhumanly, as though a giant has just dropped his foot into the ocean by the Land of the Waves. The water takes the shape of icicles and I wonder if Haku was just kidding when he said that he didn't want to have to kill Sasuke.

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura shouts as the icicles take on a more established shape. I shush her.

"He knows what he's doing!" I hiss, focusing in on the scene. "Let him concentrate!"

The needles begin to waver in the air before shooting forward and exploding as they impact the nucleus of the attack. Haku has jumped back to avoid the hit and stumbles a bit when the water splashes to the ground and he sees that Sasuke is gone.

Sasuke has jumped up to avoid the ice crystals and, from the air, Sasuke pulls shuriken from his holster and tosses them at Haku one at a time. Haku manages to dodge each one, but just barely, and the fourth shuriken comes so close to hitting him that he has to use one of his senbon to counteract it.

"You're not _that_ fast," Sasuke says, appearing behind Haku with a kunai in each hand. "From now on, _you're_ the one who will be able to run from my attacks."

Haku whirls around as Sasuke thrusts his hand forward to stab him. Haku blocks it easily, and then has to duck when Sasuke throws the kunai, aiming for his face. Then, as Haku is still down low, Sasuke swings his leg back to kick Haku's jaw and send him flying. Haku skids to a halt by Zabuza's feet.

"You're fast," Sasuke says smugly, "but I'm faster."

This time, I can't help but to groan as Sakura roots Sasuke on.

"You had that coming for underestimating my team," Kakashi says and, as though it's just occurred to him that he should set a good example for us as an adult, adds, "and for name-calling. He may not look like much, but Sasuke is the Leaf's top rated rookie. Sakura here is our sharpest mind. Ren could be the best medic of her generation. And let's not forget our own comedy ninja—the idiot show-off, most hyper-active, and loudest ninja in the village: Naruto!"

Zabuza starts to do that freaky smug chuckle of his. "Haku, do you realize," Zabuza says to his partner, "at this rate, we'll be driven back? You could end up being killed by the very hands you sought to spare."

"Yeah," he admits, getting to his feet. The air around us suddenly drops in temperature. I don't seem to be the only one who notices because Sasuke's body tenses as well. "We can't have that." Haku makes an awkward hand seal that I've never seen before. In response to this, the water around Sasuke starts to slither up in thin sheets. They surround him before freezing into separate panes of ice that resemble glass windows or mirrors. They have Sasuke covered in an icy dome that spaces apart every quarter of a meter, making it almost impossible for Sasuke to escape unless he turns sideways and shimmies out.

"Kakashi," I start, panicking as Haku steps forward and slides into one of the ice panes. "Kakashi, I gotta go. Sasuke can't—"

"No, Ren!" Kakashi says. "You stay here. I'll go—"

Before Kakashi can make it very far from our group though, Zabuza gets in his way and says, "Let's not forget. Your opponent is me. Let's let our children play together. Anyway, against that technique, he's finished."

"Kakashi!" I cry, growing agitated. My body is trembling and I can't stop it. I need to go help Sasuke. I need to go be by his side. "I can do it! I can help him."

"There will be no way you'll be able to make it inside those mirrors and do anything more than be torn to shreds girl. Let's take a look, shall we, to see what my boy is _really_ capable of."

Our glances shift over Zabuza's shoulder to watch. Suddenly, a blur of green ricochets madly against each of the mirrors and Sasuke yells. Even from here, I can see his clothes being torn to shreds and blood splaying everywhere.

"If you try to get past me," Zabuza warns Kakshi, "I'll kill those three over there."

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura calls as he screams again. "Tazuna-san," she says, more collected this time, "I'm sorry but I'm going to have to leave you for a moment. Ren will watch over you."

"Sakura, wait!" I screech, reaching out to grab her arm. "If you can't get inside those mirrors to help him, what's the point?"

"I can at least distract him!" Sakura counters, tugging out of my grip. "It's better than just _standing around_, Ren." This last part makes me flinch, but she doesn't notice. She's already running toward the mirrors, kunai out. She flings it through the gaps between the mirrors to hit one of the Hakus, but he merely extends his hand and catches it. But sure enough, his attack on Sasuke has stopped. His head follows out after to see what caused the interruption. That's a bad move on his part because a shuriken comes out of nowhere and hits him, knocking him out of the mirror. This surprises us all.

"What in god's name…?" Tazuna mutters from behind me as someone sets off a smoke bomb to the left of the ice dome.

"Uzumaki Naruto!" the blonde boy announces as the smoke clears, striking a pose. "At your service!"

I sigh, relieved that Naruto's appearance has, for the moment, stopped everything down, yet at the same time, annoyed because he could have chosen a more inconspicuous way of showing up and getting us out of this trouble.

God, do we have our work cut out for us.

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	16. Legacy

**Bound  
Chapter 16: Legacy**

"Here I am to save the day!" Naruto declares, stabbing a finger at the enemy. "You know how the story goes—things look bleak, and just when you think it's too late, the hero arrives and instantly kicks the enemy's ass!"

"WELL YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GET ANYWHERE MAKING STUPID CLAIMS LIKE THAT AND STANDING AROUND!" I yell at him, wanting to wring my hands around his stupid neck and shake him back and forth. "GO. HELP. SASUKE."

Just as I'm saying this though, Zabuza pulls out a couple of his shuriken and flings it at Naruto, who promptly prepares to block it with a kunai. However, Haku's senbon make it there first. The needles knock the shuriken away as the masked boy gets up, confusing us all. For a hopeful second, I think that Naruto's speech had somehow senselessly made Haku change sides, but then Haku explains himself to his partner.

"Zabuza-san," he says slowly. "These kids—please let me fight them my own way."

"So you don't want me to interfere, huh, Haku?" Zabuza asks. "How charmingly naïve of you, as usual."

_Naïve?_ I want to scream at him. _NAЇVE?_ There's nothing _naïve_ about his offensive tactics! He's got Sasuke trapped in crystal dome with no chance of escape and is swiftly tearing him to shreds with his needles, even though he can just kill him right away. It's mental torture and anxiety rolled into a single, flawless technique.

Although Zabuza maybe referring to how naïve it is of Haku not to kill Sasuke right away. I mean, Sasuke could bounce right back any minute and totally obliterate Haku. Right? And what with Naruto coming along to help, it should be even better for Sasuke to get out of there, as long as Naruto attacks from the outside where Haku can't get to him.

"You total moron!" I hear and snap out of my musings. I turn my attention back to the situation at hand to find that Naruto has entered into the ice dome and is now crouched beside Sasuke. I slap my palm to my face, wondering why I had trusted so much responsibility to Naruto.

"If you're a shinobi then use your head!" Sasuke scolds from within the trap. "Why did you come inside the mirrors? DAMMIT, NEVER MIND, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE. You're an idiot!"

"What did you say?" Naruto demands. "I come to save you and this is what I get? Besides, _Ren_ is the one who told me to help you out!"

"Hey, don't you go blaming your stupidity on me!" I scream back, fuming. "I said 'HELP SASUKE', not 'GO COMPROMISE YOURSELF BY RUNNING BLINDLY INTO THE ENEMY'S TRAP WITHOUT A PLAN'!"

"Enough," Haku says and slips back into the mirrors. "Let's finish this!"

Without missing a beat, Sasuke starts to flip through a series of hand signs before the entire ice dome fills with a raging ball of fire. Sakura yelps, but before she can do anymore fretting, the fire disperses just as quickly as it had come on. However, against all natural logic, the flames have barely caused the ice mirrors to sweat. There's another blur of movement from inside the mirrors and Sasuke and Naruto cry out. They fall back against the ground, torn up and wincing.

"How?" I mutter, my eyebrows cinching together. "How is he doing that?"

Naruto gets back to his feet and conjures up about a dozen clones. Individually, they spring for a mirror, only to be dissipated by another blur of Haku. Naruto gets knocked back again as Haku explains, "The jutsu uses the mirror's reflection to transport me. From my point of view, you seem to be moving in slow-motion."

Like teleportation? I scoff. Teleportation isn't real. It's just high speed movements that give off the impression of teleporting. But if that's the case in this situation, he'd have to be moving at an impossible speed.

"I never imagined someone so young could master a technique like that," Kakashi notes, though I can barely hear him. I need to get inside that stupid dome without getting trapped as Naruto and Sasuke are so I can help them get out.

Of course, there is a way for me to go in and see the terrain without physically having to go in myself, but that would go against everything that I stand for! And there's always the slight chance that while I'm doing mid-jutsu (although is it a jutsu? I wouldn't think so, considering it doesn't require me to do much anything.) I could be targeted and thus bring my teammates down with me.

"…kekkei genkai!"

My ears perk up at this and I look to my teacher. "That's it!" I blurt, bringing my hands together to form a hand seal. Luckily, no one notices because they're too entranced by what's going inside Haku's Dome of Death. "Tazuna, I'm gonna need you to stick close," I say so that only he can hear as I close my eyes. "And try not to move so much."

I flip through a few hand signals until I'm able to feel the vibrations in the air pressing against my chest. Keeping my hands tightened in the seal of the snake, I can feel the slightest twitch of Kakashi's panicky fingers. I can feel each nervous breath that comes from Tazuna's shaky lungs. And most importantly, I can keep track of Zabuza's movements. I take a relaxing breath and, instead of opening my eyes, I let the barrier between Sasuke and me slip and then I'm there.

I can feel the slight tingle of the cuts all over his arms and cheeks, the nauseating fear of not knowing what to do next or how the hell they're going to escape. I can feel his dread that maybe—just maybe—he will die.

"I've had enough," Naruto is saying wiping the side of his mouth with the back of his hand. He grimaces. "So, is this it? It can't end like this! I've got a dream I need to fulfill!"

Haku pauses, watching them from inside the mirror where he stands. I roam Sasuke's brain for the basics of Haku's attack tactics and find nothing that I didn't already know. But if I attack from the outside and break one of the mirrors at just the right time, I can knock him out of it and get Sasuke and Naruto free.

Something shoves against me while I'm inside Sasuke's mind. Not physically; mentally. Sasuke is finally aware that I'm prodding around inside his head. _Get out,_ he seems to be saying, and I feel another mental shove, like someone is jabbing their finger into my brain. _Get out!_

I push back and, ignoring him, try to find the best point of entry for me to break in and free them. Obviously, it's going to have to be from the back of the dome, that way, if and when Zabuza notices, he won't be able to get to me right away. Now, to watch his movements and see if I can find an opening in his attacks.

"I," Haku finally says as I urge Sasuke to his feet, "find it difficult to embrace the full shinobi philosophy. I can't help but prefer that the two of you not force me to kill you. However, if you are going to come at me, then I shall kill my heart with this blade and act as a full-fledged shinobi would. This bridge is a meeting point of our destinies and all our dreams and futures balance on the edge of a knife.

"I have my own dreams," Haku says softly, "as you have yours. Please try not to resent me, but I'm willing to do whatever it takes to protect the one I care about most; to fight, kill, or die to fulfill that person's dreams—doing so is my own dream. To that end, I will become a true shinobi and I shall kill you both."

I can feel the smirk working its way up across Sasuke's lips as I consider what Haku has just said. _I'm willing to do whatever it takes…to fight, kill, or die to fulfill that person's dreams—doing so is my own dream._

He's just admitted, with no shame that I can detect, that to live his life for someone else, doing everything in his power to please them, is all that he wants to do, to the point where he would _die_ for them. This confuses me. I had always thought everyone was only concerned about themselves. Sure, maybe not as radically as I am, but I'd always use the selfishness of the human race as justification for running away, for wanting to break this bond.

My guard falters some as I revel in the fact that Haku has inadvertently disproved my hypothesis and jumbled everything that I know to pieces.

I'm snapped back into action when, from outside the dome, I hear Sakura cry, "Sasuke-kun, Naruto, don't you dare lose to a guy like him!" and then Kakashi quietly reprimand her. The vibrations of their voices rumble to my body, and I can feel every word that they say, but I chose not to listen. After all, I'd only set up my vibrations as a safety net, so I can feel when Zabuza's coming and return to my own body before somebody dies. Namely me or Tazuna.

I quickly fill Sasuke in on my plan before I get so caught up in Haku's previous words that I forget. I tell him where my point of attack is going to be and tell him to relax, to which he quickly argues that he's fine. He tries to send me back to my own body, but I stick firmly to the recesses of his mind.

_Just to watch his attacks,_ I explain to him. _Besides, I've got Tazuna covered. The vibrations will alert me of any movements outside of the dome._

Just as I'm saying this, the vibrations take a violent shift that makes me gasp. It's Zabuza's body that's moving, I can tell, but it stops almost as soon as it started. With the vibrations, I can feel Kakashi reaching for his headband and lifting it so that he can use his Sharingan. I can also feel that Zabuza has lunged forward to strike Kakashi, though I can't tell if the hit landed.

_Go back,_ Sasuke orders. _Go back and cover the rest of our team._

To this, I firmly hiss, _No._

Because, honestly, I'm worried about him. I'm scared for him. I want to help him and be close to him, and if this is the only way for me to do so, by God I'm going to do it and stay here for as long as I can. Although I wouldn't admit that to him. Or even myself before hearing what Haku had to say about living for someone else.

Besides, I haven't been able to do much during our time as a team. And I resent that. It's like I'm some nasty fifth wheel. And it's even worse when I put into consideration the fact that we're supposed to be working together.

And that I'm supposed to be protecting Sasuke with my life. And yet, here I am, basically letting him die.

"Aw man," Naruto groans. "We've got to stop reacting and take back initiative!"

"Shut up and get to your feet," Sasuke retorts. "I can't fight him and watch out for you too. We're both wounded but all we can do now is suck it up and keep fighting. We'll be fine if he doesn't kill one of us." I wince here. "Besides, his chakra levels have got to be depleting. His movements are getting slower."

Haku readies his needles and Sasuke pulls a kunai from his holster. He watches the mirrors and manages to jump to the side as a needle impales itself into his knee.

_What the hell is he doing?_ I wonder, referring to Haku. This is the first time one of his needles have actually pierced Sasuke at all. _He's actually trying to _cripple_ you now instead of just cutting you to ribbons?_

Sasuke promptly tells me to shut up.

Outside of the dome, I can feel Zabuza shifting. He's moving way more than usual, and it seems that he's got Kakashi trapped, because my teacher is standing completely still. Sakura has moved back to Tazuna's side. This must mean that Zabuza is hunting again.

Sure enough, Sakura asks, "Ren, _what are you doing?_ It'd be nice if you opened your eyes! Zabuza could be moving in any _second_ now."

_Then go back,_ Sasuke demands. _All you're doing is distracting me anyway._ Haku sends another assault of needles that Sasuke again manages to dodge, but just barely.

Kakashi's been sent flying across the bridge, and I can see from Sasuke's eyes that the fog outside the dome has thickened considerably.

The vibrations flurry closer to my body now, alarming me. My eyes snap open and I'm back in my own consciousness again. Through my own eyes, the world is blurry and swaying with vibrations.

"Ren, what've you been doing?" Sakura wants to know, but there's no time to answer. I whirl around and see it: Zabuza's musty silhouette hiding in the mist behind Tazuna. I grab onto the old man and pull him back, just as Kakashi comes in and bumps us away from Zabuza, but the missing-Nin cries, "Too late!" and swings his sword over his back and toward Kakashi.

Sakura screeches as blood scatters the ground at Kakashi's feet. Kakashi is slightly hunched, a hand covering his stomach.

"Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura cries and suddenly, my vision goes haywire. I slightly lose my balance and I have to press a palm to my forehead to keep my brain from imploding. I blink rapidly, but that does nothing to clear my sight, and with the added fuzzing of the vibrations, I can't see where one body ends and the next one begins. I flip my hands together and swiftly release the vibrations. At the same time, my neck begins to throb and ache, like I'm wearing a necklace of spikes that stab into my flesh, somehow missing all the vital points, but only by a bit. I feel on the verge of collapsing. I can't hear anything that the people around me are saying, and it isn't until Zabuza disappears behind the mist and Kakashi's about to leave again that I realize I need to move in and help Sasuke nownownow because there is something terribly wrong.

"Ren, Sakura, don't move an inch," Kakashi says, preparing to jump off. "I'll finish this as quickly as I can."

"Kakashi, wait!" I call, and he hesitates. "I'm gonna go help them. Sasuke and Naruto. Sakura can stay here and watch Tazuna, but the situation within the mirrors—it's getting hopeless."

Kakashi glances at me from over his shoulder, looking grim.

"I just thought I should tell you," I say, holding my head. "Before I go."

"Wha—Ren, you can't just—!"

"Go," Kakashi nods, and dashes off.

"Don't worry, Sakura," I say, rubbing my neck. "You'll be fine. I believe in you."

"Ren, wai—" I don't hear the rest of her sentence because I'm already gone, running to the ice mirrors because inside something is happening to Sasuke and it's awful. I can feel the settling acceptance of someone who's going to die, the kind of acceptance that you just kind of tolerate because you don't have any more time left to really do what you want. And as I come closer to the ice mirrors, I lose my sense and gather my chakra into my fist before throwing it forward into the first mirror that I see, forgetting my plan, and release my chakra at the precise moment my knuckles make contact with the ice mirror.

The mirror shatters into a thousand tiny fragments that fly forward and crackle to the ground. My feet crunch over them as I stumble forward. Slowly, I raise my head and find that the shattering of his mirror has caught his attention. Haku is staring right at me, a needle ready to strike, when, from the center of the ice mirrors, chakra explodes and swirls into the air, its own sheer ferocity causing the water to rise up. The chakra crackles and rips into the ground. And right in the center of it all is Naruto.

And Sasuke.

Only as Naruto stands, his chakra churning the air around him, causing the wind to kick up and debris to soar, Sasuke stays still on the ground. I can't get a better view of him because of the chakra's finicky motions, but I can tell that he's definitely down for the count. I brace myself on the mirror beside me, my eyes wide and my mouth slightly agape, because this cannot be happening.

"Naruto," I whisper, and then manage to scream, "Naruto!"

The wind picks up once again, the chakra seeming to swirl even faster, taking shape above Naruto in the face of a fox with demon eyes, though I can't be sure because, once I blink, it's gone.

There's one final blast of energy before the chakra clears. I can still feel it though, this intense dread, the air pulsing with such bloodlust. It is the foulest, sickest feeling in the world, like the death of a million souls.

Naruto glances at me from over his shoulder, his eyes gleaming a freakish red. His pupils have become slits, not unlike those of cats, and his skin looks fresh and clean, like he'd never been fighting at all, though his clothes say otherwise. The marks on his cheeks have become prominent, like whiskers. Like a fox.

Oh god.

Naruto crouches and charges at the mirror that contains Haku. A feral, blood-curdling roar bleeds into the air, making my hair stand up. I watch as Haku sends four needles Naruto's way. There's a surge of chakra around Naruto and the needles are deflected. I slump against the mirrors, not believing what I'm seeing before me, when the bond brings me back to what I came here for in the first place.

"Sasuke," I mutter and, without thinking, I hurtle forward and grab him, just as Haku sprints out of the mirror overhead, a needle in his hand, ready to stab Naruto.

But with the fox's killer reflexes, Naruto digs his hand into the ground and throws himself to the side, soaring over me, as Haku makes impact with the ground where Naruto had been standing. I shield Sasuke with my body as another too powerful wave of chakra radiates from Naruto. Its strength is enough to crack a few of the mirrors and tear up more of the bridge below us.

When I look up, I see that Naruto has grabbed Haku by the wrist. There's a crater beneath his feet. A few wayward pebbles pelt my face; I only barely flinch. But when Naruto reels back his arm and firmly delivers a solid punch to Haku's face, I have to cower. This power is incredible, fearsome, absolutely terrifying. It's totally unlike Naruto, unlike the boy who eats so much ramen that it's sickening, unlike the boy with the bluepreciousblue eyes like oceans that are heightened by the indelible blonde hair.

This cannot be my friend.

_It's a monster,_ I think, only to quickly reprimand myself. How can I think that? It's still Naruto. No matter what is sealed inside of him, this is still Naruto Naruto _Naruto_. It is still the same punk kid that has become my friend over these past few months of being a team, still the same loudmouth, quirky boy that I believe in and trust in, the one with the dream to become Hokage, the one with the life that had been lonelier and more heartbreaking than anything I could have ever endured.

It is still Naruto. Maybe not completely. But it is still him.

Haku crashes through one of his ice mirrors and goes flying across the bridge. I think that Naruto is going to stop and come back to check on Sasuke, but he dashes forward to, presumably, finish Haku off.

"Naruto, wait!" I shout but am drowned out by the shattering of the other ice mirrors encasing me. I pull Sasuke into my lap and press his body into my own to shield him from the falling shards of ice. But then all I feel hit me are droplets of frosty water. I shiver, straightening out, and shake what water I can from my face. When I look to where I'd seen Naruto last, I can't see a thing. The mist has promptly swallowed the area where I am after the collapsing of the ice cage.

"Naruto," I call, waiting for him to answer. "Naruto!" I'm about to lift Sasuke from my lap when I don't get a response, but then I see Sasuke's face and I stop.

He has cuts layering over each other, and his cheeks are smeared with dried, brown flaking blood. There are needles piercing his body every which way. When I see the ring of needles around his neck, I can feel my own neck throbbing. The way he's got his eyes closed, I would say that, given the current circumstances, he's dead. But, knowing what I know, I can tell that he's alive.

But Naruto can't know that. Naruto must think he's dead. That must have been what triggered the fox to be released.

I lay Sasuke down on the ground so that I can have a solid surface to work on, knowing that with the extra boost of strength that the demon fox's power Naruto will be fine fending for himself. Hopefully. But strength doesn't make up for lack of tact. Any mastermind would be able to manipulate Naruto easily, and Haku is definitely smart.

I bite my lip, torn between healing Sasuke and going to help Naruto. I look down at the Uchiha, so still and pale and cold, and run my thumb along one of the needles that jut out of his arm. Slowly, I tug it out and toss it aside.

His fingers twitch. This seemingly settles things.

"You're right," I mutter. "You're not dying. I'll be right back."

And then I hesitate. Again. Cupping my hand around Sasuke's face, I rub away the blood that has started to run from the moisture in the air. Then, after cleaning his face, I hold my hand to his cheek. My hand radiates with yellow chakra, and when I move it away, his cuts have neatly healed. Satisfied, I get to my feet.

By this time, the mist has started to clear. I can see Naruto standing only three meters away from me, with Haku a meter in front of him. Haku's mask has fallen off to show that his hanging black bangs part in the center to frame pale cheeks that made the bruises and blood stand out and big eyes with sweeping lashes. His lips are virtually thin and contain the most color on his face. It all comes together and forms this lovely androgynous face full of desolation.

"The Land of the Mist has been the scene of generations of non-stop war," he's saying. "Among its people, those who possess the kekkei genkai are loathed as abominations."

"Kekkei genkai?" Naruto asks, and I furrow my brow, remembering how Kakashi had been talking about a kekkei genkai earlier.

"The term refers to clans who give them powers like mine," Haku explains, "inherited skills that were exploited and twisted and used to cause horrible slaughter until we ceased to be looked on as warriors or even weapons, but were condemned as harbingers of doom. After the wars were over, we who possessed this trait were hunted, only able to survive by hiding the existence of our skills and our bloodline away. Exposure meant certain death. I'm sure that the boy I killed, who shared that skill, must also have grown up knowing the pain of which I speak. We are special. We are powerful. And we are feared."

I look back down at Sasuke, knowing that his family had gone through something along those lines and it's half the reason for his clan's extinction. And my own clan's. But that story is for another time.

Returning my eyes to Naruto and not wanting him to hear more of what Haku has to say, I call to him, but he doesn't seem to hear me. He's already caught up in Haku's words.

"When my father discovered that my mother was from one of these clans," Haku continues, "he killed her. And before I even realized what I was about to do, my father died by my own hand. And then it came to me. I knew what it was. And I was forced to accept it. And that was the most painful thing, accepting that in this world, I was alone. Superfluous. Unwanted. Shunned."

Immediately, I walk around Sasuke and approach Naruto, grabbing onto his sleeve once I'm close enough. He turns to me over his shoulder and I see that his eyes are back to normal, as well as finally realizing that the menacing chakra has disappeared.

"Ren? When did you—?"

"A while ago. Naruto," I interject, tugging on the fabric I'm holding between my fingers, "Sasuke's—"

Hearing Sasuke's name, Naruto instantly turns away from me and lowers his head. Knowing that he's misunderstood my message, I cinch my fingers tighter around his sleeve.

"You said to me you wanted to become the best ninja in your village and have everyone acknowledge you," Haku says before I can correct myself. "Now, if someone acknowledged you from the bottom of their heart appeared—wouldn't that someone become the most important person to you?"

At this point, I'm not sure what to say anymore. I just watch Haku as he speaks.

"Zabuza-san took me in knowing I was a person of the advanced bloodline," Haku says. "This blood that everyone hated—he desired it. I was so happy."

To live as a tool for someone else—that was the purpose that the Kagiru served to the Uchiha. It's what I want to run from and what this guy wants to live for? I don't understand it. But I can see that as Haku's eyes tear up and how he smiles so blissfully that there are some things that you can feel and others just don't have to understand. Besides, if this is the way Haku wanted to live his life, who's to say he couldn't? After all, isn't that all I want? To be able to live my life as I want?

We're not so different, Haku and I.

"Naruto-kun," Haku says, the smile dropping from his face. His eyes clear of tears as he asks, "Please kill me."

My eyes go wide and my fingers clench around Naruto's arm. "Wait a second!" I cry, jumping forward so that I'm standing in front of Naruto protectively. This catches Haku off guard. He furrows his brow at me as I explain, "You—you can't just _ask_ him to do that! That's hardly at all fair. How do you expect Naruto to kill someone when you yourself weren't able to?"

Haku lowers his eyes. "You're right," he says. "But that situation had not called for your untimely deaths."

"What is with you?" Naruto demands, tugging his arm from my hold and taking charge of the situation. "You're used to being toughest; you don't like to lose—I get that! But wanting to die just because someone's beat you is crazy! Is being strong the only reason for you to be alive? There's…there's more to life than just fighting," Naruto finishes weakly, his head drooping. "There's more to you! Your boss must like you for more than just that—more than being just a tool—right?"

"That day I met you in the forest," Haku says softly, and I wonder when Haku and Naruto had had the time to meet outside of our fights, "I remember thinking that we were two of a kind. Surely you can understand." He takes a breath—one of those breathes you can tell people treasure because they know they've got only a glorious few left. "You'll have to bloody your hands. Forgive me for that."

I glower at him and turn on my heels to face my friend. "Naruto," I say. "You don't have to—"

"Is that," Naruto interrupts, pushing me aside so that he can be face to face with Haku. "Is that the only way? Is there no other outcome?"

Haku looks to Naruto, surprised that even despite what I'd said Naruto is still contemplating doing him this favor. "Yes," Haku answers, smiling sadly.

Naruto closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He reaches into his holster and pulls out a kunai.

"Naruto!" I hiss. I turn back to Haku. If I can't convince Naruto to not do it, I can at least convince Haku not to force him to go through with it. "Naruto's right!" I shout at him. "You can have more dreams! You can do more with your life! You don't have to die just because the only dream you've ever had has been destroyed. Your first dream isn't the only one you'll ever be able to conceive. Please…please don't do this."

I don't know why I'm so adamant about Haku not dying. He's supposed to be my enemy. I'm supposed to want him to be dead. Maybe it's just that I don't want my friend to taint his hands. Maybe it's just that I don't think Haku should be giving up so easily. But I know that it's for more selfish reason.

I just don't want to see any more people dying on me. Not even my enemies.

So can I really be a full-fledge shinobi if I can't even face the fact that people will die?

Haku smiles at me warmly. "Ren-chan," he says and I'm astonished that he knows my name, although my surprise is stifled by my anger. "I appreciate what you're trying to do. But it's okay."

_No,_ I think, scowling at him. My hands clench into fists and my throat is heavy. _It is most definitely not okay._

I whirl around so that my back is to them. I cross my arms and pout like a child. Naruto takes a firmer hold on his kunai and says, "I hope you find your dream then."

My head falls forward. I squeeze my eyes shut and grip my head like I don't want it to fall in half.

"He," Naruto says, his voice wavering. "Sasuke had a dream too. Didn't he Ren?"

_He _has_ a dream,_ I think. _He's alive. He's _alive_. So just stay alive._

"If we'd met under different circumstance, we probably would've been friends." Naruto pauses. "All of us I think."

My eyes snap open when I hear his feet taking off and charging forward. I spin around and cry, "Naruto, stop!" But he's much too far gone.

It's then that I realize the frenzy the vibrations are in; a frenzy which is only set off when a large amount of chakra has been released. I remember that Kakashi and Zabuza are still fighting a ways down the bridge. I look past Naruto and Haku to see the mist is starting to dissipate. However, I still can't see Zabuza or Kakashi.

Haku, suddenly, grabs Naruto's arm to avoid his attack, catching my attention again. I wonder if it'd all been a trick, and fear floods my senses. But then Haku says, "I'm sorry Naruto-kun. I can't die just yet." He holds a hand seal in front of him and disappears in a whirl of the mist.

"Where's he—?" Naruto starts and I cut in with, "Kakashi! Naruto, Kakashi is still fighting Zabuza!"

The mist starts to thin out enough where we can see three silhouettes. "Ren, stay with Sasuke!" Naruto shouts at me over his shoulder and, before I can protest, he dashes off.

It doesn't matter whether or not I go along with him though, because by the time he's close enough to really see what's going on, the mist has cleared so thoroughly that I have no problem seeing for myself the mess that Kakashi has on his hands.

Literally.

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	17. Bonds

**Bound  
Chapter 17: Bonds **

Blood is spattered all over Kakashi's face and chest. It's splayed on the ground and sprinkled on Zabuza's entire front as well. However, it should be noted that between Kakashi and Zabuza is Haku. And that penetrating Haku's chest, right where his heart would be, is Kakashi's right arm.

I feel a little woozy. I turn my gaze away from the gory scene, my nails biting into the flesh of my palm.

At least Haku got what he wanted.

Zabuza's voice cuts through the mourning and catches my attention. "I really did find a treasure in that gutter!" he cries, reaching back to grab his sword and I realize that he's planning to cut right through Haku. "To think that he'd grant me this marvelous chance in the end!"

Kakashi is able to jump out of the way just in time to dodge Zabuza's attack, carrying Haku with him. He extracts his arm from Haku's chest and gently lays the boy down. Carefully, he sweeps his hand over Haku's face to close his eyes.

"So you were able to get away," Zabuza says, swinging his sword over his shoulder. I notice that his right arm dangles at his side uselessly, damaged by one of Kakashi's previous attacks. "Because poor Haku's already dead." He sounds smug about this fact.

It makes me want to rip him apart.

"Naruto, Ren, stand down," Kakashi orders. "This is my fight."

Not that I'd been planning on rushing in anyway.

"Naruto?" someone calls and I remember that Sakura is still with us. She and Tazuna stand six meters away from Kakashi. Her eyes dart between Naruto and me, beaming. "Ren! You're alive!" she says, relieved. "But—wha—what about Sasuke-kun?"

From behind, I watch as Naruto's body wavers. His fists clench and he turns away from Sakura quickly.

It dawns on her what he means to say by that. She looks to me and cries, "Ren, where's Sasuke-kun?"

_Sasuke._ "Shoot," I mutter, dropping my eyes to the floor. I knew I should've stayed behind. At least then I could've cleaned Sasuke up a little bit more so that he'd be presentable and not so dead looking when our teammates came by after the battle. But then understanding how my avoiding her eyes can seem to Sakura, I raise my head hurriedly, making me dizzy. It's too late anyway. Hand-in-hand with Tazuna, she's rushing past me to meet with her dearly beloved.

"Sakura!" I yell after her, exasperated, before following her to Sasuke's side. Why is it so hard to explain to these people that Sasuke isn't dead? I suppose it's my own fault for being so misleading.

Sakura is already kneeling beside Sasuke, her hand pressed to his cheek. "He's so cold," Sakura says weakly. "This isn't an illusion, is it?"

"Don't mind me," Tazuna says. "There are times when it's best to let it all out and cry."

"You know," Sakura mutters. "I always got perfect scores on my exams in school. I memorized over one hundred shinobi sayings. I used to write them out with pride. One day, this question appeared on the test. It said, _'What is shinobi saying #25?'_ I wrote down the answer as usual." Her voice cuts out at this point and she sniffles. Her shoulders shake. When she speaks again, her voice is so thick and full of snot that I get irritated. "_'No matter what the situation, a shinobi must keep emotions on the inside. You must make the mission top priority and you must possess a heart that never shows tears.'_"

Sakura starts wailing, dropping her head in Sasuke's chest. "Sasuke-kun. Sasuke-kun…!"

Leaning down, I roll my eyes, fidgeting with a needle that's impaled in his arm. Slowly, I yank it out of his flesh. I frown, rolling Haku's needle between my fingers.

I'm about to reach for another needle when I feel the bridge rumbling beneath us. My head jerks up, and I look around, alarmed. There are so many feet pounding against the bridge right now, and their numbers are growing. I can't see anyone coming around, but I stand up anyway, just so that I'm not caught off guard. Unsurprisingly, Sakura doesn't take notice, and neither does Tazuna. Leaving them where they are, I run forward, ready to warn my team.

"Kakashi," I say. "Kakashi!"

The Jounin looks my way, having finally disabled Zabuza so that both of the missing-Nin's arms are useless. I stop about a meter away from Naruto and am about to inform him that someone's coming, and by the feel of things, they've got a fucking _army_ on their heels, when another voice speaks up, drawing his attention to the unfinished side of the bridge.

There, a colony of samurai of all shapes and sizes are clustered together, smirking at us. At the head of the group is a short and stout man with a receding hairline of mousy brown hair that stands up thick like a mane. He's got his hands poised at the tip of a cane and dark glasses that cover his coward eyes.

"Well, he's certainly made a fine mess out of you," the man says, grinning like he's just won the lottery. "What a pity, Zabuza."

"Gato," Zabuza greets, albeit suspiciously. "Why're you here? And what's with all these men?"

"The plan has changed, Zabuza," Gato says, then shrugs like he doesn't care. "Well, _your_ plans at least. I'd been planning this since the beginning. You see, you're going to die, 'demon', here and now."

"…What?"

"Surely you must have guessed," Gato says haughtily. "I never intended to pay you from the start. I mean, hiring normal ninja from a village is expensive, and they might betray me, so I get missing-Nin like you who are easy to take care of afterwards. After all, no one cares what happens to your kind once the job is done. All of you ninja are so eager to kill each other. Once you've worn each other down, common thugs can finish up the rest. It's efficient _and_ inexpensive. My only problem was hiring you in the first place. Calling yourself the demon of Kirigakure is just plain false advertising!" He throws his head back and laughs, gaining momentum. He must not feel threatened with all those men behind him because he goes so far as to add, "You're no demon. You're just a cute little baby demon, if that!"

The group starts to laugh along with their ringleader. "What with the shape you're in," one of the men behind Gato cheers, "we could take you down easily!"

"Kakashi," Zabuza says, relatively calm despite his newfound circumstances, "I'm sorry, but our fight is over. Now that I've no longer got any reason to kill Tazuna, I have no reason to go against you."

"Ah," Kakashi answers. "You're right."

My jaw drops open. "You—you're kidding," I stutter, "right? I—I mean, after _all_ that? We're just…we're okay?"

"Ren," Kakashi says.

"What?" I demand. "What, huh? We're just supposed to be _friends_ now? He almost killed us, Kakashi! So we're just gonna let him _slide_?"

"He's no longer our enemy." Kakashi ends it in a way that lets me know the conversation is over. But, my god, if he thinks that I'm going to go along with this so easily—

"That reminds me," Gato says, coming forward. He stops by Haku and prods the boy's face with his foot. "_This one_ squeezed my arm until it broke!" When Haku doesn't flinch, Gato furrows his brow and, upon further investigation, scoffs. "He's dead!" Gato announces, kicking Haku's head to the side. My fingers clench around the needle that I still have in my hand.

"Hey, what do you think you're doing you bastard!" Naruto shouts and charges forward to attack. Kakashi catches him by the collar on the way, stopping him.

"Look at their numbers, Naruto," Kakashi warns. "Think. Don't just _charge_ in."

Kakashi, however, being occupied with caring for Naruto, doesn't notice until it's too late the needle zooming past him. It nails Gato's cane right in the center and impales itself nicely in the expensive wood.

"Hey, wha—?" The shipping magnate stutters and looks for the culprit. "Who—?"

"Don't," I say grimly as everyone looks at me. My arm is still extended from the throw, making it obvious that I was in fact the one who had thrown the weapon. "Don't you _dare_ do that again."

"Why you—"

"He worked for you!" Naruto shouts, turning to Zabuza as he realizes the missing-Nin has contributed nothing to defending Haku. "He was practically your slave! Say something, won't you?"

"Like what?" Zabuza says. "Haku is already dead. Just shut up, kid."

"But you should care!" Naruto says like it doesn't really need explaining. "Don't you feel anything at all? Weren't you two always together? Weren't the two of you _friends_?"

"As I was used by Gato," Zabuza says, "I used Haku. I've said it already: It's a shinobi's lot. We can be users or tools or both. What I wanted from Haku was his blood. I didn't value him as a person. I have no regrets."

This strikes a fear into my heart that I can't understand. My breathing becomes uneven and I want to lash out at Zabuza, pierce a hole through his heart as Kakashi had done to Haku. But on purpose this time, with malice. With no regrets. I don't care if we're not enemies anymore. I don't care if I have to tear my way through Kakashi to do it. I just want to damage Zabuza beyond repair.

"Do you," Naruto mutters weakly, "do you really believe that?" He jerks away from Kakashi who protests, "Stop Naruto! We're not fighting him anymore. Besides—"

"Shut up!" Naruto yells, jabbing a finger at the man who is nearly twice his size. "He's still my enemy!"

"Who _is_ this annoying kid?" Gato wants to know. I wonder why he even has the audacity to make his presence known to us. It doesn't matter anyway because we just keep on ignoring him.

Naruto points to Haku, bellowing, "He really loved you! He was devoted to you enough to give up his life for you! But you think that's just nothing, that _he_ was nothing! Don't you feel a thing? Do you really—really, _truly_—feel nothing at all?"

The desperation of trying to understand the situation that Naruto throws into the air makes my stomach fold in on itself and my soul shred. This makes me want to hurt Zabuza all the more.

"Is that how you get when your powers are as strong as yours are?" I find myself having to look away from Naruto as he wails, "Because if it is, I never want to be that powerful. Because he threw away his _life_ for you! And you feel nothing? Without his own dream. To die as a tool…that's just…too sad."

And that's when I realize what it had been that tugged at my cowardly heartstrings—Haku was nothing more than a tool, nothing more than what I was meant to be: An accessory to the Uchiha. But I'd always figured that I'm worth more to this world than that. But if what Zabuza says is true, if what he's been preaching to us about shinobi being users and tools is all that there is to this life, then what have I got?

I close my eyes, my breathing coming in and out unevenly.

"Kid," Zabuza murmurs amidst my panic. "Not another word."

"Ren," Kakashi says softly, and I return my gaze to the scene before me just as Zabuza turns away, but not fast enough that I can't see that his eyes are welling over with tears. My thoughts go topsy-turvy. I purse my lips, unsettled by the rolling feeling in my stomach.

"Kid," Zabuza says again, his voice getting stronger. "It pained him to have to fight you. Haku not only fought for me, but he fought for you guys too. He was too kind. He didn't want to have to kill you. But I'm glad I got to face you guys in the end. And, you know, you may be right. So, do what we will, in the end, we shinobi are still people with all too human feelings."

The bandages around Zabuza's mouth become loosened before they fall around his neck. "Kid," he says to Naruto. "Lend me your kunai, will you?"

Naruto, surprised, hesitates. But then he reaches into his holster and tosses the kunai toward Zabuza who professionally catches it in his mouth. There's a determined glare set on his face and, without another word, he tears off for Gato.

Panicked, Gato stumbles back to the safety of his men. "That's enough!" he bumbles like an idiot. "Kill them!"

"Sure," a man answers, stepping forward. "One badly injured ninja against these numbers? Do you think you can win?"

Their faces drop though and they falter when they see that Zabuza isn't slowing down or showing any signs of an injured Nin. He barrels forward, making them part, and mows through the crowd of thugs, even managing to take a few of them down. As Zabuza flies through, the samurai stab their katana and spears and whatever else they can into his back. They don't do much, but I'll give them credit for trying.

Zabuza stops when he's standing in front of Gato, who is chilled by the fact that Zabuza has managed, even in the condition he's in, to get this far. He digs the kunai into Gato's stomach, making the old man gasp.

"Die already!" some men cry, shoving their blades into his back. They stumble away when Zabuza doesn't go down and scurry back to their safety in numbers.

"If you want to go to the same place as your friend," Gato blurts, "then go alone!"

"Unfortunately, I have no intention of going to the same place as Haku," Zabuza says matter-of-factly.

"Wh-what are you babbling about?" Gato demands. "You won't survive!"

"No," he admits. "I'm taking you with me to _hell_."

I throw my hands over my face just as Zabuza goes in for the kill, beheading Gato. I lower my head, my fingers trembling over my cheeks.

I feel my heart lurch into my stomach, making me sick. Clutching my stomach, I turn away and walk quickly back to where Sasuke, Sakura, and Tazuna are. Sakura is still bent over Sasuke, crying, and I'm annoyed that she hasn't realized that, beneath her weight, Sasuke is breathing. I stand beside Tazuna, my eyes turned down in an angry disbelief. I just want to go home now.

"Sakura, move aside," I say, bumping her with my foot. I fall lightly to my knees and bump her again with my shoulder when she doesn't as I've ordered. "Come on, Sakura. Open your eyes."

"Look," Tazuna starts, his voice irritated. "You're young, so you might not know what it feels like to lose someone you love, but Sakura—"

"That's where you're wrong, old man," I say quietly, gripping the shredded fabric of Sasuke's shirt. "Don't make haughty presumptions like that. It's embarrassing."

"Sasuke-kun," Sakura sobs, ignoring me completely. "Sasuke-kun…!"

I shake my head, fed up, and grasp another needle that's stuck in his arm. I pull this needle out at the exact angle it had entered, careful not to cause more damage. I put my finger over the open wound and, slowly, it smokes. Then it starts to heal over. When I move my hand away, the wound is gone.

I hold my hand out so that I can examine the needle. Half of it is covered with Sasuke's blood. I wipe it off on the hem of my shirt and when I hold it up to the light, it gleams. Quietly, I put the needle into my pouch, just as Sasuke's finger twitches. I freeze, my eyes shooting to his face. I elbow Sakura as Sasuke's eyes start to flutter.

"Sakura," I say as she finally lifts her head. I flick a finger toward Sasuke. "Look."

Reluctantly, she turns, biting her lip to contain the sobs. Then her face goes slack. Her eyes widen. They brim with tears once more.

"Sakura?" the boy asks, looking like it's taking all his effort to open his eyes halfway. "Your arm's heavy."

"Oh, good grief." I slap Sakura's arm. "I didn't think about that. Move it off—"

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura cries without acknowledging me. She throws her arms around his neck, oblivious to the needles that are ringed around it like a collar of spikes. I wince as Sasuke groans, the pain rippling through his body practically visible. "Sasuke-kun! Sasuke-kun!"

"Sakura," says Sasuke again as I try to peel her off of him. "That hurts."

"Oh!" Dutifully, she releases him, helping him into a more comfortable sitting position. "Sorry," she adds feebly.

"How're you feeling?" I ask, examining the needles in his neck from where I sit. These won't be hard to remove; it'll just take a delicate hand, though I'll probably have to do it here, before we get back to the house. Having him move around with all these needles in him won't help his case.

"I'm all right," Sasuke assures, trying to get up. "How's Naruto? And that creep in the mask?"

I scowl at him for referring to Haku like that—after all, Haku _had_ spared all our lives, and after speaking with him the way I had, he doesn't seem so bad to me anymore. Especially not now that I can relate to him.

I push Sasuke back down roughly. "You should be more concerned for yourself," I tell him. "Don't move."

"Ren's right." Sakura agrees. "Besides, Naruto is fine. And the masked boy is dead."

"Dead?" repeats Sasuke. "Did Naruto—?"

"No," I answer, "I don't think that he would have been able to; even give the chance he had." I can't resist reaching out to brush the dirt off of Sasuke's face. Luckily, Sakura doesn't think anything of it. Sasuke, however, gives me a questioning look.

"It was hard to tell," adds Sakura. "But the boy died trying to protect Zabuza. Anyway," Sakura continues as Sasuke diverts his eyes, thinking about what she has told him, "I was afraid—I thought—" Sakura claps her hands together and manages a smile for Sasuke. "You're amazing, Sasuke-kun!" she cheers as I stand, stretching my limbs. "You survived a deathblow!"

"No," Sasuke and I say at the same time. I smooth down the fabric of my headband that keeps my hair stifled and out of the way.

"From the beginning," I go on, "that kid never planned on killing us, no matter how much he liked to threaten us. It was all a bluff."

Sakura looks up at me, not quite understanding what I mean because she hadn't been fighting him herself. And, honestly, neither had I, but I had a very reliable source. Then something else registers in her mind, and she scrambles to her feet and turns, cupping a hand over her mouth. She screams, "Naruto!"

The blonde boy quickly whirls around, alarmed, and spots us.

Sakura jabs a finger at Sasuke and says, "He's all right! Sasuke-kun is alive!"

Seeing that he won't do as I told and rest, I allow Sasuke my hand. He takes it and, lightly, I pull him up. Tazuna helps me brace him. Once he's stably on his feet, I let go and take a step toward him to assess the damage to his neck. He raises his hand to shoo me away, I think, but he just waves Naruto down reassuringly.

I scowl, pushing the high collar of his shirt down. "It'd be a lot easier to see over this stupid thing if it weren't so high and annoying."

"Then look at it later," Sasuke says, glancing over my shoulder. "Looks like we've got company."

My eyes follow his gaze to the still lingering horde Gato had brought along to ruin Zabuza. They smirk at us, weapons ready.

"I think you guys are forgetting something," one of the men at the front says. "You just killed our meal ticket!"

"Yeah!"

"You guys are dead!"

"The only way we can break even now is to overrun this village and loot every business and home!"

"Let's go!" they cheer and barrel forward, weapons at the ready, only to be stopped by an arrow that soars through the air and pierces the ground in front of them.

We blink at it, surprised, before slowly turning around to find all the men of the village gathered behind us with their own homemade weaponry in their hands. They stand, feet apart, crossbows aimed, hats covering their heads. And at the head of it all is a small boy, a quarter of the size of the other men, and looking three times as confident.

"Inari!" Naruto hollers.

Inari smiles back and says, "A hero always shows up at the last minute, right?"

An idea occurs to Naruto just then and he grins back, reinvigorated. "All right then!" he says, and brings his fingers together to form a hand seal. "Now that we've got back up, this will do!"

Four other Narutos appear by his side, making the thugs quiver in their sandals. Catching on, Kakashi makes the same hand seal and conjures up forty times the amount of clones as Naruto has, although it's obvious from the minimal chakra release that the clones Kakashi has made are mere shadows, not actual replications like Naruto's created. But these samurai don't realize it, and it causes them to completely cower. Chortling under my breath, I can feel the bridge rumbling beneath my feet as the men run back to the plank they had used to climb up the bridge from their boat, retreating like the pansies they are.

"We did it!" the villagers celebrate, pumping their fists into the air as Kakashi and Naruto release their jutsu. I ignore the jubilation behind me and watch as my sensei walks forward to Zabuza's crumpled body. From where I am, I can't hear what they're saying, and the vibrations of the villagers' celebrations muffle the vibrations of Kakashi and Zabuza's words, but as Kakashi bends down and pulls the swords from Zabuza's back and lifts him up, I can see that all the animosity between us is really settled.

I feel something cold hit my cheek and flinch. Wiping my cheek with the back of my hand and leaning my head back, I watch as small white drops fall from the sky. Peeling my gloves off, I hold my hands out to catch the flakes, just to make sure that what I'm seeing is real.

"Uh," I start as a snowflake kisses the tip of my nose. "This isn't just me, is it?"

"It's snowing," someone confirms. "But it's the middle of summer!"

"He was born in a snowy village," Naruto explains, and I don't need to look at him to hear the tears that are undoubtedly dripping down his face.

"I see," Kakashi says, close enough now where I can hear him. "He was a boy as pure as snow."

I close my eyes, grinning up at the sky as the snow keeps drifting. Slowly. Silently. But even in the silence, and beyond anything the vibrations would be able to relay to me, I can hear the rising hopes of the villagers around me and the pure unadulterated happiness that Haku sings from the heavens or wherever he and Zabuza are now in light of all the things that had been going on.

Yes. I can hear it all.

[+]

That night, the entire village is celebrating. Tsunami cooks up more food than I've seen during the duration of my time here. I've pulled all of the needles out of Sasuke and wrapped him up and am returning to his room from the kitchen where I'd grabbed a before-the-meal snack when I hear arguing from the hall where the rooms are. Quietly, I sneak down the corridor and listen from around the corner as Sakura, Inari, and Naruto bicker.

"Shut up, Naruto!" Sakura is saying. "Sasuke-kun doesn't need to be bothered by your stupid reenactments right now. If you want to show off, then you and Inari can do that when the guests arrive! _I_, however, have a good reason for being here. I want to _check in on_ Sasuke-kun and make sure that he's okay."

The way she says 'check in on' is actually code for 'flirt with', I can tell. And apparently so can Inari because he protests, "But you just want to go in there and flirt with him!"

"Besides, Sakura-chan," Naruto adds after I hear Sakura pound Inari upon his little head. "Sasuke missed the entire thing. Don't you think he'd want to see it? After all, he _is_ going to be bedridden for a while."

"And I need lessons, Naruto-niisan!" Inari exclaims enthusiastically. "I need you to teach me how to be a hero!"

Naruto chuckles humbly, embarrassed, though I can tell that he's basking in the attention. "Oh, all right, Inari. If you insist."

"We could go check on Sasuke in shifts, I suppose," Sakura says thoughtfully. "He will be pretty lonely."

"No."

The trio turns to me as I show myself. I finish my snack and brush my hands off on my shirt. I stand with my hand on my hip. Under my other arm I've got a first aid kit that Tsunami had had lying around. It's not much—just a few bandages and ointments, the usual home essentials—but it's all Sasuke really needs at this point.

I walk past the three of them and slide the door to Sasuke's room open. Over my shoulder, I say, "No visitors. No poundings. No lessons. No shifts. No hording, harassing, teasing, flirting, and/or renditions of any kind of any_thing_. Not until everyone is fully rested at least."

"But—!"

"No buts, either!" I add, glaring at Naruto. "Now, Tsunami's practically made a banquet down there, and people are starting to arrive. Go entertain _them_ with your folly. I'll be down in second and then you guys can bother me. Sasuke will be down in a moment or two after, seeing as how he's gotta rest for a little while longer than you guys. So, really, above all else: _let him rest._" I meet each of their eyes meaningfully. "Everyone understand?"

"Yes, Ren," they reply sheepishly, with an added, "-chan" at the end of my name from Inari.

I nod and go into the room. "Good. Now go away."

They're dragging themselves down the hall, grumbling to each other, as I close the door behind me. Sasuke is sitting up in his futon. The scowl on his face tells me that he had heard everything that I'd said to our friends.

"I'm fine," he says for the seventh or eighth or millionth time since we'd gotten back.

"I'm sure," I answer, rolling my eyes and taking a seat beside him. "But I've gotta recheck your wounds and all that great stuff."

"I don't understand," he says as I peel off his old bandages, "why you don't just heal it with your medical ninjutsu."

I clump the bandages together and place them beside me in neat pile. Opening the first aid kit I say, "I haven't exactly told our friends about my magical powers yet. Sure, I mentioned it back in the forest on the first day of tree climbing, but they don't know that I actually _know_ any medical ninjutsu. Besides." I pick out the roll of bandages and start to unravel it. "It'd be weird for them to see you all banged up one day and perfectly okay the next. Not only that but, if you don't have a reason to, you'd never relax. By making you heal slowly, like humans should, I'm forcing you to rest. Really, it's all in the job description that, as your doctor, I do everything I can to make sure that you get your rest."

"Not that you wanted the job, right?" he spits at me. I ignore him. He glowers at me as I extract balls of cotton from the kit, unscrewing the ointment bottle and lathering it on to the cotton ball. I apply the cotton swab to the cut on his right cheek. It makes Sasuke wince and flinch away.

I frown. "Don't move," I order, taking his chin in between my thumb and forefinger and pulling his face back to me. I dab the wound again, more lightly this time. Sasuke grimaces, but doesn't otherwise budge.

I finish treating all the wounds and discard the cotton ball into the pile of used bandages. As I take a handful of gauze and tape it down on his cheek, I say, "Anyway, it's not so bad. Taking care of you like this, I mean."

This throws Sasuke off. His eyes widen with curiosity. "What do you mean?" he asks, and I can feel the vibrations of his voice singing through the tape.

"Well, generally speaking," I say quickly, the words tumbling out of my mouth without a second thought. "Generally taking care of you guys—Naruto, you, Sakura, Kakashi. It's not as bad as I thought it would be."

"Oh." As I pull away from Sasuke, his breath falls on my skin, making it tingle. I wipe my hand where my skin is prickling and glance up to see how he's reacting to my rapidly made-up, and admittedly pathetic, clarification.

He's blinking at his hands that he's got curled in his lap like a good little boy. I think for a second that there's a glimmer of disappointment lining his irises, but if there is, it's melded in with the deep blackness of the trademark Uchiha eyes.

Not wanting to think any more of it, I continue with my job, unrolling the bandages from the first-aid kit. I'm able to finish up without another word from him or me.

I step out of the room, the first-aid kit under my arm, and stumble out into the hallway that is damask with the setting sun. I accidentally stub my toe against the door frame and curse under my breath, shutting the door with a vigorous snap as I lean the first-aid kit against the adjacent wall, only to be stopped by a mass of incandescent pink.

"Ouch!" Sakura yelps as the first-aid kit whacks against her forehead.

"What the—Sakura?" I straighten up and hold the first-aid kit to my chest. She rubs her broad forehead and stands, scowling at me. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," she says a little defensively.

"Were you waiting for me to finish up with Sasuke so you could go in and harass him some more?" I ask, narrowing my eyes at her suspiciously.

"No," she says, shaking her head and crossing her arms over her chest. She takes a step away from me and says, without meeting my gaze. "I actually wanted to talk to you."

I search the hallway to for someone else that might have set Sakura up as a mediator of sorts, but there's no one else around. I press my lips together, confused, and say, "Uh. Sure. What about?"

"Is Sasuke," she murmurs, clasping her hands together in front of her, her eyes downcast. "Is he okay?"

I should've figured that the only thing she would have to say to me would be able Sasuke. I sigh and cock my head to the side, tucking the first-aid kit back under my arm. "He's fine," I say, swatting the air dismissively. "If you go in and ask him, he'll tell you so himself. But I wouldn't give him any more attention than he's getting. It'll make his head so big that he won't be able to walk straight. Is that it?"

"Not," she says awkwardly, shifting on her feet, "not exactly."

"Oh…all right. So. What do you need?"

"It's just…" She twines her fingers together and knots them up until they look like they may snap. Out of habit, she bites her lip before she takes a deep breath of courage and conjures up the words, "You and Sasuke are pretty close, aren't you?"

I stiffen and push my bangs from my eyes. I really do need to get a haircut. "I mean, as close as teammates get," I say elusively, stepping around her and making my way down the corridor. "It's no big deal really."

Sakura follows me down the hall, much to my dismay. "It's only that it seems like he tolerates you better than most girls," Sakura says, shrugging as though it doesn't bother her that much, but I can tell by the way that she adds, "better than he tolerates me even." that she's a little resentful.

"He only tolerates me," I reply, tugging on the ends of my hair, "because he has to if he wants to get better. I mean, I helped Naruto when he almost bled out too."

"Still," Sakura says. "There's something else about you and Sasuke that I just don't get. The two of you were always butting heads and, granted, you were a little better than Naruto, but you were always complaining about him—you even went out of your way to knock him down a notch whenever you got the chance. And yet whenever we got into trouble, you were always _there_ for each other; you guys were like this team within the team, you know? Like when we were going against those Rain Nin—Sasuke was the first one you called to for help. And when we first battled with Zabuza, you called for his help too. Then, when Sasuke was trapped in that ice dome with Haku, _you_ when to help _him_. Even at the beginning, during our pre-test. When Kakashi-sensei put a knife to Sasuke's throat, you jumped up and _threatened_ our sensei—"

"Like any _rational_ person would have done," I say, swerving to the left in order to lose her for a moment, but she's right on my heels. "It's not as though _you_ hadn't reacted either, Sakura. And, again, that was all _teamwork_ stuff. That's what you do when you get put on a team and have to care for other people."

"I hadn't reacted the way you did," Sakura says. "And even besides our teamwork—"

"So what are you implying?" I demand, coming to an abrupt halt and whirling around to face her. I prop my hands on my waist and ask, "Could you possibly be thinking right now that I'm doing all this for Sasuke because I secretly have a foolhardy crush on him like you and the other girls in Konoha?"

Sakura huffs, offended. She crosses her arms over her chest, ready to take on the defense.

"You're right," she says as though she doesn't even understand why she bothers to talk to me. She turns around and starts back the other way, where the sound of clattering plates and pots and thumping feet alert us that there are more important things to be talking about right now than some girl's opinion of what luck is and is not. "I do think that you like him. And even you can't deny that you don't feel _something_ for him, what with the way you're always so worried about him. Something beyond just the protocol of _being on a team_. You should stop moping and just consider yourself lucky to have Sasuke be such a good friend to you. A lot of girls would kill to be in your situation."

"Well," I say, even though I know she's already out of earshot. "If this were one of those things that could be granted or given away by fulfilling a duty as simple as killing someone, I wouldn't be here right now, Sakura."

I don't know who she thinks she is that she's able to dictate the merits of my relationship with Sasuke and lecture me about how ungrateful I am about a situation that doesn't even call for graciousness. But it doesn't matter. Because it's obvious that by what she's just told me that I'm being too careless with this bond. I'm not hiding it deep enough, not resisting it well enough, because if Sakura can tell what's going on or have an inkling as to what's going on, I must truly be underestimating the bond's strength.

And to my horror, I realize that it didn't use to be this hard to ignore the bond. Could I have been right when I guessed that it's been getting stronger?

I swallow, taking deep, deep breaths, and continue on my way to the living room, so that I can put the first-aid kit back where I had found it, sincerely hoping that I could be wrong about the bond.


	18. Homecoming

**Bound  
Chapter 18: Homecoming**

Two weeks later, we're standing in front of Haku and Zabuza's graves, saying our final goodbyes. The bridge has been finished and our mission is, at long last, complete. Sakura is placing garlands she'd made herself around the wooden crosses Tazuna and Inari had been kind enough to make for the graves.

Behind Zabuza's grave, Kakashi's planted the kubikirihocho. It towers over the small cross that serves as the grave markers. On Haku's cross, we've wrapped the waistband that he'd worn. It flutters slightly in the breeze and I wonder for a second if it'll be able to withstand the threatening storms that pass through the Land of the Waves.

I make my way up to Haku's cross as Sakura scolds Naruto for trying to steal the offerings we've laid out. Reaching into my pouch, I pull out two of the number of needles I'd saved from Sasuke's injuries and poke them through the scarf and deep into the wood to ensure that the waistband stays in place. I smile softly to myself, putting a hand on the top of Haku's cross, a silent _Thank you_ flitting through my lips and catching in the wind.

"Kakashi-sensei," Sakura speaks up, coming to my side to fidget with the flower wreath over Haku's cross. "I can't help but keep wondering: Were they right about ninja?"

"A shinobi is not supposed to pursue personal goals," Kakashi answers as I make sure the needles are holding well before walking back to join my team. I catch Naruto scowling on the way and wink at him. He flushes a bit but continues to scowl. "It's important that we merely exist as tools for our country. It's the same in Konoha as it is anywhere else."

"Is that really what it means to be a true ninja?" Naruto asks, his frown deepening. "I don't like the sound of it."

"Do you feel that way too, Kakashi-sensei?" Sasuke speaks up from beside me. I prop my hand on my hip, my back to the graves, staring out toward the open path in front of me. "About being a tool, that is."

Gooseflesh jumbles up my spine at the question.

"Well…no," Kakashi admits as my skin settles back into smoothness. "And that's why we ninja live our lives with that ideal beneath the surface of our minds, disturbing us, like it did Zabuza. And the boy."

I suppose it's kind of unfair that we're suppose to just be tools for our village, but if I really think about it, if protecting our village keeps our precious ones safe, then isn't it worth being used? Isn't being a tool something we can take some kind of pride in then?

But if protecting our loved ones was all that was required of us, our jobs wouldn't be half as controversial or as complicated as they are.

My eyes cut to Sasuke who, like the others, is staring at the graves. I bite the inside of my lip, raking my bangs from my forehead, thinking about what I had been working toward these past seven years.

"That's it, I've decided!" Naruto says, breaking my train of thought. I look at him over my shoulder, curious. "I'm going to make my own ninja way. Create my own destiny!"

Sasuke scoffs and turns on his heels as I smile. "We should get back to the house," he says, "and get going. It's going to be a long walk home."

Kakashi agrees and we do as Sasuke suggests. Once we've finished packing and had a last goodbye meal with Tazuna, Tsunami, and Inari, they and Giichi walk us out to the newly finished bridge where they see us off.

"Thanks to you, we've completed our bridge," Tazuna says, resting a comforting hand on Inari's head. The little boy's eyes are large and watery and on the very brink of welling over. I can't help but grin at this, amused, considering he hadn't liked us at all when we'd first arrived, and now that we're leaving, he's getting all emotional. "It's going to be super dull once you guys are gone."

"Well, thanks for your hospitality," Kakashi says.

"And don't worry!" Naruto reassures. "We'll come back to visit sometime."

"You better!" Inari blubbers, his bottom lip quivering. Tazuna chuckles and pats his grandson's head. I look to Naruto to see that he's not holding up so well either.

To make up for his weakness, he says, "Inari don't let it get you down! You can cry if you really want!"

"No way!" Inari retorts, raising his voice to an inappropriate level to ensure that we can't hear his sadness over his shout. "But you can cry too, if you want to Naruto-niisan!"

"Me? No way." Naruto whirls around, grabbing the straps of his backpack coolly. "See ya."

Inari, looking stricken, watches Naruto's retreating back and finally allows the flood of tears to come tumbling down. I give our new friends an informal salute goodbye before turning as well and following after Naruto. Once I'm at par with him, I'm about to open my mouth and chide him for leaving Inari hanging only to see that he's crying as well. I find this super endearing and laugh.

"Boy, am I glad to be getting back home!" I sigh, twining my fingers behind my head. "Now I can slack off without having to worry that somebody might be killed on my watch."

Kakashi looks at me nervously, no doubt wondering about what I had been doing during my shift as Tazuna's guard, but doesn't get to say anything due to Naruto's more than enthusiastic response.

"Yeah!" he agrees, pumping his fist into the air. "Let's get home fast so I can have Iruka-sensei buy me some celebratory ramen from Ichiraku's! And of course I'll have to tell little Konohamaru about my legendary feats!"

"Uh, okay," Sakura says rolling her eyes. She clasps her hand together like something's just occurred to her and leans toward Sasuke who promptly takes a step away. Blushing, she asks demurely, "Sasuke-kun, how about we go on a date when we get back to the village?"

I nearly choke on a laugh when Sasuke says, "Uh, no thanks."

"B-but!" she stutters, trying to defend her inquiry. Sasuke just keeps walking forward, paying her no mind.

"_Dissed,"_ I snigger to a deflated Sakura and shake my head. She immediately glowers at me, her fingers cracking as she tightens them into a fist.

"Hey, _I'll_ go on a date with you, Sakura!" Naruto volunteers keenly.

"NO!" Sakura cries, taking out her anger at me on him. "SHUT UP, NARUTO."

Kakashi sighs hopelessly as Sakura's fists rain down their fury upon Naruto's head and I swear I can hear our laughter collecting along the bridge and reinforcing it and building the faith of the people of the Land of the Waves, returning the hope of a city we've helped to restore to its former glory.

[+]

Once we're back in Konoha, we part ways—Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, and I to our respective homes and Kakashi to go fill out a mission report.

I'd decided on our trip back to the Leaf Village that it wouldn't hurt to go back to my own house just to check up on it, although it had most likely only gotten dustier over the three weeks I'd been gone. Being in the Land of the Waves made me realize that, sure, it takes a lot of effort to fix up a home, but it doesn't mean that it isn't possible, or that it's not worth it. Or maybe I'm just hoping that the change in scenery and self-reliance would make me stop doubting that breaking the bond is—for lack of a better phrase—not what I really want to do.

Granted, I want to be able to do things freely and never have the threat of being forced to do something against my will looming over my head, but who's to say that Sasuke will ever try to force me to do anything for him? As it is, we're already on better terms than we were when I'd first left the village with this idea in my head. So maybe it won't actually be so bad keeping the bond as it is and being there for Sasuke. It's not as though he doesn't need a support, right?

"Ah, there you are!"

I look up from the road where I'd been watching as my feet kicked away rocks that had crossed my path to find, surprisingly enough, the Hokage coming toward me from the last lane that intersects with the route to my house. He has his hands behind his back, the warm genuine smile on his face, and his Hokage's hat on his head to shield the sun from his crow's feet lined eyes.

"I'd gotten word that you'd be back today," he says, "but I didn't expect you to arrive so promptly."

Stopping in my tracks, I throw him a puzzled stare, glancing over my shoulder to make sure that it's me he's talking to and not some other family that lives down this way. When it's plain that I am, in fact, the only one going down the street besides him, I ask, "What're you doing here? Sir," I add, last minute, wiping my cheek with the back of my hand. Frankly, I'm embarrassed because I'm dirty and sweaty from the long walk back to the village, so I can't be sure that I smell like a bundle of roses or anything.

"Welcoming you home." He motions down the path, beckoning me to walk along with him as he goes. When I get to his side, he falls into step next to me, one hand behind his back, the other adjusting his hat.

The silence between us starts to settle in and make me feel awkward. Luckily, the Hokage fixes that by speaking up.

"You know, you step too lightly," he says, keeping his eyes trained ahead. "Why is that? Do you not want to leave your mark on the world?"

I furrow my brow, glancing at him from the corner of my eyes. "I don't know what you mean," I answer, running a hand along the fabric of my headband. "Are you being cryptic for a reason or is it just for giggles?"

"I mean your feet," he says, smiling. "I can hardly feel them against the ground when you walk."

"So, you mean, I literally just step too lightly? Isn't that supposed to be a good thing, considering who we are and what we do?"

"Sure it is," he says. "It's especially useful when you're out in the field, on a mission. But here? This is home. You should be able to let your guard down here, shouldn't you?" He regards me carefully as I concoct my answer.

I shrug. "I think I'm just so used to being on guard all the time from all the years I'd spent outside the village. It's not a matter of my guard being up or not, it's a matter of habit. And for the record, this house is no home of mine. Especially in the state it's in. I hope you don't expect me to invite you in for tea or anything. Anyway," I say, twining my hands behind my head. "What're you doing here? Don't you have village leader stuff to do?"

He nods thoughtfully, stroking the tuff of hair he's got building on his chin. "Well," he says, "while you were out of the country, I was informed of the state of your house."

I wince, dropping my arms back to my side. "Oh," I mutter, tugging at the hem of my shirt. "Yeah?"

"Yes." He smiles at me again, amused now. "I was actually informed by a few concerned friends of yours _before_ you left for the Land of the Waves. And a few years ago, too, while you were away on your private mission, I received letters from some concerned parents."

My mouth drops open in disbelief and I come to a halt. "What?" I ask, jogging to catch up with him, since he'd decided to keep moving. Besides, this walk seems strangely longer than it usually takes to get to my house. "Why?"

"Some kids thought it would be funny to break in and see if you home was haunted," he says with nonchalance. I glower into the brush lining the path and grumble, _"Damn kids."_ as he continues with, "Anyway, I got a chance to take a look at your house while you were away. I hope you haven't actually been staying there, Ren."

I blow my bangs from my eyes. "Of course not," I retort. "I've been staying with Sasuke. When I saw how badly torn up it was, I was out of there."

"That's good." The Hokage nods as though he's proud of me because he didn't think I'd been capable of using my common sense in the first place. "Well, after a final plea from a mother whose child got injured from trying to break in with a few of his friends, I finally got around to issuing a mission report for a team of Genin to clean it up."

As though he'd timed this conversation, I see my house coming into view. It seems to beam at me, having new wooden panels replacing the old, peeling ones. The sill around my windows have been replaced and glossy ebony frames the window panes that are shiny and reflect sunlight off the surface and into my eyes with such intensity that green spots dot the inside of my eyelids when I blink. The yard has been weeded and I can now see a familiar dirt path that leads to my newly renovated wraparound porch that's glossy like the wood from my sill. But my front door sits ajar, sunlight creeping into the foyer.

"My front door is open," I point out, frowning.

"Hmm." The Hokage rubs his chin again, making a face. "They must not be finished with the interior. But I'm sure that they've got your electricity and water running," he says, as we trod up the path. He stops, just before we reach the porch. I follow suit.

I turn to him, rubbing the back of my neck. "Listen, old man," I start, keeping my eyes diverted. "Thanks. Thank you. For a lot. I owe you one big time and now…I kind of regret throwing that tantrum and giving you such attitude when I first came back."

"Don't feel guilty," he tells me. "The money I posted on this mission is all coming from your inheritance."

"Inheritance?" I repeat, devastated. Why hadn't I been informed of an _inheritance_ earlier? Before it was all spent on these renovations? Nevertheless, I shake my head, dismissing it all. "But that's not it at all. I…this mission experience, you putting me on a team—I've come to find that I really am actually enjoying it." I bow to him. "Thank you, Hokage-sama."

His feet move forward and a hand is placed on the back of my head. He pets me genially and answers, "It's my pleasure, Ren." He backs away as I straighten up. I smile at him just as we hear a crash come from inside and I jump, flinching when I hear the familiar pitch of a nagging voice curse, "DAMN THIS HOUSE."

The Hokage laughs, turning his back to me and saying, "You'd better get inside and see what's going on. And Ren," he adds, coming to a stop again. He looks at me over his shoulder. "I hope that someday you'll be able to relax and say that this is home."

Before I can answer, he's down the path and another shriek pierces the air from inside. This time, the same voice, shrill and girlish, squeals, "SPIDERS!"

"Oy," a lazy voice sounds as I amble into small foyer, kicking off my sandals besides the other four pairs, and then into the living room. "Ino, you're making dust fly up everywhere."

"Shikamaru's right, Ino," an older adult voice agrees. "Stop flailing around like that. Chouji, get rid of those spiders."

"Gotcha, sensei," answers another boy.

"Ino, _move_."

I take a good look around. The floors have been polished to a shine and my furniture has all been uncovered and is looking fresh. The shoji walls are looking nice, the wooden grid un-splintered and the paper smooth and without a tear in sight. One of the shoji doors that lead into the hall toward the bedrooms sits open, informing me of where my house guests are.

"Wha—but there are—" I run my finger along the chabudai table in the center of my living room when suddenly the window panes shudder and I can hear the dishes in my cupboards rattling. I furrow my brow, curious as to what could have caused that and look up from my inspection of the coffee table to see a menacing cloud of dust erupt from behind the shoji doors. Three small figures and one adult-sized one burst from the hall, coughing and trying to wave the dust from their eyes.

"Chouji!" the girl cries, her long blonde ponytail sweeping along her back. Her face contorts into a glower. "What the _hell_ were you thinking?"

"Ino," the man with them warns, frowning down at her.

"Whatever," the skinnier of the boys grumbles, pushing his lips into an annoyed pout. "Can we break now, Asuma-sensei? I'm tired."

"You're just lazy!" Ino shouts, knocking him on the back of his head.

Chouji pushes through his team and blinks into the brightness that consumes my living room, staring at me for a few moments as though making sure I'm really there before he greets, "Ren!"

"Hi," I answer, smiling and allowing them a little wave. "Nice work you guys have done around here. Thanks for cleaning up for me while I was away. I appreciate it."

"_What?"_ Ino demands, the veins in her head popping. She turns to the man and says, "Asuma-sensei! I thought you said this house belonged to an old lady who was crippled and in the hospital and that it was her last will that this house be cleaned up and given to her daughter!"

"Uh, yeah," I say, peering over my shoulder and into the kitchen. "That's me. The daughter part, I mean. My mom, however, has died. She's been dead for the past five, six years though. I didn't think her will would still be valid after all that time."

"So Team 7 is officially back in town, huh?" Asuma asks, pushing his headband up. "How's Kakashi doing?"

"Fine," I say vaguely, wandering into the kitchen. "I think Naruto is wearing him out though. Uzumaki Naruto, that is. And, I mean, what with Sasuke always showing off—"

Starting, Ino asks, "_You're_ on _Sasuke's_ team?"

I look at her quizzically. "What of it?"

"Uh, well, that is, how is Sasuke-kun doing?" she manages, and the added honorific to the end of his name tells me that, unsurprisingly, she's one of Sasuke's many fan girls.

"All right, I guess," I say evasively. Taking my bag off, I flip a switch on my wall and grin as an artificial orangey-yellow light fills my kitchen. I hear my refrigerator click on and I whirl around to face it viciously. On a whim, I make my way over to it and open it up.

Gloriously, there are piles of food inside, sitting in neat little containers and covered with tin foil. Although, they really shouldn't be there. I turn to face the team that's staring at me—Asuma, amused; Ino, annoyed; Chouji, passive; Shikamaru, scowling as usual.

"What's with all the food?" I ask. "How long have you guys been here? Unless this is some kind of welcome home present for me."

Ino scoffs. "Hardly," she mumbles under her breath.

"Chouji's mom made it for us," Shikamaru explains, nodding to his friend. "We'd been spending a lot of time here, renovating and stuff, and your house is pretty far from any of the restaurants Chouji likes going to—"

"And my wallet is really not that deep," Asuma makes a point to add.

"So my mom made us a few things to warm up and eat on the job since we'd cleaned everything and the electricity's working now," Chouji says.

"Have I thanked you, by the way, for doing this?" I ask, grinning at them. "Even if I have, I'd like to say it again. Thank you."

"No problem."

Closing the fridge, I say, "So how long have you been working on the house?"

"A few hours here and there for the past few weeks," Asuma answers. "You had a lot of stuff hanging around here. And when Shikamaru told us that you didn't want to get rid of it any of it that made our job a lot harder."

Sheepishly, I scratch the back of my head. "Sorry about that," I apologize. "I just—"

"You don't have to explain," Asuma says kindly. "How about we all sit down for lunch? And then we'll leave you be. We're done here anyway."

"That sounds good."

Over lunch, I make plans to hang out with Shikamaru and Chouji tomorrow so I can tell them about the mission. Once we're all finished eating, they help me wash up and I see them off. I close the door after waving goodbye and thanking them all one last time, especially since Chouji told me that I could keep all the leftovers that would probably last me a few weeks.

The sun is descending, making my house a musty golden color. And instead of blocking it out, my paper thin curtains let the last rays of the day bleed through. My house is now graciously empty. No boxes cluttering the walkway and no dust poisoning the air. I'll still need to get my clothes and other belongings from Sasuke's, but that can wait. I want to see the rest of my place.

Having already seen most of my kitchen and living room, I make my way down the corridor and to the row of rooms along the back of the house. The first one I think to enter is my own, considering the fact that Shikamaru had told me that he and his team had stored all the other boxes in the other three rooms in my house, but then I figure I should go through some of the boxes first and see if I can get rid of any of them.

The last place that I want to go is my parents' room, but as it's the closest room at the moment, it only makes sense for me to head there first. But as I find myself just outside the door of my parents' room, I'm not so sure that I want to be doing any looking around. After all, it's late, and I'm worn from a day's travel, and I should really be resting my body.

_No,_ I think, closing my eyes and inhaling so deeply that my lungs are on the verge of bursting. _I can't be a coward._ Besides, how long had it been since my clan's untimely death? Five and a half years, almost. I can't keep putting off facing my parents' death, can't keep pretending like I don't need to ever acknowledge that they're dead _because_ of the indelible fact that they are dead.

I need to keep in mind that they will not be coming back.

Upon opening my eyes, I reach out for the door handle, taking it tightly in my hands. I slide the door open quietly, childishly, like a toddler sneaking into their parents' room after a nightmare. I lean in and turn on the lights before moving any further into the premises.

A sea of brown wraps around a large bed with neatly made red coverings. I'm so overwhelmed by the sight of all the boxes that I have half a mind to quit my prying again and just put myself to sleep, but I shake the feeling off, determined to do as I'd intended and filter through this mess.

My gaze falls on a small black box, a bit bigger than a bento, that is sitting atop the dresser. It's worn and is shredding at the corners, and its lid is slightly ajar, like it's telling me to start with there. And so I do.

I wind my way around the other boxes to get to the black box. I pick it up and plop down on the ground with it, adjusting it in my lap so that I can see directly into it when I lift the lid.

Inside, the box is full of seemingly useless trinkets. A pincushion with no pins, pens with no caps, an empty ink pot. There are pieces of papers that look like they used to make up something bigger, and ribbons that were once glossy. I recognize them as the ones my mother used to tie into my hair and thread one around my fingers.

I keep it on as I dig deeper into the box, wondering where my mother had kept this box when she'd been alive. I don't remember ever seeing it around before, even when I had rifled through all my parents' things looking for the blood oath contract in the days after they'd died. I'm not sure that I want to see everything inside of this mystery box, not sure that I want to or that I even _will_ understand what each thing inside this box could mean, but I'm already this far in. It would be stupid to give up now.

My fingers corner something against the sides of the box as I drag my hand along the bottom, shifting items around. I grasp onto what my hand has run into and lift it from the box.

A small notebook, a day planner it looks like, sits in the palm of my hand. I brush scraps of paper and balls of lint from the cover and turn it over a few times to see if I can find a title, or a name. But the cover is blank and uniformly black, although the pages on the inside are crinkled, like they've been left out in the rain.

I flip through the book like there'll be pictures on the corner that will come together to tell a story. Instead of seeing pictures, however, I see page after page of crisp black katakana running down in columns.

I've never seen so many words before in my life, never seen so much paper filled to the brim with ink. What was so important to my parents that they needed to write so much about it?

I turn to the beginning of the notebook and read a date close to my third birthday. Beneath, it says, _Ren's finally tapped into her chakra. I am relieved. Her father was starting to believe that she would never gain control of her powers and be able to do nothing more than maid service, but—_

Unwilling to read what's coming next, I cut into the center of the notebook and read from there. The words at the top of the page don't make sense until I realize that I'm starting in the middle of a sentence.

—_difficult, but I never imagined her to be like _this_. Her father says that—_

At another mention of my father, I snap the book closed and realize just what this notebook is about. Of course my parents would find it fitting to log the progress of my training for future generations to better know how to deal with that stuff.

I lift the box from my lap and stand, ready to leave. My feet are taking me out the door and down the hall without a second thought, and before I know it, I'm inside my own room, flicking the lights on and blinking once, twice, three times before I'm able to take in how it looks.

My room is exactly the same as it had been when I'd left. The sheets are tucked under the mattress like my mom used to do and my desk has a set of my favorite books neatly placed on it. My dresser sits against the wall that the door is on, all the drawers half-open, like they'd been hastily closed by not quite made it there.

I can see myself, the little six year old me, sitting alone at my desk, staring out the panoramic window on the wall just above the desk, my homework unfinished beneath my elbows. I can hear the faint and haunting sounds of my father scolding me for making a mess of my room and my mother singing me to sleep. I remember digging through my drawers at age seven, looking for the bond just before I skipped out of town.

I feel as though I'm having an out of body experience as I trod heavily across my room to my desk. I climb on the old wood, making it complain under my weight. With great effort, I push the panoramic window out. It props up on the lever, staying open.

When I look at my hands, I find that I'm still holding the little black book. The log of all the things I'd done since my third birthday, since I first started harnessing my chakra, my bloodline limit. I'm betting that I could find all of my accomplishments and blown-out-of-proportion failures, and yet there still wouldn't be a single thing about how I'd felt at the time because my parents didn't care about that.

They just wanted me to become the best for the Uchiha.

I toss the black book over my shoulder, not caring where it lands, just knowing that I'll find it again when I get up. An evening breeze flits in through the open window and licks my skin.

I close my eyes.

I breathe it in.

[+]

"I'm back," I call into the house, kicking my shoes off in the foyer. I see through the living room doorway that Sasuke's head is poking over the back of the sofa. He turns, regarding me with annoyance at once, propping his arm on the backrest to better see me.

"What're you doing here?" he asks. "I heard that your house has been fixed up."

"I wish you wouldn't invade my privacy like that," I say, scowling and moving into the kitchen to look for something to eat. "And my house has been fixed up. I just don't feel like going back just yet."

"Why not?" he counters.

Dishes shake as I open the fridge with a little too much force. I frown into the white light of the buzzing container, finding everything displeasing. I sigh and close the fridge, deciding that I'm not actually hungry at all. When I turn, I find him standing in the doorway of the kitchen, his arms awkwardly crossed with a book in one hand. His eyes are placid, but otherwise generally blank.

I fidget under his stare. "What?" I hiss when he doesn't look away.

"Why aren't you going home?" he repeats. "I thought you said you wanted to get out of here as soon as possible."

"I did," I say defensively. "I do. But…I mean, my house is just a little…uncomfortable for me at the moment." When he doesn't respond, I know he wants me to elaborate. And for some reason, I find myself doing just that.

"Don't you," I go on, "remember how it was for you? Those days after the massacre when you were all alone in this giant house with no one to be with you."

He doesn't show that he knows what I'm talking about, but I can feel the change in his personality, in the air that swims around us.

"Well," I say, shrugging, "after five years of avoiding it, it's finally catching up with me. And coming back to your house is almost an extension of my running away, which is, admittedly, really…pathetic. But I can't help it."

"You're going to have to go back to your house sometime," he says softly. Sadly, I want to add, but I don't think that's what he's aiming for.

Just as quietly, I answer, "I know."

**END PART I**


	19. Encounters

**Bound  
Part II  
Chapter 19: Encounters**

"Oy, you should take it easier on yourself, Naruto," I complain as we walk back from our mission at day's end. It's been a few months since our trip to the Land of the Waves and still, Naruto is trying to show-off in front of us like he's got something he needs to prove. Which he doesn't, considering that he had basically been the one to take out Haku on our last major mission. But this line of thought makes me uncomfortable and I shy away from thinking about the Land of the Waves as quickly as I can.

Our missions have been relatively simple lately, yet Naruto had been able to land scrapes and bruises by the end of each day due to his rowdiness and carelessness. Today is no different. He's attained multiple scratches on his face, his clothes are raggedy, and he's is being supported by Sakura who says, "Ren's right. You would've been fine if you didn't push so far."

"You're such a nuisance," Sasuke feels the need to add and I glare over at him, trying to tell him that he's not really helping the situation, but he ignores me and goes on. "Can't you even take care of yourself?"

This throws Naruto into a frenzy and he turns on Sasuke, ready to pound him. Sakura, however, is quick to defend Sasuke and retaliates on Naruto, leaving me open to do as I please. Which is, conveniently, punch Sasuke as hard as I can.

"What the hell?" he spits, rubbing his head where I've hit him.

"Stop taunting Naruto like that," I hiss at him, crossing my arms and sternly scowling. "You know he's easily provoked. Especially by you."

"It seems that our teamwork has been suffering lately," Kakashi sighs and I look to him, wondering if he saw how nicely Sakura and I had worked together to scold the boys. Apparently not.

"It's _his_ fault!" Naruto accuses childishly, glaring at Sasuke. "You're always hogging the spotlight and ruining our teamwork, Sasuke, you bastard!"

"He's talking to _you_, moron," Sasuke scoffs, turning on his heels and making an exit. "If you want me to stop making you look bad, then why don't you get better than me?" He looks over his shoulder and returns Naruto's glare to make a point.

"Okay then," Kakashi says, breaking the tense silence that had been cuddling around us. "That's enough for today. I have to go submit the mission reports."

"Then I'm going home," Sasuke says, continuing on his way out.

"Oh!" Sakura jogs after her love quickly, making the vein in my forehead twitch. Naruto isn't taking too kindly to his crush ogling after Sasuke either, though for much different reasons. "Sasuke-kun," she gushes and he stops to give her his time of day, which is saying something for Sasuke. "I was just wondering, how about right now, we work on _our_ teamwork, just the two of us?"

"You're as bad as Naruto," Sasuke reasons and my eyes catch a glimpse of a rock roughly the size of my thumb by my foot. "Why waste your time flirting when you should be practicing? Frankly, your skills are below Naruto's."

As Sasuke is finishing this sentence, I pick up the rock and toss it up in my hand, measuring its weight. It lands in my palm with a sturdy _plop_ and I smile, satisfied with it, before launching it at Sasuke's head as he walks away. It nails the back of his head and, by the looks of the way he cringes, hard.

"Ren!" Kakashi cries, alarmed.

Sasuke's hand flies to his new injury and he turns on his heels, eyes narrowed directly at me.

"Stop being a jerk," I tell him, mirroring his stony stare. "And pull that stick out of your ass, Sasuke-kun." I smile at him coldly and wave as he rolls his eyes and storms away.

"Ren," Kakashi says nervously, like I might turn on him. "I appreciate you sticking up for your teammates like that, but please try to stick to _verbal_ defenses when going against one of your friends."

"Whatever," I dismiss. "He's gotta learn a lesson, you know?"

"Hey, Sakura-chan," Naruto calls, waving her over as Kakashi sighs and leaps away from us. "Forget Sasuke! You and I can train together!"

I can feel the gloomy aura that she's emanating and can tell by the way that her body sags there's no chance of her hanging out with the boy to whom she's just been likened.

"I think it's best if you give up on her," I advise Naruto, twining my fingers behind my head. "She's too far gone down the Sasuke trail."

Naruto harrumphs at the name, pouting. "Whatever," he announces. "What matters is that I'm done losing! The only thing for me to do now is train!"

I laugh, giving Naruto a small two-fingered salute. "Good luck with that," I say, turning to go in the opposite direction where my house will be waiting for me at the end of the path. Over the past month, I'd gradually made my move back into my own house and warmed up to it. A little. Enough for me to sleep well at night. And at least my mind has stopped replaying all the memories from when my parents were alive and making me hear things that weren't really there. That's actually the best part.

"Wha—Ren!" Naruto shouts, getting in my way and stopping me. "Don't you want to train with me?"

Laughing again, I tug on the tuffs of hair that stick out from under my headband. "No way," I answer. "Not a _chance_, Naruto. I want to relax today. It's the first day we've really had any time off, so why not?"

"Because," argues Naruto, but I shake my head and sidestep him.

"I'm going home," I say with a wave. "Or at least to find a nice place to sleep. No more training." I twine my hands behind my head and look up to the sky. "No more missions. No more working! Not today."

The sky beams a brilliant angel blue above me. I smile back at it. "Bye, Naruto."

I think I hear Naruto grumble something to me, but I don't care. I'm positively gleeful. I haven't been able to relax completely since I joined Team 7 nearly ten months ago. And what's better is that I'm alone for once. Though I probably wouldn't mind Shikamaru's company right now because he is, at least, quiet and tolerable, the loneliness of just walking home feels good on my soul. Even the vibrations don't seem so bad. They're like faint masseuse hands rumbling against the soles of my feet. And god, are they rumbling.

This doesn't seem right to me. The vibrations wouldn't be so rowdy unless there's a stampede of some kind. Seeing that the only people in front of me are a girl with sandy blonde hair tied into four tuffs, two at the top of her head and two at the base of her neck, and a boy wearing a black cap and black suit with purple face paint like he's getting ready to go on at the kabuki theatre, I turn around to see if I can find out what's going on. Sure enough, there's a team of three boys and a girl sprinting toward me, looking absolutely panicked. I recognize them as Naruto and a group of Genin that have been clinging to his every move as of late. Today, they even sport goggles that are obviously allusions to Naruto's pre-graduation days.

A boy with a long scarf trailing after him—the boy Konohamaru Naruto had been speaking about on our way home from the Land of the Waves—is ahead of the rest of the group, apparently more desperate to get away from whatever they're running from than the rest.

"Hey," I manage to get out before they zoom past me, kicking up dust. Not long after they've past, I see Sakura coming up, charging at them like an angry bull. Now I realize why they'd been so scared. She looks absolutely murderous.

I turn to watch after Naruto and his followers as they make their escape, but then I see that they've skidded to a stop so as to avoid colliding with the pair walking in the opposite direction. Konohamaru, however, isn't able to stop as fast as the others and has run into the boy in all black. He is sitting at the older boy's feet, staring up at the admittedly intimidating face. The girl next to the boy in black is scowling down at little Konohamaru, her hands on her hips like a stern mother. Although I know that whatever she's got going on in her mind is hardly motherly at all.

Sakura slows to a stop at my side, confused. "What's going on?" she asks, alarmed by the two strangers in front of us. Now that they're closer, I can see their headbands—the girl has hers around her neck, and the boy wears his the traditional way—and I realize that the symbol etched into the metal is not a leaf, but instead an hourglass with an elongated oval over the top of it. I recognize the headband from my years travelling through the Wind Country. These guys are ninja from the hidden village there, Sunagakure.

The boy in the black suit picks Konohamaru up by his scarf, making me jump. I hadn't thought that any physical confrontation was needed in this kind of situation.

"That hurt you little piece of shit," the older boy says.

"Don't," the girl chides lamely, with no convincing force behind her words. "We'll get yelled at later."

"I'm sorry," Sakura says nervously, grasping that these guys are not the kind of people we really want to be involved with. "It was my fault. I was just messing around."

"HEY, FATASS!" Naruto shrieks as though our situation isn't bad enough. "Let him go!"

The boy looks at us with contempt, smirking. "We still have time to play," he says to his friend, raising Konohamaru higher, "before the boss gets here."

"Bastard!" Naruto says, and before I can catch him, he dashes forward, toward the threat.

The boy twitches his fingers in the air, and I can feel the vibrations pick up. This surprises me so much that I don't really care that Naruto trips up, seemingly without anything to make him fall. Luckily, Konohamaru's two friends are still concerned enough to rush up to their idol and make sure he's all right.

"What a wimp!" the boy taunts. "Is that the best Leaf Genin can do?"

I narrow my eyes at him, not appreciating the fact that he's grouping me with the foolhardy likes of Naruto. I mean, Naruto is definitely a cool guy; it's just that, like Sakura, being compared to him at the moment isn't really a compliment.

Naruto scrambles to his feet, thrusts a finger at the boy in black and yells, "Hey, you fat pig! If you don't let him go now, I'm gonna make you pay! FATASS! _Idiot!_"

"What, Naruto?" I scoff as Sakura furiously pulls Naruto into a headlock to make him stop provoking the enemy when they've already basically got a hostage. "D'you plan on making him cry by calling him names? We're not five. Quit being annoying."

"That girl's right," says the foreigner. "You are pretty annoying. And basically, I hate midgets." He rolls his free hand into a fist, that insolent little smile still on his face. "Especially younger ones that have no manners, no respect for their elders! It makes me want to kill them."

"Whoa, hey," I say, holding up my hands in defense. Konohamaru's friends are visibly shaken—the girl is crying and the boy with glasses is trembling so hard his spectacles are barely keeping on the bridge of his nose. They hide behind me seeing as how Naruto's too riled up to protect anyone. And although I feel uncomfortable with them clinging to my pants the way they are, I also feel like it's my duty as an older Nin to make sure they stay okay. "That's going way too far."

"Oh well," the boy says nonchalantly. "He's got it coming for him."

"I," the girl sighs then, shrugging, "will not be held responsible for this."

"You bastard!" Naruto cries, freaking out now that he's coming to the conclusion that he can't handle these foreign Nin.

"After this one," the boy says, reeling his hand back for an attack, "I'll take care of the other midget!"

"Hey!" Naruto dashes forward again, but I catch him by his collar and pull him back, just as something shoots through the air and hits the foreigner's hand, making him release Konohamaru, who drops roughly to the ground, along with a marble sized rock. Our heads turned to the point where the rock had come from to find a familiar boy sitting coolly in a tree, tossing another rock up and down in his hand.

"What are you bastards doing in our village?" he deadpans.

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura squeals happily, and I scoff, letting go of Naruto to cross my arms as Konohamaru comes scuttling back to our side.

"Oh, look," grumbles the boy in black. I can see that he's still holding his hand where the rock had sliced his skin. Talk about wimp. "Another brat who pisses me off."

"Get lost," Sasuke orders like he actually has some kind of power over these people.

Sakura and Konohamaru's friends gawk at Sasuke while Naruto and I remain indifferent.

"Sasuke-kun, you're so cool!" coos Sakura, hearts in her eyes. "You get him!"

"Naruto…," Konohamaru starts slowly. He looks to his mentor and says, disappointedly, "You suck. I can't believe I believed in you."

"Don't be stupid!" Naruto says hastily. "I could've easily taken care of that guy if Sasuke hadn't butted in!"

Konohamaru scoffs and turns away from the blonde, shunning him.

"Hey, punk!" the stranger shouts at Sasuke, finding us too inferior to mess with now. Or maybe he just wants to get his pride back. "Get down here! I hate show-offs like you the most."

"God, tell me about it," I complain, dropping my forehead into the palm of my hand. "At least you don't have to deal with this every day. What are you even doing here, Sasuke? I thought you went home."

Sasuke doesn't answer me. Instead, he watches as the boy removes the tightly wrapped package that he'd been carrying around from his back and holds it out.

The girl, startled, puts a hand on her friend's arm and says, "Hey, don't tell me you're going to use the crow."

I'm about to intervene again when a creepily placid voice says, "Kankuro, stop it. You're a disgrace to our entire village."

Everyone instantaneously freezes as dread slinks into the faces of the two foreign Nin before us. We look to the left of Sasuke to find a boy with a gourd on his back hanging upside down from the tree branch beside Sasuke, the white sashes draped over his shoulders hanging like vines, his red hair standing out against the greenery. He's got his arms crossed and a blank look, with eyes rimmed with the thickest black lines—like make-up, almost, but I can see that it's nothing like that of the first boy's. The boy in the tree is closer to our age than the other two foreigners, yet the way that he'd snuck appeared had been so discreet, I hadn't even felt a shift in the vibrations, which I'm usually able to discern.

Kankuro smiles nervously. "G-Gaara," he stutters, taking a step back and strapping his 'crow' back on.

"It annoys me that you've lost control with yourself in a fight with children," Gaara answers, his expression unchanging, and I can't help but to roll my eyes at the audacity of this guy, calling us children when he is about the same age. "How pathetic. Why do you think we came to the Leaf Village?"

"But listen, Gaara," Kankuro tries to amend quickly, "they started it and—"

"Shut up," he answers, and frankly, I'm glad that he does. I mean, 'They started it'? That guy might as well have been five years old. But the red-haired boy adds, "Or I'll kill you." and that immediately throws me off. Would he really threaten to kill his own kinsmen like that? At least now we know who the leader is in this situation.

Gaara turns his head slightly to glare at Kankuro, and I can see that there's a red tattoo on the left side of Gaara's forehead in the kanji for 'love'. Ironic, I think, keeping my eyes trained on the boy in case he makes any sudden moves.

"You're right, I was out of line," Kankuro relents, his voice shaky. He holds his hands palm out in front of him in defeat. "We're sorry, okay, Gaara?"

A swirl of sand immerses the boy and he disappears, only to be carried by the sand, reappearing next to his teammates. "I know we're here a little early," Gaara says as his teammates step aside to give him a wide berth, "but we didn't come here to play around."

"I know," Kankuro answers. "I swear it won't happen again."

"Then let's go," Gaara says, swiveling around to go in the same direction as I had been heading.

"How rude," I mutter under my breath as they walk away. Before they get much further though, Sakura yells, "Wait!"

"What?" It's Gaara that answers, and his voice makes chills march up and down my spine once more.

"Sakura, _why_?" I hiss, jabbing her with my elbow. "_Why_ are you calling them back? Are you _crazy_? These guys obviously mean business, so far as being ninja go."

"I just need to ask them some questions," she answers, and then redirects her focus to the trio before us. "Judging from your headbands," she says, projecting her voice to be heard, "you're ninja from the Village Hidden in the Sand right? Your country is one of Konoha's allies, but our treaty states that it's forbidden for shinobi to enter each other's villages without permission. So state your purpose! We can't just let you go your merry way!"

The girl laughs and presents us with a passport. "Talk about clueless," she says. "Don't you guys know anything? As you said before, we're Genin from the Hidden Sand. We're here to take the Chuunin selection exam."

"Chuunin selection exam?" Naruto repeats, ever oblivious.

"Jeez, you kids really _don't_ know anything," the girl sighs, and I'm about to say otherwise but she just barrels forward with, "The Chuunin exam is where outstanding Nin from the Sand, Leaf, and other neighboring countries assemble to take an exam to become a Chuunin—you know, a journeyman Nin? It's the level above being a Genin."

"We _know_," I growl.

She smirks at me. "I'm sure."

"Why do we take it all together?" Naruto asks, excited at the idea of being able to advance.

"Mainly to maintain the skill of all shinobi at the same high level," she replies. "Also to improve the relations between allies and maintain a balance of powers between the Shinobi Nations."

Naruto has already turned away from the girl to his minion. "Hey, Konohamaru," he says enthusiastically, "d'you think _I_ should take the Chuunin exams?"

"You bastard!" the girl fumes. "When you ask a question, listen until the end!"

"Sounded like you were done talking to me," I retort, though I'm sure she doesn't hear.

Sasuke jumps down from the tree and lands at my side, asking, "What's your name?"

The girl flushes and stutters, "W-who, me?"

"No," Sasuke says blatantly and I snort while the girl's face falls. "You with the gourd."

He looks Sasuke up and down, measuring him up to himself no doubt, before answering, "Gaara of the Desert, at your service. I'm also interested in you. What's your name?"

"Uchiha Sasuke," he says, and I mentally groan thinking that this meeting is way too melodramatic for me.

"Well, if we're all done here," I say, clapping my hands together as Sasuke and Gaara stare each other down. "Let's all—"

"Hey, what about me!" Naruto interjects, grinning. "Don't you want to know my name?"

"No," Gaara says, turning away. "Let's go."

The three Sand Nin jump off, leaving us to ourselves. Well, so far as everyone else is concerned.

The vibrations flicker against my ear, alerting me to another presence. Three to be exact. And they're confident enough in their hiding spots to be speaking, although I can't understand what they're saying through the vibrations alone. I can, however, pinpoint their location.

I look to the trees around us inconspicuously, trying to see if I can spot the spies, and sure enough I find them loitering on a tree branch, hiding in the shadows of the leaves overhead. It looks as though they're watching me, but if that had been the case, they would've noticed that I've spotted them right away. So, I figure, they're staring at Sasuke who has managed to get in yet another fight with Naruto.

I scowl, tired of their constant fighting and leave them the way they are without saying another word to them. Once I'm far enough that they can't hear me anymore though, I start muttering to myself. It starts out as an innocent line of profanities and then turns into an all out rant.

Not that ranting is doing much for me, since there's no one around to listen and agree with me so that I feel better. But still, at least for once, it's all about me at the moment—no Naruto vying for attention, no Sasuke acting all haughty, no Sakura drooling over Sasuke, no Kakashi to nag me about anything. Nothing and no one to bother me.

I amble to the park, my mutterings dying out with no more words to fuel it. If there's anything that I'm definitely sure of now, it's how much I really do want this bond with Sasuke broken. I can't believe I had even considered keeping it around. I hadn't been thinking straight. I mean, I had just returned home from a high stress mission and the Hokage dropped the pressure of moving back into my own house on me, a house, might I add, that isn't exactly associated with good memories or anything. So it had only been natural for me to freak out and start rethinking things and doubting things and generally feeling so overwhelmed that I would consider not going through with what I've spent nearly _half of my life_ trying to accomplish!

And now that I've _basically_ got my head on straight and can think things through thoroughly and sanely, it's obvious that whatever I'd been considering the last month had no legs to walk on anyway and if I had taken the time to sit down and rationalize, I would've realized that!

I blow my bangs from my face, tugging at the ends of my hair that have started to brush past my shoulders now. I contemplate cutting it back to its old length, the length at which I had kept it these past few rebellious years, only to disregard it almost immediately because 1.) I'm really in no mood to think about anything, much less my _hair_, which 2.) being a shinobi and all is, in truth, pretty unimportant, especially considering 3.) I should probably be thinking about the upcoming Chuunin exams the girl from the Sand had mentioned would be taking place sometime soon, although, again, 4.) I don't really feel like thinking about anything at all, especially not something so important or life-changing, and besides 5.) the only reason I had kept it short all these years was that was the only way I felt I could retaliate against my parents for all that they'd done to me.

My mother had loved my hair long. In fact, when she was still alive, she absolutely forbade me cutting it and only trimmed it every few months to keep it in line. Until I was five, she would always style it for me in nice little buns or other complicated up 'do's. It would have gone on for longer had my father not decided to take the bond that I had with Sasuke to the next level and push me harder and watch me closer than ever before. It was then that I first became aware of how much of a burden the bond really was, and I decided that if I couldn't do as I pleased any longer my parents would have to have something taken away from them as well in order to even out the score.

By cutting off all my hair as I did, I took away any personal alone time that I got with my mother at all. Every other time we were alone together, I was learning medical ninjutsu.

From my father, I took my obedience. I wouldn't listen to him anymore, wouldn't do anything he told me to do without putting up a fight, and wouldn't so much as acknowledge the Uchiha until someone scolded me for my bad manners. This shamed my father and caused uproar within our family. It was, as he made sure to tell me many times before he died, humiliating for him. It's too bad that he didn't realize the more he berated me for doing it, the more it egged me on.

To this day I still believe that I was able to hurt my mother much more than I ever did my father. And that's the only part I regret.

"You should watch your step."

My head perks up at the voice. In front of me, I'm able to spot a girl with deep mahogany locks curling around her face and eyes that are an awkward shade of brown and green. Just as I furrow my brow at her though, my foot rams into the bottom-most step of the stairs that cut through the park and sends me flying forward.

My arms stretch out to brace myself on the rail that splits down the center of the stairs. My foot throbs and I wince a bit, seeing as though my sandals are opened toed, but since my toes aren't banged up or anything from what I'd just done, I look back up to see the girl standing just five steps above me.

"I told you," she says, winking. "That's why I wear these." She extends her leg out so that her toes are pointed at my torso. She waggles her foot at me, brandishing her scuffed black boot that has a navy blue frill sowed around the mouth of the boot. "They're generally handy in any toe-ouch moment, considering the fact that they have a metal plate at the tip _and_ the fact that they're already covering my toes."

She drops her foot down on the step in front of me and neatly leans forward so that we're basically nose to nose. I blink at her quizzically and counter her movements by leaning away from her, taking in her outfit.

She's wearing a high-collared white shirt with a heavy poncho over it. As she raises her hand to give me a wave, the fabric over her arm drops back to show that the sleeve of her shirt is held fast to her skin by a number of tight bracelets with god knows what kind of charms that dangle and clang together. Around her neck, she's wearing a necklace with what looks like four evenly spaced-out shark teeth and she's got a rope belt as thick as my index- and forefinger side-by-side tied around her hips as a makeshift belt for her chocolate colored pants. To top it all off, she's got an eagle feather stuck in her headband (which, I should note, has a quarter note etched into it) and a single red line of paint running through her left eye, much like Kakashi's scar over his Sharingan.

"Hi," she says, beaming at me.

"Uh," I answer. "Hey."

Still grinning at me, she says, "Your aura's so muggy. It's a real shame, considering you're such a pretty girl. Although if you wore your headband in a style that didn't cover your nice hair, you'd probably look a lot better."

I flush at this and glower at her. "Think so?" I ask coldly, shoving past her and stomping up the stairs. "Like I really care at all what some _foreigner_ says."

She giggles, apparently taking delight in my sour reaction. "Well, see ya! Oh, and just so you know, you shouldn't doubt whether you really want to break that bloody bond you've got. You were right to want to break it in the first place."

I freeze immediately, gripping the rail for support. Whirling on her, I blurt, "What did you say?"

But she's already gone.

* * *

**Thank you for reading! Please review!**


	20. Unsatisfied

**Bound  
Chapter 20: Unsatisfied **

Scrambling down the stairs, I search the immediate area for her before wondering why I don't just see if I can pick anything up from the vibrations in the air. However, even resorting to the vibrations is futile. I can't feel any movements that are out of the ordinary, although I probably should have suspected that, considering the girl is from, according her headband, the Sound village. She's probably manipulating the vibrations around her somehow so that she's moving without disturbing them and thus alerting me to her location.

"HEY!" I shout into the air, moving away from the park and looking around. Even if I couldn't sense her nearby, I should be able to at least see her, right? After all, we'd just been talking a few minutes ago; she couldn't have gotten far. "Who do you think you are?" I demand, my fists clenching. "You can't just, just _walk_ up to somebody and say that kind of thing, you presumptuous little bi—"

There's an awkward kind of "Erm?" from behind me and I turn around. A boy is halted on the second landing with his black hair tied into a stubby pointy tail, his hands stuffed into his pockets and a nervous look on his face.

"Oh," I mutter, my shoulders sagging. "Hi Shikamaru."

His eyes slink around the general vicinity as I sulk up the steps to meet him. "Are you, uh…," he starts, scowling like he's having trouble putting it all together. And then, deciding that he doesn't want to approach the subject anymore, he says, "Never mind."

"Yeah," I agree, crossing my arms, agitated. "At any rate, what're you doing here?"

"Asuma-sensei told us that he needed to go file some mission repots," he says, "so we've got the rest of the day off."

"Funny," I note. "That's what Kakashi told us too. Maybe they're meeting up to plot against us or something."

Shikamaru scoffs, rolling his eyes. He leads the way to our usual area under the trees. "Like Jounin would waste time plotting against a group of lowly Genin."

"It could happen."

We drip slowly into silence, and once we settle down into the grass and I've got my eyes closed, Shikamaru says, "So. Should I even ask about what you were doing earlier?"

"No," I answer, turning on my side. "Although I should ask: Have you run into any foreign Nin lately?"

"What? No. Why would there be foreign Nin in Konoha?"

I sigh, opening my eyes and picking at the blades of grass that poke my face. "If I told you, you wouldn't believe it. It's all really troublesome."

I'm not saying that to Shikamaru just to end the conversation, although that does do the trick. It really is all troublesome: The Chuunin exams, the foreign Nin coming in and throwing us all off, the fact that we haven't been informed of any of this yet and that we don't have any idea of what's going on. And that damn girl from the Sound.

Even thinking about her makes my fingers clutch around the grass hairs and yank it out with violent vigor. I shake the grass from my fingers and press half of my face into the warm soft soil, forcing myself to forget about it and just sleep.

[+]

I'm leaning up against one of the posts of the banister that lines the bridges, my head lolling forward and my eyes fluttering to a close. Even though I had slept in an extra hour knowing that Kakashi wouldn't be on time anyway, I'm still tired and Kakashi's still not here. But, I mean, I've had _reason_ to be sleepless at night.

That girl won't leave me alone.

I haven't seen her since that day a week ago, and that's only been putting me down more, considering I really want—no, _need_—to get answers from her. Because by 'bloody bond', I could only assume that she had been referring to the blood oath. And what if she had something for me that I could use to break the bond? What if she had the vital answers that I'd been looking for all this time? How did she even know about it in the first place?

Opening one eye, I glance up at Sasuke to make sure that he's not listening in to what I'm thinking. Luckily, he's irritated because of Naruto and Sakura, who are openly and loudly complaining about Kakashi's bad habit of tardiness. And frankly, I don't blame Sasuke for his irritation, because Kakashi _is_ late every time and this kind of conversation between Sakura and Naruto _always_ ensues.

"Okay, look!" Sakura shouts, clenching her fist and shaking it in the air furiously. "Are we just going to stand around and let him get away with it? Why is it that, whenever we get called out, we always end up waiting like dopes for him to show?"

"You're right!" Naruto agrees, making a face. "Say it, Sakura-chan!"

"No, actually," I mutter, propping my cheek on my knuckles. "Don't say it."

Sakura doesn't hear me or chooses to ignore me because she goes on. "I mean, does he even _think_ about us? I overslept and didn't even have time to blow dry my hair. See how it's curling here?"

"Yeah, it's not right!" Naruto says with extra enthusiasm, as though supporting Sakura will help him get on better terms with her romantically. "I overslept too and didn't even have time to wash my face or brush my teeth!"

On this, both Sakura and I can concur: "Ew."

"But I mean, if you guys can guess that Kakashi is always going to be late," I deadpan, smoothing down my hair, "why don't you relax and take your time in the mornings?"

Sakura opens her mouth to retort but is cut off by a voice that greets, "Morning, guys!"

Our attention is redirected to the archway built over the bridge and we find our sensei looming overhead, perched on a beam and smiling at us happily.

"Today I got lost on the road of life—"

"LIAR!" Sakura and Naruto are quick to accuse, glaring. "Can't you at least _pretend_ to be sorry?"

"Oh, drop it," I grumble, annoyed. I get to my feet as Kakashi leaps from the archway and lands before us.

"Good suggestion, Ren," he says, nodding. "I've actually got some news that you might like. This may come as a surprise, but I've nominated you guys for the Chuunin selection exam."

We look at our sensei skeptically. Personally, I suppose I could've seen this coming, but I don't know what the requirements are for a nomination, so how can it be that a couple of nothing-special Genin got recommended for the test?

For another second or two, no one says anything. Then Sakura scoffs.

"What did you say?" she demands like he's just made a jab about her forehead.

"Funny, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto jeers, miffed. "You almost had us there."

"Here are your applications," he says as though they hadn't spoken, and holds out official looking papers that he distributes among us. "Whether or not you choose to take this exam is up to you. If you do want to take it, then sign the paper and report in a week to room 301 at the Academy to turn them in."

Naruto suddenly jumps on Kakashi, crying, "I LOVE YOU, KAKASHI-SENSEI" in a way that makes me flinch as the Jounin tries to pry him off.

"Kakashi," I say, once he's managed to shove Naruto away. I raise my hand. "You're a form short. I didn't get one."

"Ah," Kakashi says, mussing his hair and turning his eyes quickly away. "I must have grabbed too few. My mistake. Why don't you come with me to the Ninja Administration office and we'll get you one?"

My eyebrows slink up my forehead, suspicious. Why I would have to go with Kakashi to get myself an entrance form is beyond me. I have half a mind to decline and tell him to just send one to my house later this evening, but they way he shifts under the weight of my gaze—not _nervous_, so much as impatient to tell me something privately—I know that he's counting on me to agree with his proposition.

"Okay," I say, shrugging as though I hadn't been questioning Kakashi's inquiry in the first place. "That sounds fine. Let's go."

[+]

"I'm gonna need to have a talk with Sasuke," I grumble as Kakashi and I enter through the Administration building doors, the cool ventilation freezing the sweat on my brow that had gathered in the intense summer heat. "For what he said to Sakura the other day, I mean. Although maybe an intervention of sorts with Sakura is better called for, since she holds Sasuke's opinion in such high regard in the first place. Did you see her face when you passed out those papers? She looked absolutely terrified at the prospect of entering these exams. And Sasuke, the bastard for demoralizing her yesterday like it's his _job_ to kill people's hopes and dreams because he can't achieve his own."

"I have a feeling," Kakashi says, leading me down a corridor with blank walls and lights that seem to shine seriousness instead of fluorescent yellows, "that Sakura will know just what to do when the time comes for her to make her own decisions."

"I'm sure," I say dismissively, crossing my arms over my chest. "But she has to know what to do _now_, not only when time comes. Anyway." I stop abruptly, making Kakashi have to peer over his shoulder to keep his eyes on me. "What is it that you want, Kakashi? You and I both know that I didn't have to come here to get an application. Not that I don't want one."

Kakashi blinks at me, considering his words. "The thing is," he says at last, bringing a hand up to scruff his hair again. "There are two Chuunin Exams held each year. One is for Genin whose cell members have not advanced yet, and the second one is for Genin who wish to take it solo or are forced to take the exams solo because they're missing cell members, whether it be because their teammates passed the year before or are otherwise unable to take the exams. You probably know which one this exam is."

"The one where all squad members are still Genin and are around to take it," I answer. "But then, one, why did you say it was an independent choice to participate in the exam?"

"So as to avoid having your teammates pressure each other into taking the exam against their will," Kakashi says. "I thought you would like that. Besides, you should know better than anyone else that if your heart isn't into what you're doing, you shouldn't have to do it."

I frown, unhappy that he'd make an example out of me, even though what he's saying is true. "All right," I agree, "so, secondly, why would it matter which of the two exams it was? All of Team 7 are still here. Unless the Hokage's decided to promote me early or is letting me leave the village by myself again. I'm fine with either one."

"Neither," says Kakashi carefully and rubbing his neck, like he's upset that he has to be the one breaking this to me, "is the case. Ren, from the beginning, you understood why you were placed on Team 7 in the first place, right?"

I scowl at him, tugging on loose tuffs of my hair that have started to wriggle out from beneath my headband. "To keep an eye on Sasuke," I say, "because the Hokage, despite the fact that he had let me leave to try to find a way to break the bond, believes the old myth that if the Kagiru finally fulfill their blood contract with the Uchiha, they will be free of the bond at last. And, of course, so that _you_ could keep an eye on _me_ in case I tried to make a run for it. Don't think I missed that underlying motive of the Hokage's."

"Right," Kakashi says. "And also, we needed a last minute fill in for Naruto because he had failed his test and we'd had an odd number of graduating Genin. However, some uncalled for events took place that allowed Naruto a second chance to pass his graduation test, which he promptly did in a way that greatly benefited Konoha."

"Huh," I muse, rubbing my chin. "He did something _that_ incredible?"

"We hadn't anticipated it either," Kakashi admits. "But it happened, and suddenly we ended up with odd numbers again. However, we'd already told you that you were to be on the team as punishment, and if we retracted our statement, we would have run the risk of having you fleeing again, and the Village Council weren't exactly thrilled at that idea. The Hokage had allowed you release the first time secretly, and to do it again would only put him on worse terms with the Council members and, possibly, the daimyo. So you were placed on Team 7 anyway. We figured it wouldn't have hurt, and in the end, we were right."

I bite the inside of my lip, taking this in. Kakashi waits patiently for my response. I cock my head to the side, closing my eyes to help me concentrate on forming the right words to say before I speak.

"So what you're saying is," I reiterate, nodding slowly as the information clicks and my thoughts come together in sentences. "I…_never_ had to be here in the first place. And all this time, I was just a handy spare to be thrown on a team for the sake of two other Genin whom I felt absolutely nothing toward? Oh, until the Genin who had _previously_ failed ended up passing miraculously, once again throwing things off. Then I just became a loose end that needed to be tied up hastily before I could be snipped. And the reason," I say loudly, forcibly, as Kakashi is about to interrupt. "The reason that you didn't give me an application is because I am not technically part of the team, and therefore cannot technically participate in this exam. Is that right?"

Kakashi's silence is more than enough confirmation for me.

I want to laugh. I want to shake my head, turn on my heels, and go back home to pack my things and high tail it out of here. I knew nothing good could come out of this _building bonds_ shit. I really must have been out of my mind when I thanked the Hokage for placing me on this team when we'd come home from the Land of the Waves. I really must have been looking at my situation with blind eyes.

"Ren!" I hear Kakashi call, somehow sounding far behind me. I realize that my feet have started to carry me down the corridor, away from my _sensei_, and it's then that my much delayed anger catches up to me. Or maybe it had been way ahead and I'd only just caught up to it. Whichever the case, I don't care. Because, now, knowing what I know, I will be getting out of here. I will be leaving this place behind once again.

And hopefully, forever. At last.

The thought makes my legs take longer, more powerful strides. My arms start to swing. My body leans forward. I'm full out sprinting down the halls that wind and shine with the seriousness instead of flushed out yellow lights like normal places because this place cannot be warm or happy or welcoming. This is a place where people get sentenced to their deaths, where people sacrifice themselves for people who don't even care what happens to others, so long as they get what they wantneeddesire.

These fools. These _goddamn fools_.

My fingers grapple for the door handle and I'm slamming it open before I can register it in my head. A squad of upper level Nin who are standing before the table at which missions are handed out turn, and when they see me, my face, the obvious signs of adolescence that litters my body, their expressions drop unanimously in disapproval.

"Old man," I growl, folding my arms across my chest and narrowing my eyes at the Hokage who I only see slivers of through the on-guard Nin in my way. "I need to have a word with you."

The adults in the room have their thoughts plastered on their faces. _Who does this girl think she is?_ they ask each other as they exchange glances of arrogant disbelief. I see some Nin are halfway up from their seats around the room, ready to escort me out with force if necessary, but then the Hokage speaks up and puts an end to all the commotion that I've caused.

"Ren? Is that you?" he asks casually. He moves a pipe from his lips and nods serenely as the ninja before him move out of the way so that I have sight of him. "Hmm. I suppose I should have been expecting this. Well, let me finish with my meeting—"

"No," I hiss, standing my ground. "Now. I need to talk with you now."

The Hokage furrows his brow, but there's this serious look about his eyes that I've never seen. He frowns and says, "Since you've disrupted my conference so rudely, I would think that it would be a fair compromise to have you wait a few minutes while I finish up. So, if you would please step outside until I bring you in."

Ha. I should've figured as much.

"Like hell I will," I say, kicking the doorframe as I exit the room. I'm not going to be so kind as to wait for him. I'm not even going to bother listening to what he has to say.

After all, I was never meant to be here right?

…god_dammit_.

I'm not sure which is worse: the fact that, when it comes right down to it, I was unneeded or the fact that I'm angry at the idea of being unneeded. Because it wasn't as though I'd come back to the village with the intention of being useful or, god forbid, building bonds that would lead me to being wanted or cared for or depended on by anyone. Already having the burden of the blood oath on my shoulders, those options are in no way appealing to me.

So why am I peeved that I wasn't—and, technically, never was—a necessary part of Team 7? I shouldn't _want_ to be necessary to them. I shouldn't I shouldn't I shouldn't.

The hallway seems to have stretched hundreds of meters since I ran it just moments before. My feet quicken their pace again and my fingers bite into the flesh of my hand. I want to get out of here. Might as well start now.

The plan is already forming in my head. Once I get out of this building, I won't stop. Not at my house, not at Sasuke's, not at the park where I could possibly catch Shikamaru and tell him where I'm going because I can't afford to get distracted. I don't have precious time to waste. I'd already lost ten months in this town, ten months that I could've spent living for me or trying to break the bond instead of tending to strangers' gardens, babysitting children for members of the village council, walking dogs, grocery shopping for asses too lazy to stand from their chairs, saving a village foreign to me from a shipping magnate despite my having nothing to do with the situation, and caring for Sasuke.

I had actually cared for Sasuke during my ten months back here. God, my father would be _so fucking proud_. And it's this that I'm thinking as I burst through the administration building doors and into the gleaming daylight that swarms Konoha.

Only to find my path blocked by the very Jounin who had dropped me off in the first place.

"Kakashi," I growl, skidding to a stop. Suspicion tampers with any and all logic that I have. I can only think that he's here to capture me and tie me up, keep me from leaving and telling people what I know about how this village uses people with no regards as to how said people would feel when all is said and done.

"What are you doing still loitering around?" I snap, sliding my feet back in case I need to jump out of the way if he attacks me. "Because if you think you're going to be doing me any more _favors_ by keeping me in this place, you can just shove off."

"Ren, be reasonable," Kakashi says sternly, his face morphing into a look that a parent would give you if you weren't being sensible. "These months that you've spent back in Konoha—haven't you learned something from them? Haven't the bonds you created with Sakura and Naruto and—"

"Don't even say it!" I interrupt, dragging my hands down the sides of my face in horror. "Don't even go there, Kakashi! These bonds may be good for my soul and worthwhile in the moment, but in the end, all they are are _burdens_! Looking out for other people when my own life could be in danger, putting others before myself, sacrificing myself for other people—I don't want that! And do you know _why_? Because that will be my whole life to an extreme if I don't break this bond! For god's sake, do any of you people understand that it isn't any of your business to be making these decisions for me?"

"That may be so," Kakashi says, keeping calm as my hands shake from the anger and frustration that's circulating through my veins. "But taking off like this isn't going to solve anything. It's only going to cause more problems for you and the village."

I throw my hands up and roll my eyes in disbelief, muttering, "Oh, right, because the village really matters when it comes to my affairs."

"You need to understand," Kakashi says, speaking over my last few words, "that, being a Genin, there are certain precautions we need to take to look out for your wellbeing. We can't just let you loose into the wild with no one to watch over you. You are, I repeat, _a Genin_, regardless of your past experience and training. You can't properly take care of yourself out there, Ren. That was why we had that ANBU tracker team follow you."

"An ANBU tracker team that I was able to get off my tail," I bring up. "Or are you leaving that part of the argument out for the sake of making your point?"

"We could have easily found you again," dismisses Kakashi. "But the Hokage thought that it would be best to give you some freedom and trust you to come back on your own."

"So why don't you trust me to leave now?" I ask and hear that my voice is on the verge of a whine. "Why can't I go, since everything is _fine_ here and, as it turns out, I'm not even needed?"

"That," another voice cuts in, "is a matter to discuss when you're older."

The Hokage is standing behind me, his pipe smoking at his lips, his stupid hat shielding his face from the sunlight. He has his hands clasped behind his back and only reaches up to remove his pipe to speak.

"There are things that you can't understand at the moment, Ren," he says quietly, "and frankly, things that you shouldn't know until you have learned to control your temper better. Not to mention your logic on caring for others is fatally flawed. Do you even realize what you're saying half the time?"

"I'm not an idiot," I snap, folding my arms. "And I'm not a child. I can handle whatever you want to throw at me."

The Hokage sighs, letting his shoulders sag out of his stiff commander posture. I'm wearing him out. He can only relent to my wants now.

"You're trying too hard to grow up," he laments, tapping the mouthpiece of his pipe against his top lip. "It's much easier to be a child, you know. Wouldn't you agree, Kakashi?"

"Old man—"

"But, if you want to be a rational adult, let's discuss this," he says, his brows coming together in a determined stare. His voice takes on a sarcastic tone that tells me he's definitely not taking this seriously. He wants using this tactic to annoy me and it's working. "I _insist_. So. You want to leave the village, is that right? You want to find a way to break this bond by using other resources from other countries because there is nothing for you here. You fear that this bond is becoming stronger with each waking moment—"

"I _know_ that it's getting stronger," I correct. "I can feel it. And if you ask Sasuke, I'm sure he'll tell you the same thing."

"Okay then," the Hokage concedes. "Your bond is getting stronger, and that fact is making you desperate to find a way to break it. And the reason you want to break the bond is because you don't want to spend the rest of your life living for someone else and possibly being ordered around like a slave. Is that right?"

"Yes," I mutter, annoyed. "I had to give up my childhood for this goddamn bond, do you understand that? I had to give up having friends and being able to decide whether or not I wanted to become a ninja because everything was about _Sasuke_ and the _Uchiha_ and I had to do it for them because they were the glorious clan that was all deserving of our reverence."

"So why are you still wasting your time on it now?" the Hokage counters. "Why let it control your life to the point where you would leave everything behind to give it your full attention? Why not just ignore it and let it go to see if it reaches a certain point and then begins to fade?"

"Because!" I argue, wondering why he can't comprehend or at least _try_ to comprehend where I'm coming from. "Ten years, gramps! Working for the Uchiha, improving myself for the Uchiha, and then attempting to break the bond—all together, I've spent _ten fucking years_ with this mess over my head! I can't just _waste_ all that effort I put into finding a way to break it! I can't just _let it go_."

"But you haven't gotten any closer to breaking the bond than you were six years ago," says the Hokage. "You really have wasted all your time then, haven't you? And you've got your mind set on wasting _more_ of your life? How does that make sense, Ren?"

"You goddamn—!" My feet grind into the dirt and I'm launching myself at the Hokage so boldly that I'm sure he'll be able to dodge or at least counteract in a way that would send me flying. He is, after all, the most talented and powerful man in the village. But my movements are so brash and predictable that Kakashi is able to grab me by my shoulders, keeping me in place, and chides, "Ren!"

"Now, let's go over those points again," the Hokage says, calm as usual. He tips his hat a bit so that the sun, which has shifted some since our conversation began, is completely blocked from his face once more. "You want to leave the village to find a way to break the bond by using resources from other countries because you insist that there is nothing here that will help you. Even if last part were true—which it isn't, I assure you. You're simply not looking in the right places—to go into other countries is breeching our treaties with them. Our alliance with the Sand, for example, states that none of our Nin shall enter into each others' land for any reason that hasn't been approved by the respective Kages. I know you've been to the Sand country already, under the guise of a touring child with a troupe that you had come across on your way there. Chancing that trip with them was very risky by the way. Lucky our ANBU were on you at that time of that incident. You are not, however, a child any longer. You are a ninja, and you are a threat. To go back to the Sand country now could cause problems between our villages, and I would like to maintain a peace with them for as long as possible, if you don't mind."

I struggle against Kakashi, who keeps his hold on me strong. I want to strangle this old man, want him to suffer at my hands whatever the cost is in the end, because I don't want to hear him preaching to me about my methods. I don't want to hear what he has to say about my life because I don't give a damn. I just want him to shut up. But he doesn't give any sign of quieting any time soon, so I try my best to close my ears to him. It doesn't work.

"Secondly," he says, cocking his head. He hums and then nods as he puts the finishing touches on what he's about to say. "Your bond is becoming stronger and you're afraid that it's going to overwhelm you. You want to break it, yet you're completely overlooking the fact that, if you let it run its course, maybe it'll go away on its own. Have you considered for a moment that maybe resisting it, ignoring it, isn't the way to solve your problems? You're so caught up in trying to become independent that you can't see any other option besides what you want, even when there are simpler ways of going about doing things right in front of your face.

"And last but not least," the Hokage says, talking over me as I hiss a profanity at him. "You don't want any bonds, but you must come to realize someday that that is nearly impossible in this life. You need bonds in order to survive, whether they be small and insignificant or as deep as your bond with Sasuke. Maybe you'll even create one that runs deeper than the one you have with Sasuke, and maybe that will be enough to truly break the blood contract the Kagiru have with the Uchiha. And it won't be a matter of whether or not you _want_ these bonds or whether or not you _need_ them, Ren, because some things…just happen."

But I refuse to believe that.

[+]

House arrest. That is what I have been subjected to until further notice.

It wasn't what the Hokage had said directly, but it's what he has implied. I am, by his orders, not allowed to leave my house until the exams next week because I am a flight risk.

I hate this place.

Trapped within the confines of my house, I find myself pacing the floor, growing agitated as the sun rises every morning and becoming a tired mess by day's end.

I think all too much.

I think about the bond—my life before and after I found out about it—my parents for damning me with it in the first place. The Sound girl. How I can't fight her anymore or demand her to tell me how she knows about the blood oath. How much I want/need really need to leave this village full of people who believe too much in good things because they've been settled with the idea of peace for so long that they've grown overly comfortable with their lifestyle, overly careless. I think about why the floorboard in my kitchen keeps popping up despite all my efforts to get it to stay down.

I play with the vibrations when I'm bored enough. Which is often. Through the Genshindou, I can always feel someone shifting about just along the edge of my property. I figure it to be one of the Great Lord's spies making sure that I don't do anything funny.

I cannot leave and I cannot stay.

My life becomes monotonous quick.

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	21. Matters

**Bound  
Chapter 21: Matters**

"Ren? What are you doing here?"

I glower and shift from one leg to the other as Sasuke approaches, eyebrow quirked and mouth slightly frowning. Out of all the members of Team 7, I was hoping that he would be the last to show up at the Academy in order to turn in their applications. As my luck would have it, though, he is the first.

I'd been waiting outside the Academy for what has probably been half an hour now, and while Sasuke is just arriving, plenty of other Nin are already here, gathered with their teams and looking experienced and menacing. I'd also kept track of what symbol was etched into the headbands of which Nin so as to see if I can spot the girl from the other day, but it doesn't seem like there are many participants from the Sound village. I mostly caught sight of Leaf and Sand headbands, all, might I add, belonging to Nin two or three years older than us. I had begun to wonder if Kakashi had made a mistake nominating Team 7 when we're so much younger than these guys.

"I've been waiting for the rest of Team 7 to show up," I grumble, crossing my arms. "Because I have the great honor of being able to see you off to your exams today."

Sasuke's brow furrows. "Oh _really_?" he's asking with his eyes.

He knows. About the house arrest thing, I mean. He knows about why I haven't been showing up for team meetings or participating in missions, about how the Hokage sentenced me to solitary confinement, and how I can't take part in the exams. And that is why he's suspicious with me now.

"And there was something that I wanted to talk to you about, Sasuke," I say, deciding that, as long as I'm here and as long as we're alone, I might as well say what I need to say. I realize too late, however, that my inquiry will fall right in line with what the Hokage said about bonds. I shake it off and comfort myself with the fact that the geezer won't ever hear about this.

It takes Sasuke a moment to register what I've just told him. He faces me slowly, and I can already see on his pretty features what he's expecting to hear.

"It's not about the bond," I say through my teeth so that the passing Rain Nin can't hear me over their laughter. "I wanted to talk to you about what you said to Sakura last week, you know, before we ran into those Sand Nins?"

"Oh," he says, and subconsciously reaches up to massage his head where I'd nailed him with the rock.

"All I'm trying to say is," I go on, "you don't have to be such an insufferable ass _all_ the time, you know?"

He narrows his eyes at me. "What does it matter to you?"

"It matters to me," I answer, knowing I shouldn't do this or say anymore because standing up for Sakura will go against everything I'd argued about with the Hokage. But I can't help it. Sasuke just bothers me so much, and I will do anything to antagonize him. "Because you're bringing other people down with your holier than thou comments! You're hurting their feelings even though they're trying their hardest. You keep degrading people, making it out like they don't matter because they're not strong. But just because someone isn't physically strong doesn't mean that they're weaker than you, all right? So just shut up and stop thinking you're so damn cool because you come from a prestigious clan."

He doesn't seem to have anything to say to me, so I turn my back to him and we don't speak again. To my delight, although I don't show it, Sakura ends up showing after all, five minutes after my conversation with Sasuke.

"Ren," she greets with surprise. I grunt, besides the fact that I am happy that she's chosen to show up. "What are you doing here? Kakashi-sensei said something about you not feeling well."

I grin bitterly at this lie. It seems that my existence in Konoha is solely based on excuses made up for me by the adults. "Yes," I say stiffly. "Something like that. But I'm feeling well enough to escort you guys to the exams today. That's about the limits of my services though. Did Kakashi also tell you about my not being able to participate in the exams?"

Sakura blinks at the way I've spit out the question and nods, like she's figuring that she probably shouldn't have brought this up. "He said that there were some complications is all," she says.

"Complications indeed," I grumble, reaching up to tug on a tuft of hair that sticks out from under my headband.

Sensing that I won't be elaborating anymore, Sakura turns awkwardly away and the three of us end up not speaking to each other until Naruto shows up, bright and bubbly as always.

"Hey, Sakura-chan!" Naruto cheers, pointedly ignoring Sasuke as he jogs towards us, waving and grinning so that all his teeth show.

"Uh, h-hi," Sakura answers, and Sasuke's calmed enough to notice how she's acting.

"Your fault," I sing as Naruto busies Sakura with helping him figure out where to sign his name. Sasuke glowers at me, his lips pinching together like he wants to say something but will hold it in for my sake.

"Ren!" Naruto finally notices as he finishes with Sakura. "Where have you been! Why haven't you been going on missions with us or to team meetings?"

"I've been around," I tell him, unable to keep from grinning despite my annoyance with Sasuke. "Don't fret, Naruto. Things have just gotten a little complicated."

"That's what Kakashi-sensei said," Naruto frowns. "But I don't get it. What's gotten complicated?"

"That's none of our business, Naruto," Sakura says quickly. "Anyway, we should hurry to turn in our papers. Look at all the other people who are here. We'll be late if we don't go now."

I agree with Sakura, not wanting to reveal anymore about my current situation, and we set off. But I have to wonder how they'd been doing without me. Granted, there aren't any missions within the village that really require the use of more than one, much less three, _ninja_. At least not so far as D-ranked missions go, anyway. But I wonder if they had noticed my absence or if they had just gone about it without thinking twice about me because their missions were so mundane that it was hard to really delve too deeply into important matters.

Besides, it shouldn't matter whether or not they missed me. I shouldn't care.

When we reach the second floor of the Academy building, there's a crowd of people blocking the corridor, making it hard to get through. I wonder if this is the line to turn in the papers, but when I realize that these people are merely mingling by to watch something, I look for a way to sneak around the horde and get to where we need to be.

"What's up with all these people?" Sakura asks, stopping to watch. There are two Leaf Nin a few years older than we are standing in front of the door marked 301. One boy has got his headband pulled over his head, flattening his hair like how I have my own headband. Part of the collar of his shirt pulls up over his chin and could probably be used to pull over his mouth if needed. The other boy has bandages taped vertically through the line of his jaw: one on his chin, the other two on either of his cheeks. He's also carrying two oversized kunai on his back that crosses to form a giant X.

Smirking belligerently, he's saying to the group of Genin in front of him, "Besides that, Chuunin are cell commanders; they lead their units. The responsibility for failed missions and dead shinobi rest firmly on their shoulders. And you little punks have the nerve to apply? We're saving a step by weeding out the obvious losers beforehand."

"I think there's a way to get around them if we sneak through here," I say, just as Sasuke says, addressing the Nin guarding the doors, "That's a good plan in theory, but you better let me through. I have business on the third floor."

Throwing Sasuke a look of complete disbelief, I groan and slap a hand to my face. The guy always has to get involved with things that don't concern him.

"And drop the illusion while you're at it," Sasuke adds with a smirk.

The crowd starts to whisper.

"What is he talking about?"

"Who knows?"

The boy with his headband covering his head mirrors Sasuke's expression, impressed, and asks, "So you figured that out, yeah?"

"It was easy, right Sakura?" Sasuke says, and the pink haired kunoichi looks up. "You were probably the first to notice it. After all, you're the most analytical and best in our cell at understand genjutsu."

My eyes slink over to Sasuke, who's giving me a knowing look. I frown, though, admittedly, I'm glad that he's repenting and doing penance.

"Of course I noticed it," Sakura says with a renewed vigor. "And obviously we're still on the second floor."

"Of course," Naruto agrees, smiling as well.

The sign above the door warps before our eyes and changes so that it reads 201. I had noticed the illusion as well, but to say anything now would only make me seem like I'm begging for attention. I sigh, propping my chin on my fist and wondering why everything has to be so dramatic when I'm around Team 7.

"Hey, not too bad," the first boy says, "but just seeing through it isn't enough." He moves so fast then that I can hardly keep track of it, but there's no mistaking that he's heading for Sasuke, the one who had been the first to notice—or at least been bold enough to say something about it—the genjutsu that'd been cast. Sasuke is quick to counter the boy with a kick of his own, but they're both suddenly stopped by a green blur that comes out of nowhere.

The green blur turns out to be a boy a year or two older than us, with an eye-twitching green jumpsuit, orange leg- and arm-warmers, and a bowl cut that makes me touch my hair to reassure myself that it's not as bad as his is. The boy's eyes are large, with long lashes that stick out against his slightly bruised skin, as well as thick eyebrows that look like caterpillars inching along his forehead. I'm glad to see that he's got a Leaf headband tied around his waist and is probably unlikely to start any more problems for us.

He sighs as he releases Sasuke and the other boy's legs. The boy who'd instigated it falls from imbalance because of the way he'd moved forward with his attack. The teammates of the boy with the bowl cut come forward, not looking too happy.

"Hey," says a boy with white, white eyes that have no visible pupil or iris. I recognize them as being one of the kekkei genkai specially contained to the Fire Country, though I can't place a name to it. "That's not what we agreed. You're the one that insisted we avoid drawing attention to ourselves."

"B-but," the first boy stammers and glances over at us. I can't help but notice that his bruises have all disappeared.

"Here we go again," says the boy's female teammate, shaking her head.

The boy in green blushes as he comes toward us, and I take a hasty step away from him so that I'm standing behind Sasuke. "What's this guy's deal?" I hiss, but Sasuke doesn't answer me. Instead, he watches stiffly as the boy walks past him and to Sakura.

"I'm Rock Lee," he introduces himself to her personally as we watch on. His blush grows deeper. "You're Sakura-chan, aren't you?"

Sakura doesn't seem to know how to answer. It's obvious that she doesn't even know this boy at all. She stares at him quizzically, unsure of how to proceed with the current situation.

"Would you like to go out with me?" Lee asks, giving her a thumbs-up and winking at her, smiling so wide that his teeth practically gleam in the light. "I promise to protect you with my life!"

I snort loudly and drop my forehead into Sasuke's shoulder to hide my laugh. Clenching my stomach as my giggles bubble up my throat in the form of hiccups, I can hear Sasuke scoff and Sakura say, "No. Way. You are way out of hand!"

"Oh dear God," I mutter into Sasuke's back. "That was just…_funny_. That was funny. Admit that that was funny."

"Get off of me," Sasuke says instead, and I'm in too good of spirits to let him get me down. I comply and watch as the boy with white eyes, Lee's teammate, steps up and says to Sasuke, "Hey you! What's your name?"

The crowd around us starts flowing, moving down the corridor up to the third floor, clearing the laughter from my system. We've got places to see, things to do, and causing a scene with those Nin who had cast the genjutsu has cost us time. We haven't the time to be making more introductions. We'll get to know these other Leaf Nin soon enough. Well. At least Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura will.

"Wrap it up," I whisper over Sasuke's shoulder, and he nods.

"It's common courtesy to give your name first," he replies to the other boy smartly.

White Eyes doesn't relent so easily though. "You're just a rookie," he inquires, "aren't you?"

"I don't have to tell you a thing," Sasuke counters, and the two stare at each other for a moment before turning on their heels to walk away from each other.

"Sheesh," I say as we head to join up with Sakura and Naruto. "That was the worst conversation I have ever heard in my life. You guys could've easily politely exchanged names and all that. Way to make things complicated."

"You said that we had to go," Sasuke says briskly. "I did what I could to speed up the conversation. If I had told him my name, who knows what questions he would've asked me after that. Besides, it's best to keep as much information from the enemy as possible."

"You don't even know if we're going up against those guys."

"Who's to say we won't?"

"Okay, but 'It's common courtesy to give your name first?' You're such a hypocrite. _You_ didn't give your name first when you asked for Gaara's name."

"That was different."

"Ha, yeah, okay."

"Hey, Sasuke, Naruto, Ren!" Sakura beams, taking Sasuke and Naruto's hands. It seems that her mood has been lifted by Sasuke's compliment earlier and now she's back to her peppy self. "Let's go!" She skips along, dragging them down the hall with me lagging behind. Sasuke looks at me over his shoulder and I shrug.

"By the way," I say softly, so that Naruto and Sakura can't hear over Sakura's humming. I glance at our friends. They're too distracted really to pay attention to me, their excitement having been upped by our encounter with all those other Nin. Even so, when I meet Sasuke's eyes again, I mouth the words I want to say to him instead of saying them out loud.

"Thank you."

He smirks at me and turns away. I roll my eyes, but find myself smiling as well.

Now that is teamwork.

We're walking through the long corridor that leads to the third floor when someone calls out, "Hey, you with the scowl on your face!" from the ledge up above. We look up to see the boy from before, the one who had asked Sakura out, staring down at us, determination pasted across his face. "Fight me," he says. "Here and now."

I glance over at Sasuke to see how he's going to react. He's got his eyebrow arched and is frowning.

"You want me to fight you," he repeats slowly. "Right now."

"Yes!" He jumps from the second landing and lands smoothly in front of us although, I notice, there's a flight of stairs to his right. I suppose this kind of entrance is more dramatic though, and isn't this the kind of thing that everyone around here is into?

"My name is Rock Lee," the boy says. "When you want to learn a person's name, you introduce yourself first, right?"

Sasuke harrumphs. "Uchiha Sasuke," he answers, caught in his own made-up battle etiquette. "But you already knew that, didn't you?"

Lee nods and I watch as he slides his feet into position. He's really not going to leave us alone until he gets what he wants. "I want to fight you," Lee says, "so I can test my abilities against the last remaining member of your legendary clan. Besides…" His voice trails off as his eyes slink toward Sakura. She flinches under his gaze. And when he winks at her, she positively flips out.

"EW!" she cries over the sound of my laugh. I lean against Naruto for support, loving every moment of watching Sakura squirm. "Those eyelashes creep me out! Not to mention the geeky hair and those eyebrows." Sakura shudders and, admittedly, I start to feel guilty for laughing the way I am. Not because I feel bad for Sakura, but because I feel bad for Lee. He seems like a nice enough guy underneath his…uh, unique exterior.

"You're an angel!" he's still able to compliment, blowing a kiss to Sakura who makes a point to avoid it.

"You keep your weird kisses to yourself, you creep!" she shouts, brandishing her fist.

"Oh, don't be like that," says Lee sadly, shoulders drooping.

"Yeah, Sakura," I comment with a mocking grin. "He could be the only guy to ever willingly want to date you."

Sakura glares over her shoulder at me as Sasuke says, "You're challenging me, even knowing my lineage? Frankly, you're a fool. So dog-brows, do you really want to know what it means to be an Uchiha?"

"Absolutely!" Lee says, smiling. He makes a 'come-on' gesture with his hands.

"Hey wait a second," I say, remembering where we are and what we're supposed to be doing. _They_. What _they_ are supposed to be doing. "This is all _fine_ and dandy, but we've all got somewhere to be right now, don't we? Can't this wait? I mean, I'm sure we'll all have time to fight each other _eventually_, considering this _is_ a Chuunin exam, so—"

"I'll take care of this," Naruto says from beside me. I peer over at him. He's got this look of indifference on his face, though I can see his veins pulsing beneath his skin. It's then that I realize this is another one of those Sasuke moments that really irks him.

"Naruto," I groan, running my hands through my hair with frustration. "That's not what I me—"

"Just give me five minutes," he presses.

"I have no interest in fighting you," Lee says, keeping his focus trained on Sasuke to make his point. "Only Uchiha."

"Story of my life!" Naruto shouts with such bitterness that it makes me flinch. "It's always Sasuke this, Sasuke that! I could puke!"

Naruto barrels forward before I can think to stop him, his fist posed to punch Lee, who dodges the head on attack with ease. Naruto leans his weight forward and brings his foot up over his head, ready to land a kick. Faster than I can keep track of, however, Lee dodges it, and Naruto somehow ends up flying to the other side of the room and slamming into the wall behind Lee.

"Holy—Naruto?" I rush to his side to make sure that he's okay. His headband is scuffed and his cheek is red from where he'd been hit. I lean down and prod him when he doesn't shift. "Naruto?"

He lets out a painful sound and turns over on his back, unresponsive. It seems that the collision with the wall has knocked him out. I scowl, and pull his arm over my shoulder, lifting him to his feet.

"You didn't have to do that," I say, glaring at Lee.

"I did," he says. "Otherwise he would've kept getting in my way. And if you are going to get in my way as well—"

"Like hell I won't," I grumble, adjusting Naruto so that I can more comfortably support him.

"Good." Lee nods to Sasuke. "And I'll say this: You can't defeat me. After all, I am the strongest of the Konoha Genin today!"

"This sounds like it could be fun," Sasuke says, smirking after a moment of deliberation. "I accept your challenge."

"Uh, time check," I remind, leaning away from Naruto's hair, which is pricking my face and causing my skin to itch. Sakura gasps as the time limit they've got finally sinks in and whirls around to see that the clock on the wall displays 3:34.

"Sasuke-kun, don't do it!" she advises, stepping forward. "We've got less than half an hour to turn in our papers."

"I'll be done in five minutes," Sasuke says and I roll my eyes at his over-confidence, the way I had at Naruto when he'd said the same thing.

Before Sakura and I can protest anymore, Sasuke darts forward, and in a flash, Lee is in the air, moving in for an aerial attack. Swiftly, Sasuke avoids Lee's foot as it comes toward him. However, Lee is already on the ground, his leg reeled back for another kick, one that Sasuke won't be able to dodge this time. Realizing this, Sasuke holds up his arms to block the attack, but I suppose he's not fast enough because he's sent flying back. The thud that he lands with makes me wince.

He skids along the ground before coming to a halt, glaring still at Lee, obviously surprised by the stranger's unexpected strength and speed. I watch from behind Lee as Sasuke gets to his feet. My chakra shivers up my spine and my vision suddenly sharpens. The vibrations around me pick up and as I look to Sasuke, I see that his eyes have got a new glint to them. Really. They're shining crimson red.

_Nice,_ I think sarcastically before scowling and rubbing my eyes. Stupid blood oath transference. And for Sasuke to think that his fight is so serious that he needs to activate his Sharingan is troublesome. It's only going to drag this fight on and waste his energy for when he'll really need it during the exam.

My grip on Naruto's arm tightens. I think I hear him groan, but I'm too engrossed in what Sasuke thinks he's doing. There's no fluctuating chakra emanating from this guy, from Lee; the vibrations haven't changed frequency much since the battle has started. These moves aren't ninjutsu or some trick: They're pure speed. Speed that rivaled that of Haku from Kirigakure. Speed that even Sasuke wouldn't be able to catch up with.

Sasuke runs toward Lee again, more confident in his abilities this time because of the Sharingan. Just as I predicted though, it doesn't help him see what Lee's going to do next. He's caught in Lee's attack as the older boy's foot spurts up and hits Sasuke's jaw, causing him to shoot a considerable height into the air.

"Yes, my moves are neither ninjutsu nor genjutsu," Lee says before jumping up and flying through the air beneath Sasuke like a shadow.

Naruto stirs against me and his arm comes up to rub his face. "Huh?" he asks, looking to me. "Ren?"

"Hey," I say, letting him go so that he can stand for himself. I don't, however, look at him. I keep my eyes on Sasuke because whatever Lee is planning, it can't be good.

Naruto follows my gaze and his eyes go wide. "Sasuke!" he cries, his fists clenching. "What's going on?"

"Sasuke's getting the hell beat out of him, that's what's going on," I mutter, watching as the bandages around Lee's hands begin to unravel. "Sasuke's trying to fight fire with rocks. Lee's using pure physical strength and speed and Sasuke's trying to counter that with his Sharingan, which only helps to see through ninjutsu and genjutsu, and even though it might help him better read Lee's moves, it's not like he can _match_ them."

I can't believe Sasuke had been _stupid_ enough to fall into this guy's trap, to even be baited in the beginning. He should have just saved it for the exams, the idiot.

But Sasuke isn't the only one to blame. This Lee kid just comes waltzing in, demanding a fight, which he must have known Sasuke wouldn't turn down. What is it with boys and having to always prove themselves? Or needing to find validation in beating each other senseless?

The bandages have just about unraveled completely from Lee's arm when a quiet whistle sounds in the room, alarming us all. Neatly, a pinwheel appears from out of nowhere and sticks itself firmly into the wall, pinning the end of Lee's bandages along with it.

"That's enough, Lee!" a voice commands. We watch as Lee falls, his bandage having yanked him to a stop, but he manages to land smoothly in front of a giant turtle that has magically appeared, while Sasuke starts to make his decent a little less eloquently. He doesn't even try to break his fall as he comes down.

Sakura is quick to jump on this problem though. She dashes forward, outstretching her arms to catch him. She leans back and skids, so that when Sasuke lands in her arms, she'll be able to brace his fall with her body. This plan works out nicely and Sasuke lands without any further damage to himself. He's fast to push off of her and stand on his own though, independent as ever.

"Sasuke-kun, are you all right?" Sakura asks, shaky from the adrenaline that rushed her to protect her beloved.

Trembling and shiny with perspiration, he doesn't answer. Instead, he listens as Lee gets berated by the giant turtle that is wearing a Leaf headband around its neck and has swirl patterns along his shell.

"So you were watching?" Lee asks, lowering his gaze to the floor sheepishly.

"You know the rules, Lee!" the turtle scolds as confirmation, and Lee flinches. "That move is strictly forbidden!"

"I'm sorry, I just…"

"God, what the hell?" I complain so that only Naruto can hear, dropping my forehead into the palm of my hand. "Things around here just keep getting freakier and freakier. First this kid shows up, then the stupid pinwheel, and now that _turtle_?"

Naruto pounds a fist into the palm of his hand, something clicking in his head. "D'you think that could be dog-brows's teacher?" Naruto says to me.

I look at him like he's just suggested that I try to stab myself with my own kunai. "No, Naruto," I say tiredly. "I don't."

Naruto humphs and jogs back to his team to, I guess, propose this theory to them, like they'd believe it. I follow him, sighing and muttering under my breath.

"Hey, hey, hey," Naruto says as we get closer to our friends. He comes to a stop beside Sakura before pointing at the turtle and asking, "That's a turtle right?"

Sakura gives Naruto this look like she doesn't understand why she has to deal with him. "Obviously!" she grumbles.

"Well," Naruto says, leaning closer as though he's about to share a brilliant plan that he doesn't want stolen, "can a turtle become a ninja sensei?"

"Wha—how should I know? Stop asking stupid questions, Naruto!"

"Fool!" the turtle booms, and Lee flinches. "You think you can get away with an excuse like that? Considering the repercussions of a shinobi baldly explaining all his secrets!" The turtle sighs. "I hope you are properly prepared."

"Yes, sir," Lee mumbles feebly.

"Then he's all yours, Gai-sensei!"

There's a poof of smoke over the turtle's shell, and when it clears, a man wearing exactly the same thing as Lee emerges, one hand in the air and the other circling around his left eye. He's got this flamboyant smile on his face as he says, "Ah, the exuberance of youth! All of you are full of it!"

The mouths of my friends collectively drop open in horror, taking in the sight of the older man. I merely close my eyes and slap my hand over my face, wondering if there's a mental bleach I can drink in order to wipe the image of this posing man from my head forever.

"He's got the biggest eyebrows yet!" Sakura screeches in horror. "They're almost alive! And that same dorky 'do."

"I've never seen anything like them," Naruto agrees, squinting to make sure that they're real.

"Hey!" Lee interjects, holding up his fist, his face flushing a spicy red. "Don't make fun of Gai-sensei!"

"Shut up!" Naruto counters, jabbing his finger back at the green duo. "All these _freaks_ keep appearing! How do you expect us to react?"

"What did you—"

"Lee," Gai says, waving his pupil to his side. Lee goes obediently, only to be punched viciously by his sensei as Gai cries, "Idiot!" Lee flies halfway across the room, making me wince. What kind of weird teacher-pupil relationship _is_ this? Thank god Kakashi was considerably cooler and relatively more normal than Lee's sensei.

"You...you…," Gai stutters, and upon closer inspection of his face, he seems to be crying, like hitting Lee was the worst thing he could've done.

"Sensei," Lee answers, equally as tearful. "Sensei, I…I—"

"And you lost to _that_?" I ask Sasuke, who ignores me because he's too busy seething himself.

"Not another word, Lee!" Gai demands, holding his arms open. Lee immediately jumps in for the hug and they squeeze each other, talking over each other so that we can't make out what they're saying, although they seem to be shouting their apologizes.

"I understand that it's because you're young," Gai says and I groan mentally, wondering when and how things went so haywire. Oh yeah, when these _stupid kids_ didn't take my advice and leave Lee well alone! I glare over at Sasuke, silently blaming this whole escapade on him, but he's too busy scowling at Lee and Gai's mushy moment to notice.

"Doesn't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?" Naruto asks, smiling as he points at the scene in front of us.

"No," I grumble, crossing my arms and glowering at the cuddly pair.

"Don't be an idiot!" Sakura tells him, stabbing his forehead. "They're up to something!"

The dynamic duo before us finally breaks apart and stands, though the tears still run down their faces. They grin at each other happily and Gai pats Lee's shoulder.

"It's all right, Lee," Gai forgives. "Mistakes and youth go hand in hand."

"You're too kind, sensei," Lee answers, bowing his head.

"But you did start a fight and almost broke my rules," Gai says, switching to stern sensei mode. "Your punishment will take place after the Chuunin exams!"

"Yes, sir!" Lee accepts willingly, saluting his teacher.

"Five hundred laps around the practice arena!" Gai announces like it's logical and strikes a pose. And Lee goes on to accept like it's a fine and dandy idea too.

Gai's eyes slink over to us, finally taking notice of our presence, and starts counting heads. He smiles at us then and says, "Hey guys. How's Kakashi-sensei doing?"

It takes us a moment to overcome the scene that's just taken place before us, but once we've recovered a bit, Sasuke manages, "You know Kakashi-sensei?"

Gai laughs, scratching his chin. "Know him?" he repeats. And then one minute he's standing beside Lee and his turtle friend, and the next he's right behind us, saying, "Some call us 'eternal rivals'. 50 wins, 49 losses." He winks at us, teeth gleaming the same way Lee's did. "I'm stronger than him."

"See?" Lee presses. "Gai-sensei is incredible!"

"Whoa, dude," I say, backing up. "I don't care how incredible you are. You can't just get in our personal space bubbles like that."

"I'm sorry," he apologizes, although he doesn't seem sorry at all. "And I'm also sorry about Lee. I swear to this face, it won't happen again."

I can't help but scoff at this and turn away from the guy. He's just so creepy.

"Anyway," Gai continues. "You guys and Lee should continue to the classroom. It's about time to turn in your papers." His hand is a blur as he reaches into his holster for a kunai and flicks it across the room. It hits the pinwheel and pushes it off the wall, releasing Lee's bandage. I watch as Lee carefully wraps his hand back up, but not before I see what his hands look like without the bandages on.

His hands are bruised and callous, and there are stitches sown in just below his knuckles. I'm not the only one to see this, apparently, because Naruto stiffens from beside me.

"Good luck, Lee. Later," Gai says before departing.

"Sasuke-kun," Lee says as he tightens his bandages. "I'll say one more thing. The truth is: I came here to test my abilities. I lied before. Most likely, the strongest Leaf Genin is on my team, and I've entered this competition to defeat him. You're also one of my targets. Be prepare during the exam!" he warns before leaping away like his sensei.

Sasuke glares at the place where Lee once was, his hands clenched into fists. I prop my hand on my hip, watching him closely.

"Sasuke-kun," Sakura starts.

"Oh well," Naruto interrupts, twining his fingers behind his head. "I guess your famous Uchiha clan isn't so great after all, huh?"

"Naruto!" Sakura spits.

"Oh, shut it," I say, irritated by Sakura's mentality that Naruto says things only to spite Sasuke. It's not as though there's never any truth to his words.

"Next time," Sasuke says, fists clenching. "Next time I'll beat him."

"Despite the total butt-kicking you got this time, right?" Naruto counters.

"Naruto, don't," Sakura warns.

"You saw his hands, right?" Naruto asks, glancing at me. I nod. "That thick-brow must have trained really hard every day. More than you. Harder than you. That's all it is."

Sasuke's hand clench into a fist and his eyes drop to the ground. The reality of the competition is finally settling in for him, I guess. But when he lifts his head, there's a new glint to his eye, a new stubborn self-confidence that he emanates.

"Things are starting to get interesting," he says, smirking. "This Chuunin selection exam sure is bringing things to a boil."

Naruto and Sakura smile back and agree.

"So," Sasuke says. "Let's get going."

Please take note of my exclusion from the preceding conversation.

Not that it _matters_, really. Because, at the moment, it's not about me. It's about Sasuke and Naruto and Sakura, who are entering the event of their lives. It wouldn't be right for me to try to bring attention to myself and how much I want to participate in these exams alongside my team.

This shouldn't be about me.

But, as usual, I can't help but make it so that it is. I am all that matters to me, after all.

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	22. Moment

**Bound  
Chapter 22: Moment**

Don't get me wrong. I'm happy for Team 7. I'm glad that they're getting this chance to test their skills and bring out the best in themselves. My bitterness just gets in the way of my happiness for them. So when I see Kakashi standing in front of the doors to room 301 and making the end of my time with Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto, at least until these exams are over, my disappointment becomes something overwhelming and my hands start to jitter. My feet are on the verge of flight because I know I need to get outoutout.

"Well," I sigh, trying to hide my jumpiness as they pull to a stop and I take a spot beside Kakashi. "This is the limit of my services, guys. Over to you, Kakashi."

Kakashi hums in acknowledgment, his one visible eye half-open, like it's taking all his effort to stay awake right now. "So you decided to show up after all, Sakura," he says. "Now you three can properly take the exam."

"I told you I wouldn't be bringing them along if she wasn't with them," I said with a frown, my voice splitting on the last word.

Sakura's brow furrows and she asks, "What are you guys talking about?"

"The truth is," Kakashi explains, "the way the test is set up, it can only be taken in teams of three."

"But you said," Sakura interrupts again, "that take the exams was an individual choice. Why'd you lie to us?"

"I said what I had to in order to keep your teammates from pressuring you into taking the exams," answers Kakashi, as though he'd been anticipating this. "One word from Sasuke and you would have gone through the motions even if your heart wasn't in it."

"And," Sakura inquires, "what would have happened if Sasuke and Naruto had shown up without me?"

_I would've been able to take your place,_ I think and then quickly berate myself. Sakura deserves this. I would even go far as to say she needs it. They all need it.

Whereas I need to get away.

"I would have washed them out right here," Kakashi says simply.

"Wait a second," Naruto sudden pipes up, a deep frown set into his face. He has his arms folded tightly over his chest as he asks, "Is this why Ren isn't allowed to participate? Because the exam only allows the three of us to take it?"

The question surprises me. Well, not the question so much as the person asking it. To think that Naruto was able to piece two and two together like this gives me a little bit of hope that they'll be able to get somewhere in this exam.

"Well…," Kakashi starts, thrown off by the question as well. "Yes and no. The fact that Ren was on the team caused complications, I'll admit. It wouldn't be fair to the other teams if we were to allow one group of four to take the exam, no matter your rookie status. But if it were simply a matter of there being too many people on the team, I would have told all four of you at once that one of you wouldn't be able to participate in the exams."

"It only made sense that I drop out, anyway," I say so this conversation will end. They need to hurry inside before they miss the exams completely. So I can get out of here more quickly. "I haven't been around the other Leaf Genin as long as you guys have. What if you guys need to work alongside them? My presence would throw off the chemistry you already had with your friends. Besides, there's always next year. I don't mind waiting." I shrug as nonchalantly as I can. "Advancing isn't really high on my list of priorities at the moment, anyway."

Kakashi lets out this exaggerated sigh that tells me that he thinks I've said too much. Still, he manages to muster up another smile and direct it at Team 7.

"The three of you chose to come here of your own free will," he says. "And I'm very proud of you. _All_ of you." At this he gives me a knowing look, but I keep my eyes trained on the three before me and pretend I don't notice him. "Now, get in there."

Kakashi and I step aside to let Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura go through. I keep my eyes on the floor as they walk past and once they're inside I watch their backs, wondering if it would be possible for me to slip in, if just for a second. I want to see what they're up against. I want to feel the competitive air. I want to be a part of it before I have to go back to my confinement.

"You have ten minutes," Kakashi says abruptly, making me jump. I blink at him as he leans his head toward the still open doors. "Their first exam doesn't start for another ten minutes. You can go in until the first proctor arrives. I'll wait here to escort you back home."

"Wha—well, I—I mean," I stutter, crooking my neck into order to scratch my cheek with my shoulder. It's like he could read my mind. But now, presented with the chance, I feel that I'm being pitied. And I don't want that. "It's not my place, Kakashi," I dismiss. "I should be heading back home now. The Hokage will be expecting it."

Kakashi sighs, running a hand through his hair. "Ren. Go in. It's fine. Trust me."

"It's not something I want to deal with," I insist, batting the air around me to signal that I don't want to talk about it anymore. "To go in and have to explain that I'll have to leave a few minutes later—it's not worth the questions and—"

Kakashi reaches out and gives me a push, causing me to stumble into the room and bump into Sasuke, who glares over his shoulder at me. But, as this is a common occurrence with Sasuke, I ignore it to whirl around and catch Kakashi wave to me.

"Ten minutes," he says and closes the doors on me.

Bastard.

"Whoa," Naruto murmurs, drawing my attention back to the classroom. I turn to see what it is that has gotten this reaction from Naruto, and the view I get immediately causes my blood to freeze over.

There are flocks of much, much older Nin sizing us up. They're strewn across the desktops like they're tired of waiting, which I'm sure they are. While my team had only just arrived, these guys had probably been in here for some time now.

The group before me is full of impressive looking Nin. They've got hair color that ranges from outrageous to boring, and outfits that reflect their home country. Considering their age ranges and the experience that must come with it, I don't think that Team 7 will be able to keep up with them.

"Wh-what _is_ this?" Sakura manages, perspiring under the heat of the older Nins' glares.

I feel bad for Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke. Their inexperience will get the better of them during these exams. It's evident in the way that they're so unnerved by the sight of the older Nin they don't notice a blonde bounding up to them, her ponytail swishing wildly as her eyes lock on her prey who is a member of their own team.

It's too late for me to warn them of the oncoming psycho, so I let the blonde go one with whatever she wants to do. Team 7 will deal with it how they see fit.

"Sasuke-kun! Where've you been, cutie?" the girl titters as she throws her arms around Sasuke's neck, causing him to stagger forward a bit. "You're late, you know. And I could hardly wait for you! IT's so exciting, seeing you again after all this time."

Sasuke merely scowls at her as she smirks at Sakura, who promptly commands, "INO, YOU PIG; GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF SASUKE-KUN."

I flinch at their ear-shattering tones and shy away from them toward Naruto, catching his attention. "God," I mutter under my breath. "What is their _deal_?"

"Ren?" Naruto says. "What—"

"Just," I say tiredly, "checking out what you guys are up against. I've got some time before I have to leave, and Kakashi said it was okay."

Naruto's brow furrows, but he dismisses it right quick. He crosses his arms and harrumphs as the girls emit another splitting squeal. "It's always this way with them," he explains. "They're part of Sasuke's fan club, don't you know?"

"Not really," I laugh. "But I could have figured."

"Oh! That's right, Ren," Naruto says, blinking. "You haven't been here for these past few years, so you don't know them, do you?"

"Huh? Well, not especially well. But I know these guys," I say, jabbing my thumb toward Ino and the two other boys slinking their way up to her. "They, uh, helped my mom get some chores done around the house a few weeks ago. I met them while they were over. And Shikamaru and Chouji and I go way back."

"Are you guys taking this stupid test too?" Shikamaru says as he comes forward, Chouji at his side. "Why don't you do yourselves a favor and flunk out before you die."

"Well, it looks like we've got all three of the stooges here now," Naruto retorts and I snort.

The permanent glower that's set into Shikamaru's face deepens. "Don't call us that," he says as Chouji rummages through a bag of potato chips, extracting a few crunchy slices, and popping them into his mouth.

"If anyone is going to flunk, it's going to be you," I tease. "I don't recall being the one too lazy to even lift my pencil to take a test back at the Academy."

Shikamaru, knowing that I'm right, has no other response but to grunt.

"Hey!" someone shouts at us and we turn toward the voice. A boy wearing a grey jacket with his fur-lined hood pulled up. His eyes are narrow and his pupils are slits. He's got red marks on his cheek that look like his unusually sharpened canine teeth. The most peculiar thing about him, though, is that there's a small white dog sitting on top of his head.

Behind the boy are two others—his teammates, I assume from the way they're following him so closely. On the boy's left is a girl with dark blue-black hair. It's short save for two long strands that frame her face nicely. She's got familiar featureless white eyes and a timid expression. A blush creeps over her cheeks as they come closer to us.

On the boy's other side is another both. This boy has got busy dark brown hair, dark circular glasses that shield his eyes, and a high upturned collared shirt that hides half his face, making him look suspicious.

"There you guys are!" says the boy with the dog on his head. "Looks like the gang's all here!"

"Oh, man, you too, huh?" Shikamaru says, looking more displeased than he'd been before.

"Yup. Seems like all nine of us decided to apply, huh?" says Dog Boy cockily. At this, Shikamaru peers at me as though he's expecting me to speak up and protest. I don't return his gaze. "Wonder how we'll all do. What do you think, Sasuke?"

"Trying to psych us out by acting all cool, Kiba?" Sasuke shoots back smoothly, a grin on his face.

"Who's acting?" snips Dog Boy. "The way _we've_ been training, no way you can beat us."

"Uh, sorry, Naruto-kun," Dog Boy's female teammate says quietly, playing with her fingers. "Kiba-kun didn't mean that the way it sounded."

Naruto regards the girl blankly as the girl diverts her gaze quickly away from him.

"Who's this?" I ask Naruto, feeling left out and not being able to bear it any longer.

"What? Oh! That's Hyuuga Hinata," Naruto explains to me in a whisper. "She's a weirdo, always looking away when I look at her. She's shy too, so that doesn't help her much. The guy with the big mouth is Inuzuka Kiba, and that's his dog, Akamaru. He's an annoying bastard who always acts like he's the boss. The other guy on his team is Aburame Shino. I don't know much about him other than that though."

The boy with the dog on his head—Kiba—suddenly turns to me, his nose slightly upturned as though he's smelling the air. "Hmm?" he hums, leaning toward me, causing me to move back as though we're two magnets of the same charge. "Who're you?"

"Uh," I start as Kiba's dog starts to waggle his nose, sniffing the air.

"Ren?" Sakura says, noticing me at last. "What are you doing? I thought—"

"I'm an observer," I say, smiling weakly and taking another step back from Kiba.

"Wait!" Ino says, planting her hands on her hips. "Aren't you on Sasuke-kun's team? Are they letting _you_ participate in the exams too?"

"Uh," I repeat, twisting the hem of my shirt around my finger. "No. It's complicated," I add quickly to avoid having to explain anymore.

Ino gets this superior grin about her face. "I should have guessed that they wouldn't let you," she jeers. "You probably have had near as much experience as the rest of us. I'm glad the guys in charge know what they're doing."

My anger flashes. I want to wring my hands around her stupid, skinny neck and shake her until her brain comes loose inside her skull, but I calm myself with the fact that I won't be here long. My ten minutes are almost up.

"So wait," Kiba interjects, directing his comment as Sasuke, the only person he feels level with, I suppose. "All this time you guys have had an extra member on your team, picking up all the slack? No way you'll be able to even beat _Ino's_ team then, and she's got Shikamaru!"

At this, I can't keep quiet. _No one_ can go around making fun at Shikamaru in front of me and get away with it. But as I open my mouth, someone calls, "Hey. Would you guys do us all a favor and shut up?"

We glance over our shoulders at a boy who's sneaked up behind us. He has his hand propped up on his hip impatiently, and this cross look on his face. The forehead protector he wears tells us that he's a fellow Leaf Genin.

"You guys are the rookies just out of the Academy, right?" he asks. "You shouldn't be screaming like school girls still. Jeez. This isn't a picnic."

"Who do you think you are?" Ino remarks snidely like the boy hasn't got a point.

"I'm Kabuto," he says. "But you guys should open your eyes. Look behind you, for instance."

"Be…hind?"

We do as we're told to see a group of Rain Nin glaring at us fiercely, looking none too pleased with us.

"Aha," I laugh nervously, give them a feeble wave, since I'm the closest to them and, evidently, in the most danger. And I'm not even supposed to be part of this right now! Goddamn that Kakashi. "Sorry. We'll just, uh. Quiet down and quit bothering you."

I'm sure this doesn't do much to convince them, but still, they turn away and that's enough for me.

"Those guys are from the Hidden Rain Village," Kabuto explains to us. "They've got short fuses. Everybody's already on edge about the exam, so I wanted to give you a warning before you cause someone to snap and come beating you down."

"Gee," I mutter, inching away from the strangers and closer to Shikamaru, like he'd do anything to protect me if it came to that. "Thanks."

"Well, it's unavoidable," he says. "You guys are still rookies and still clueless. I remember what it was like for me."

"Uh, Kabuto-san, right?" Sakura says, and he nods. "Are you saying that this is your second time applying for the test?"

"Not second," he answers. "_Seventh_. The exam is held twice a year and I've taken it both times each year for three years now. This is my fourth year playing the game."

"Then you must have a lot of experience as to what we can expect," Sakura says.

"But is it good experience?" I grumble, still upset that I had been so close to danger a few minutes before. "I mean, you've taken it six times previously, sure, but there must be a reason you've failed, right?"

"Well," he says, smirking. "You can determine that for yourself." He reaches into his pouch and rummages through it. When he holds out his hand, he's got a deck of cards resting in his palm. "These are shinobi skill cards," he says, kneeling on the ground and setting the deck down in front of him. We gather around him to watch what he's doing, curious. "They're basically cards that have information burned into them with chakra. I have four years of information on here. In all, there are over two hundred cards."

"Hmm." I make a face as he picks one up to reveal that the card is blank. "There's nothing on them. How's that useful?"

"Keen observation, Captain Obvious," Kabuto says, smiling, and Ino chortles. "They're blank because that's part of the trick. These cards are activated by my chakra. Watch."

He spins the card into the center of our circle and presses his finger to one edge of the card. Dust flies up around the card as he pushes his chakra into it. He moves away from it as, slowly, lines start to appear and six bars grow from the card. The lines become the country borders, and soon, kanji show up along the bottom of what seems to be a map, numbers popping up beside them.

Lines run from the kanji to individual bars. From right to left, the kanji and numbers read Sound 6, Leaf 87, Water Fall 6, Grass 6, Rain 21, and Sand 30.

"It's a map and bar graph in three dimensions," Sakura muses, biting her thumb as she takes in the information. "What kind of intelligence is this?"

"This is the number of those taking the exam," Kabuto says, "and what country they come from."

Knowing this now, my eyes linger on the number beside the Sound village as I think about the girl who had ambushed me. Only six Sound Nin, out of, what, 156 applicants? Finding her would be no easy task. My mission is made even more impossible when I remember that I'm not really part of this.

"Do you have cards with information on individual applicants?" Sasuke asks as we all straighten up.

Finally, Sasuke asks a question that I'm interested in knowing the answer to. If Kabuto has this kind of intel, I could use it to find out who that girl is too.

"What—are there some guys that you're afraid of?" Kabuto snorts. "I'll admit that these cards are far from being complete, but I've burned a set of dossier cards for the current pool of applicants, including you guys. If you share any data you have on these guys you wanna look up, I'll be happy to give you any information I have on them."

"Gaara from Sunagakure," Sasuke says without hesitating as I deflate. I haven't got that stupid girl's name. "And Rock Lee from Konoha."

"Oh, so you even have their names? It should be easy then." Kabuto flips two cards from the top of his deck and holds them in front of his face as he activates them. When they're ready, he drops them on the ground so that we can all see.

The cards have the faces of the boys on them, as well as a picture of each of the boys' teammates and cell leader. It's also go a pentagram that highlights their skills, one ninja art for each point and a dark shade that shows us how well they do in each category. There's a brief summary of their abilities next to their pictures and a bar graph on the bottom left corner. On the bottom right corner, there's a set of four letters—A through D—and numbers next to them, probably for their mission count.

"All right," Kabuto announces. "First up, Rock Lee. He's a year older than you guys and has completed twenty D-ranked missions and twelve C-ranked missions. His sensei is Might Gai and it looks like Lee's taijutsu has increased impressively over the past year. He has no other talents worth mentioning, though. Last year he was recognized as as a standout Genin, but he didn't apply for the Chuunin exams. He's a first time applicant, like you guys. His teammates are Hyuuga Neji and Ten-Ten.

"Next, Gaara of the Desert. Eight C-ranked mission and one B-ranked mission. That's impressive. Not many Genin get to go on B-ranks. Since he's a new applicant from a foreign country, I don't have much on him, but something that's strange is that he seems to have come back from each mission unscathed."

Without giving us much time to let this information soak in, Kabuto retracts his cards and stands.

"Oh wait," I say, an idea coming to me. Kabuto stops, halfway through storing his cards back in his waist pouch. "I don't suppose you have any useful information on the Sound Nin, do you?"

My friends throw me quizzical looks. I don't blame them. It's not as though I'm going to be going up against any of these guys. What business did I have asking about any of them?

"It's just," I start, my mind buzzing to think of an excuse. "I've only heard of there being five great Hidden Villages, so Sound is kind of, uh, you know."

Kabuto smiles and drops all his cards but one into his pouch. "You're right," he says. "The Village Hidden in the Sound was only developed a year ago. It's part of a new, small nation, so intelligence on it is lacking."

"So you don't have anything on their Nin?" I ask, disappointed.

"That's not what I said," he tells me. He holds his card out to me and I take it. He's activated it so that it shows eight pictures on it: six applicants, their leaders, and not much else. The Genin in the first row are all unfamiliar and I skip over their faces quickly. In the second row, however, I recognize her face at once.

In her picture she's smirking dangerously, her eyes narrowed as though she's got the perfect blackmail needed to get me to do exactly as she wants. She looks totally different from the bubbly girl that I had seen in the park. However, she has the random eagle feather in her headband that confirms that this is the girl I had run into. The caption under her picture reads _Kannagi Rei_.

"Kannagi," I mutter, lowering the card. The name rings a bell in my head, but I don't know why. I prod Shikamaru's arm to get his attention. "Have you ever heard the name Kannagi before?" I ask him, pointing to the picture of the girl that harassed me the other day.

"No," he says, without so much as a glance to the picture. "Why?"

"I dunno," I say, taking another look at the picture. "I feel like I've heard that name somewhere before. Has your dad ever mentioned anything about a Kannagi clan, do you think?"

Shikamaru shakes his head and Kabuto speaks out before I can say more.

"This year every Hidden Village has sent in outstanding Genin to partake in the exams," he says. "They're the best of the best, these applicants. And they have to be! This test is pitiless!"

I scoff and elbow Shikamaru. "How does it feel to know you're no match for these guys?" I ask him teasingly, Sound Nin forgotten.

"Hmph," he grunts. "I'm taking it better than some people." Shikamaru jerks his head toward Naruto, who's literally shaking in his sandals. Sakura and I exchange worried looks before she moves forward to try to comfort Naruto.

Suddenly, Naruto lifts his head and jabs a finger into the crowd. "MY NAME IS UZUMAKI NARUTO," he shouts, grinning as though this is some super awesome prank he'll be worshiped for later. "AND I'M NOT GOING TO LOSE TO ANY OF YOU BASTARDS, GOT IT?"

"Oh my god," I groan, slapping a hand to my face and hiding behind it as older shinobi glare at us over each other's heads. I shrink back, mortified and uneasy. "He's going to get you all _killed_."

"That felt good," Naruto sighs, locking his hands behind his head and grinning like a fool, not realizing that he's put a death sentence on the Rookie Nine.

"What's his problem!" Ino demands to know from Sakura, who's blushing with her lips pursed, obviously unhappy.

"Those are some big words," Shikamaru agrees. "The idiot. He's just turned everyone in this room against us. I wouldn't be surprised if someone attacked him now."

As Shikamaru says this, I feel unruly movements slinking toward us. My eyes cut to the crowd of people to our right and although I can't see anyone doing much more than staring at us steely, I know someone's coming.

"What the hell are you doing!" Sakura hisses, trapping Naruto in a headlock.

"It's not as though I'm lying!" he chokes, trying to fight her away to no avail.

"Aha, everyone, he was only joking," Sakura explains weakly to the crowd of onlookers. "He's not right in the head, see—"

They're on the move.

There are two of them, moving in sync, toward Kabuto. I lean forward so that I can see around Shikamaru and find that Kabuto is already aware of the attackers heading his way. Still, there's something about these guys that throws me off. The vibrations around them move in an awkward flurry. It's almost like they're being manipulated, but who could—

I grip the card in my hand, making it crease slightly. Shoving it in my pocket, I push my way past Shikamaru as a boy with spiky black hair jumps out of the crowd.

"Ren!" Shikamaru says, alarmed, as he spots the attackers as well. He grabs my arm, yanking me to a stop. "What d'you think you're doing? You _don't_ want to get involved in that."

"But they—" I tug away from him, but he doesn't budge. I groan and turn back to watch from the safe distance at which Shikamaru is keeping me.

The boy in the air reels his arm back and flings two kunai forward. Kabuto leaps away, dodging them, but then another boy comes out into the open and runs up to Kabuto. His fist is poised to strike Kabuto's face, but Kabuto moves back in time to avoid this attack as well.

The vibrations shudder. I have a feeling that it's somehow the boy's doing. The vibrations pulse toward Kabuto like a wave and crack Kabuto's glasses, making his smirk fall immediately off his face. The vibrations don't stop there either. They continue their way around his face and into his ears. It'll take a while for this attack to set in right.

"What's going in?" Sasuke mutters, astonished. "He evaded the attack, so why did it—?"

"His nose probably got grazed," Shikamaru reasons, frowning. He lets me go at last when he's sure that there's nothing more for me to run in and get in trouble with. "Serves him right for acting like a hotshot."

Kabuto takes his glasses off his face, amused that the boy had been able to break the lenses, but his merriment is cut short when he suddenly lurches forward and throws up.

"Ah, Kabuto-san!" Sakura and Naruto rush to his side and help him up. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he says, wiping his mouth of vomit.

The boy with the spiky black hair chortles, getting our attention. He wears a shirt that has the kanji reading 'death' written vertically down. Flanking his left is the second boy who had attacked. He's got this big furry shell on his back, or so it looks like, and there are bandages covering the whole of his head, save for his left eye. Their female teammate stands at the end, her long black hair reaching down past her waist. They all have high collars that are grey with black splotches on them, making their outfits look dirty and giving them a rebellious air. The headbands on their foreheads feature eighth notes.

"How pathetic," the second boy croons. "Especially because this is your fourth year. Shouldn't you know better?"

"And add this to your cards," says the first boy. "These three Nin from Sound will definitely be Chuunin this year!"

"Quiet down you worthless bastards!" a heavy voice shouts from the front of the classroom, and there's a loud boom and a puff of smoke. When it clears, we're left with about two dozen adults, proctors for the exam I suppose, all smirking at us wily.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting," says the man at the front of the group. He's wearing a long black cloak over his clothes, and his headband is worn so that the fabric of it covers the top of his apparently bald head. There are scars on his face, running down and through his mouth and over his right cheek. He's got this pernicious look to his face and he's a presence that demands my compliance at once. And, with that face, there's no way I'm going to argue with him. "I'm Morino Ibiki," he introduces, "and I will be a proctor and chief examiner of the first part of the exam."

He points a black gloved hand toward our group. "You Sound guys better watch yourselves," Ibiki warns. "Unless you want to be dropped from the exam."

"Sorry, sir," says the boy with the shell of fur on his back. "This is our first time. We got carried away. It won't happen again."

Ibiki scoffs, unbelieving. "Well, here's a good opportunity to say this," he goes on. "There will be no fighting from here on out, not without the expressed permission of an examiner that is. And even if consent is given, the killing of an opponent will not be tolerated. The pigs that disobey me will be failed immediately. Do I make myself clear?"

There's a collective and somewhat reluctant "Yes, sir" from everyone in the room.

"Now," says Ibiki, moving on. "Let's start on the first part of this exam. Form a line and have your applications at the ready. When you turn them in, you'll receive a seating assignment number from our proctors here. Report to that seat immediately and we'll begin the written part of the exam."

Chairs screech and papers rustle as people start to get up and move forward to do as they're told. No pleasantries are exchanged, seeing as how Ibiki has scared everybody shitless. The only one who does say anything is Naruto, and he bellows it at the top of his lungs.

"A WRITTEN TEST?"

I can't help but laugh endearingly at Naruto as he deflates, grumbling miserably. "Don't worry, Naruto," I say, patting his shoulder comfortingly. "You can at least take solace in the fact that you'll probably do better than Shikamaru."

"What are shinobi doing anyway, taking a written test?" Naruto demands, his face wrapped in annoyance to cover his terror. "We're supposed to be fighting! Using our strength to overtake our enemies!"

"I'm sure you'll do fine," I say as Sasuke and Sakura gather beside us. "All of you guys." The smile that I'd been fostering starts to wilt as I realize what the call for the start of the first exam means to me. "I guess this is where I wish you guys luck and all that. My time's almost up, I think."

Sure enough, as I say this, Kakashi pokes his head through the door and asks, "Ready, Ren?"

"In a second," I say, and Kakashi nods, retreating back into the hallway. I turn to my friends once again, whose faces have fallen. I give them my best encouraging smile, which Naruto and Sakura return weakly, and I say, "Well. Good luck."

"Ren," Sasuke says quietly when we've turned our backs on each other, ready to go our separate ways. Naruto, Sakura, and I watch Sasuke, curious as to what he'll say next. But nothing could have made me expect to hear him utter the following sentence: "You should be taking these exams too."

I blink at him, unbelieving to what I've heard. Sakura and Naruto, on the other hand, don't seem as confused.

"Sasuke-kun's right," Sakura says. "You should be taking this test, Ren. You're a part of this team as much as any of us."

Naruto nods in agreement and I feel my stomach flip.

I turn away from them quickly and shuffle to the classroom doors. I might have muttered a "Thanks" or managed some kind of reply, but I don't know for sure whether I did or not. All I know is that the plushy, happy feeling that moment had given me was unacceptable if I hoped to leave this village without a hitch.

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	23. Discovery

**Bound**  
**Chapter 23: Discovery**

This goddamn floorboard won't. Stay. Down.

I'm not sure why, exactly, because it'd never been a problem before. Or maybe it had and I'd only noticed now when I'd walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water and found myself sprawled on the floor instead, tripped up by a floorboard curling up from the ground.

After Kakashi dropped me off at my house, I was left to my own devices. I can probably slip out and roam around town without anyone coming after me since they're all occupied with the exams at the moment, but there's not much for me to do especially when my friends are participating in the exams. So I've subjected myself to doing mundane things in order to distract myself, starting with this loose floorboard.

I've tried everything short of nailing it to the ground, but that's only because I don't have the tools to do that. I have an assortment of knives and other potentially dangerous ninja equipment, but none of them are thin or narrow enough to pierce the wood without splitting it in two. I settle with stacking my mother's old medical books on the floorboard to keep it down. In the end, there's a single tower of books about half a meter tall sitting in the middle of my kitchen.

Irritated that I hadn't been able to come up with a more permanent solution to the problem, I get to my feet and brush my hands off, wondering what else I could do. Most of what maintenance that needed to be done was taken care of by Shikamaru and his team before I returned from the Land of the Wave. However, there's still the matter of those boxes cluttering my parents' room.

I haven't been in there since I found that little black book detailing my childhood training. I couldn't think of a good reason to go in again. After all, what could I get from digging through my parents' things? I'm not interested in reading what they thought of my progress or how much they idolized the Uchiha. I'd had enough of that to last a lifetime.

Except.

I reach into my pocket and extract the card that Kabuto had given to me. It only occurs to me now that I want to see it again that the card could have deactivated or something after Kabuto's chakra had worn off. Amazingly, the information on the card is still there. It hasn't dulled even a bit. The only signs of defection are from when I'd clenched it too tightly and shoved it into my pocket too roughly.

Smoothing it out with my thumb, I skim over the pictures until I see the sneaky smirk, those knowing eyes.

Kannagi Rei.

I've heard her name before, I swear I have. And, if that's the case, I'd probably heard it from my parents. The mystery behind who this girl is could be solved if I go through my parents' things. Which were technically mine now, through inheritance. So why shouldn't I?

I purse my lip and glance through the open kitchen doors that lead into the hallway to my parents' room. It isn't going to kill me, going in there. I'd gone in once and made it out okay. I could do it again, no problem.

Taking a deep breath, I march myself down the corridor. Without even hesitating as I had last time, I push the door to the room open and flick on the lights. My confidence is brought to a halt there, however, as I am once again overwhelmed by the mass of brown boxes winding their way through the room like a labyrinth. There is no chance in hell I'll be able to figure out who this girl is before the exams are over if I have to look through all this junk on my own.

_The journal,_ I think, snapping my fingers. Why not check the journal first? If there was something important about the bond that made my mother anxious, then it would be there. It was, after all, a log of my progress and the weight of the bond on all the lives of the Kagiru.

I leave my parents' room behind, feeling a subtle relief wash over me, and make my way for my own room. Since moving back into my house, my room has gradually become a sty, one area at a time. First, I stopped making my bed in the mornings. Then I stopped folding my laundry and putting them neatly back in my dresser. Instead, I'd been draping them over the back of my chair. Not that I'd been using it to sit at m desk, which is now strewn with papers that I'd been sketching on during my confinement. And on top of it all is the worn, leather bound notebook in which my mother had penned the chronicles of my training.

I scoop the notebook up and flop down on my bed. With the notebook in my hands, the urgency with which I'd been approaching the subject of finding out who Kannagi Rei is doesn't seem so intense. As it seems, being directly faced with the prospect of having to read the unadulterated thoughts of my mother has turned me into a coward. Because I am a child, again, and my parents are looming over me, their gazes criticizing, their mouths set into firm frowns. the disappointment that leaks from their expressions cut me deep and I am on the verge of breaking.

My eyes close and I clutch the notebook, wanting to tear it apart instead of reading through it. Finding out who Kannagi Rei is isn't as important as my pride. If I read through this notebook, I'll be admitting that I need my parents.

I'd made it this far without them. I can't stain my reputation now.

However, this is bigger than anything I'd faced before. This girl, this _outsider_, knows something about the bond when she shouldn't. And the way she'd flaunted the fact that she knew about it—she must want me to pursue her in order to find out how she knows what she knows.

I release my hold on the notebook. It plops heavily into my lap, unfurling from the way I had tightened my grip around it. This girl, Kannagi Rei—she had managed to stifle the vibrations and hide herself away from me, something that had never happened before. So what else is she capable of? Either I face her again not knowing a single thing about her or I do my research and face her with some kind of idea as to who she is.

Now I'm being too optimistic. Who's to say I'll face her at all? She's in an exam against 183 other applicants who could get her and take her out before I reach her. Not to mention all the other variables that could keep me from talking to her.

_You should be taking these exams too._

I wince and take the notebook in my hands.

Anything to distract me from the exams, I decide.

The notebook starts out slow. My mother writes about how I'm a generally happy child, vivacious when given the chance to show off, sullen when being instructed on how to do things correctly.

She mentions the bond off-handedly like it's the weather. I think this is the part that bothers me the most.

Her pen strokes become more careful the deeper I read. And then they start to dig into the paper and blobs of ink blot the ends of her words. Something is going wrong, but I can't tell what because she's yammering meaninglessly about my training and how well I'm doing, despite what my father says. The speed at which I should be improving was never fast enough for him. It was critical that I be inhumanely strong for the Uchiha.

_The fervor with which my husband approaches the subject of Ren's training is frightening_, my mother writes in an entry marked for spring of my fifth birthday, _and Ren is growing tired of it. As a child, she doesn't yet want to take any of this seriously. I understand this, but it doesn't seem as though Katai does, and he keeps pushing her to her breaking point. Each day they return from their training, I can tell that Ren is physically and mentally exhausted. Even with her fatigue blatant in the way her body droops, Katai wants me to push her even further with medical training. Which is a bit ironic because the best medical training I could give her then would be to rest. A medic shouldn't tire herself, after all. The lives of the team could depend on her._

_I've expressed my concern about all the training to Katai, but he simply says that, when the reason behind her rough training regime is revealed to her on her fifth birthday as is tradition, she will understand and receive her birthright well. "They always do," he told me. "It's in their blood."_

_I, however, am doubtful._

Good to know that there was at least one person in my family who had a bit of sense to her. And that I might have inherited some of it instead of just a bunch of arrogance and ignorance.

_Ren is already different from the other Kagiru women—they say so themselves. She's much too defiant, much too…curious of the world outside the family._

_From what I have read of the records of the other girls who had inherited the bond before Ren, they were concerned solely about their relationship with their Uchiha counterparts. Ren seems to be losing interest, however, and is instead connecting with other children, a prime example being Nara-sama's son. Katai still has not allowed me to forget that it is my fault that they are friends in the first place, but he fails to remember that it was he who insisted that I teach Ren how to identify herbs on the day when Nara-sama had decided to bring his son to his family park in order to pass on family knowledge of the deer they raise._

It was probably the only good thing that my father had ever done for me: Inadvertently introduce me to Shikamaru. If it hadn't been for my father's pushiness, my mother would have never taken me to the Nara family park. It was out of line with the lessons she'd been teaching me, but as it was so bright out my father insisted that there wouldn't be a better day to do it. So we went. And I met Shikamaru.

_Ren!_

I jump, the notebook flying from my hands. It does a somersault in the air and I grab for it clumsily as it comes back down. I clutch the notebook to my chest as my heart starts to slow and I hiss, "The _hell_."

My name comes again from out of nowhere, but I'm more prepared for it now because I know who it is that's calling me.

_Ren,_ Sasuke repeats once he has my attention. _Who is this girl?_

An image flashes quickly through my head, but I'm able to catch it and hold onto it. It's a girl with wavy, mahogany locks that curl in odd directions, creating a muss of medium-length hair that reaches down past her shoulders. She wears a short-sleeved shirt with a tight, high collar. The shirt has longer sleeves attached to the sleeves by two strips of fabric on opposite sides. The extended sleeves don't quite reach the sleeves of her shirt though, so there's about a six centimeter gap that reveals her biceps. Beneath she wears a skirt over shorts that reach just past the hem of the skirt, and bandages cover her legs up to her mid-thigh before her feet are covered with frilly lined boots. Although she's changed her clothes, the decorative feather that she wears in her hair and the snarky gleam in her eyes tells me who she is right away.

I don't know what she has to do with Sasuke, though, and while I deliberate on whether or not I should tell him, he prods me again.

_Who is she?_ he demands, on the verge of digging through my brain to find out for himself.

_Hello to you too, Sasuke,_ I snip back, settling back into my bed. _I'm doing fine on my own, shut out from the exams, thanks for asking. Not even a little lonely cooped up here in my house. But I hope _you_ are doing well and having the time of your life in the exams._

_She mentioned the bond,_ he emphasizes as though that will get me to give him an answer faster. _She bumped into me and while she was apologizing, she said, "That's some nasty blood you've got on your hands."_

_That's not mentioning the bond,_ I retort, pulling my knees up to my chest and massaging my temples. _That's mentioning blood. Not quite the same thing, buddy._

_You didn't see the way she looked at me when she said it,_ he says, and my head starts to ache. I'm growing tired and I can only assume that these are some side effects of communicating through the bond. We'd never done this before, never so extensively. Sasuke, however, shows no sign of wearing because he pushes on. _The goddamn smirk she had on her face—she couldn't have been talking about anything else! We were taking a written test for god's sake._

_Maybe you got a million little paper cuts,_ I jest, a grin spreading across my face. _How many times have I told you to be careful around paper, Sasuke? It's your one true weakness._

_She said your name. She wanted me to tell you hi,_ Sasuke says, and I can picture him gritting his teeth and sneering. The mental image makes me want to laugh, but then Sasuke repeats, more forcefully, _Who is she?_

Deciding that I may as well come clean with him, as he'll find out sooner or later, I tell him, _Her name is Kannagi Rei. I ran into her after the whole Sand Nin predicament a few weeks ago. That's all I've got. Now quit bugging me. Don't you have exams you need to get back to?_

_The first one's finished,_ he says dismissively. _We're on our way to the second one now. You _met_ her? A few weeks ago? Where? What did she say to you then?_

_Finished?_ I echo, baffled. I clamber out of my bed and start to pace my room, unable to accept the fact that these exams are moving so quickly. This leaves me with less time than I'd been hoping for to figure out who Rei is. _What were the conditions of the first exam that you guys were able to finish in an hour and a half?_

_It was a written test,_ he reminds me. _They gave us nine questions that were beyond our skill level. Most of us were able to deduce that the goal was to gather the answers from other people without being caught by one of the proctors. If your method of cheating was conspicuous and you were caught, then the proctors took away two of your ten marks. If you lost all of your individual marks, you and your team would flunk out._

_I don't understand,_ I say and stop mid-pace to cross my arms and glower at the wall. _How did you manage to pass with a fool like Naruto on your team? He would've never been able to figure out how to do that._

_The last question was given fifteen minutes to the end,_ Sasuke says impatiently as though I should know this. _It was a trick question. The proctor gave us a choice: Either we forfeit or answer the tenth question. The catch was that if you answered the tenth question wrong, you would never be allowed to take the exams again and would stay a Genin for the rest of your life. Naruto figured that never advancing wouldn't matter to him; he'd still be able to become the Hokage. And accepting the risk of the tenth question, apparently, proved that he was a ninja gutsy enough to take on the risks of being full-fledged shinobi._

I slap the heel of my hand to my forehead and groan. How stupid! But lucky enough for them, I suppose. If I had been there in place of Naruto, I would have done the same, though. What did it matter to me if I never became a Chuunin or a Jounin or anything greater than a Genin? So long as I had this bond broken—

_Now tell me about this girl,_ Sasuke says, disrupting my thoughts again. I scowl despite the fact that he can't see me and lock my gaze on the black notebook that sits abandoned on my bed. _Quit avoiding the subject. I told you what you wanted to know about the first exam, so tell me about what you know about her._

_I don't know anything about her,_ I say, reaching for the notebook. _The first time I met her was in the park two weeks ago. She was hanging around there for some reason and all she did was spook me a little. She mentioned the bond to me too._

_What did she say specifically?_

The headache hits me again, tenfold this time. I lean my head into the palm of my free hand and make way for the kitchen.

_Can't we talk about this later?_ I whine, unable to withstand the pressure of this headache any longer. And also because I don't want to reveal to Sasuke what she'd told me. _This telepathy thing is killer on my brain._

_It's not telepathy,_ answers Sasuke like I'm an idiot for calling it that. But really, isn't that what this brain communication thing is? _Just tell me what you know about her and I'll leave you alone. She couldn't have said that much._

_It's not important,_ I insist, digging through my cupboard for a glass. _It was nothing, I swear._

_You know I can tell you're lying._

Goddamn him.

_Tell me,_ he orders as I clench a cup in my hands and stalk toward my sink.

_She said I shouldn't be second-guessing how much I wanted to break the bond._ It comes out quickly, in such a rush that I'm not sure he understood me because he doesn't answer right away. But then, when the pause stretches out, I realize he must be upset. Or something.

_If you're going to face her, though,_ I say, turning on the faucet and holding my glass under the water. _A friendly word of advice. She's quick. Really quick. And she's able to hide her chakra really well. Don't drop your guard around her. I get the feeling that she's dangerous._

I'm not sure he hears me or if the connection is still…_on_, I guess, but I've done enough for him. If he's upset about it, it's his own fault for pressing the matter so hard.

My glass fills three quarters of the way before I shut the water off. I turn around to lean against the counter and stare at the tower of books sitting in the middle of my kitchen. I sip the water slowly, blinking at the books.

I weigh my mother's diary in my hand and frown at it.

I need answers. And I need them now. I can't get them quickly enough.

I thought I'd have time to read through the journal in its entirety and take it in, but I can see now, at the pace that these exams are going, I can't do that. So I seat myself at my kitchen table and skim through the journal as fast as I can, looking for any mention of the name Kannagi at all.

It's not until the end of the book that I see it. In the margins of an entry marked for early summer of my sixth birthday, scribbled so messily and small that it was as though my mother had been hoping for everyone to bypass it, is the name Kannagi. And next to it: _Sound_.

I look up from the book, flipping a page between my fingers. The Sound village couldn't have existed for that long. Kabuto had even said that they were newly founded. Maybe my mother was clairvoyant and could see the future. She had made a number of crazy predictions before she died, but they were more believable than her being able to see the creation of the Sound Village.

Come to think of it, she had mentioned the Sound Village moments before she died. What was it that she said? I had to leave the village to find ways to break the bond because there would be nothing for me here. And then something about how I would be able to find some help from—

"…_a family—a few families, actually, but one in particular—called the Kannagi in the Sound Village…"_

My breath catches in my throat. Could it be that Rei was one of _the_ Kannagi, one of the ones my mother said could help me break the bond?

Dropping my gaze back to the notebook, I search the page frantically for more of the Kannagi, notes, maybe, on how to break the bond or where the blood contract is, but there's nothing. I skim through the following pages, all the way to the end, but turn up fruitless. My anger flashes up inside me and, with a furious cry, I pick up the notebook and chuck it across the room. It flies into the tower of books, which starts to totter back and forth before it crashes and sends medical books spilling over the floor.

The sight of the mess and the prospect of having to clean it up later pushes me over the edge. I let out a defeated moan of, "Noooooooo…!" and bend over the table with my hands over my head, my fingers digging into my hair.

I remember now. The Sound Village was one of the first places I'd tried to visit on my five years roaming the country. But when I'd asked around for it, people laughed at me and told me I was mistaken: There was no Sound Village, not for miles around, not so far as anyone had heard. So what was my mother doing telling me to go there? And why hadn't my mother written more about the Kannagis? Why hadn't she mentioned them to me _before_ she died, when she had more time to talk about them? The entry was marked nearly a year before the massacre. If she had a found a way to break the bond that early, why hadn't she taken me to get it done?

The answer comes to me in a bitter rage: My father. This stupid bond. I wasn't allowed to go anywhere without the Uchihas, Sasuke in particular, who at the time was too young to travel outside the village.

What if Sasuke needed me? my father would ask. What if one of the Uchihas were severely hurt and only my mother's medical expertise could help them? It was always about the Uchihas. Every goddamn time.

I slam my fists against the kitchen table, wanting to split it in two, but I know that won't help the case. All I need to do is go into my parents' room, filter around their things and see if I can find anything worth reading or taking note of.

No. Why waste my time looking through trash when I can see Rei myself and ask her? All I need to do is get inside the second part of the exams, which, according to Sasuke, hasn't even started yet. How hard could it be? I have, after all, spent five years on my own, avoiding detection in places of highest security.

I stand from the table and make way for the well stocked weaponry room my father made sure to keep up to date every day he was alive. Once I get what I need, I'll sneak into the second exams—it won't be hard as Sasuke will be there and I'll be able to track him through, ironically, the bond—and find Rei. Then I will be closer than I ever have been to breaking the bond.

At last.

I rummage through the drawers of the weaponry room, pushing past an extensive range of knives and daggers with elaborately decorated hilts. I gather what I need and stock my hip pouch and holster with the essentials, clipping them shut and pulling them on before making my way to my room to grab my headband.

Through this entire process, the bond is weakly protesting in the back of my mind. It knows what I set out to do, but isn't convinced that my plan will work out. It, like much of the other Kagiru when they were alive, is too prideful to think that it could be foiled or brought down.

I know I shouldn't talk about the bond as though it's a separate entity—it makes me sound crazy. But I've never felt as though it were completely part of me. To me, the bond isn't some insubstantial thing like so many people outside of our clan think it to be. It's a mindset that's been wired into my body, a stigma that my body refuses to accept and fights against. It is, essentially, the strings that can manipulate me when pulled by the puppet master—Sasuke.

I can't explain it. I just know that I've never really mixed or settled with it like my father said I would. Then again, nothing much of what my father said was ever right.

I peek out my front door and search the area around my house with the vibrations, searching for any sources of chakra. As I figured, there aren't any. I slip out my door, jump from my porch, and dart down the path to where I feel Sasuke to be through the bond because I know that, wherever he is, Rei will be nearby.

He's loitering around an area I know well: the Forest of Death. It is the place where the Hokage had sent me to prove that I would be able to last on my own, where I had tried and failed to defeat the Nins who were trailing me, and, incidentally, where I had first met Kakashi.

But I digress.

I keep track of Sasuke through the bond as I move closer toward him. He doesn't move much. He glides from one area around the forest to another, not entering, but getting closer and closer. By the time I make it to the outskirts of town, he finally enters.

I frown with displeasure. Their entry into the Forest of Death will make it infinitely harder for me to find Rei easily. The Forest of Death is nearly 314 kilometers of, well, death in the form of beasts, monster plants, poisonous foods, and, with the other Genin in there, cunningly hidden shinobi ready to kill.

How troublesome! I'd been hoping to confront only Rei, but at this point it'd be safest to find Team 7 and use them as a means of safety in numbers. I wouldn't last any other way.

Sensing that I'm getting closer to my goal, the bond, not wanting me to go any farther, starts to make my head pound. Once it realizes that this won't be enough to deter me, it starts to throw a fit and knock wrong signals to my nervous system. I trip a few times, but never bad enough that I lose my balance completely. I manage to make it to the very edge of the clearing around the forest without too much of a problem, but as I slip around the trees, searching the area for the presence of other Nin, my skin starts to prickle. My head spins and I come to a halt as the dizziness starts to overtake me and I have to lean against a tree in order to keep upright. I close my eyes, pressing my hand to my head, but instead of seeing darkness as I should, I see green blurs.

I'm able to process that the blurs of green are leaves. They're being fired so fast and in so many numbers that they smear together and block my vision. They're moving fast enough to cut and I'm sure that they do—that's why my skin is prickling. My stomach turns and drops as I get a feeling that these flying leaves aren't Mother Nature's doing. Especially when the winds start to pick up around me to an unbelievable speed, nearly knocking me off my feet. I have to get out of there before I'm thrown away from my teammates and separated from them, vulnerable to whatever attack that whoever is responsible for this upheaval is planning.

Not me, of course, but Sasuke. This is what he sees; this is what is happening to him in this exam. Flashes of what's happened previous to my spirit being injected into the situation blinks through my head. An obnoxious proctor who makes herself out to be a creepy know-it-all; two scrolls, Heaven and Earth, which they have to collect by the end of five days. A quick ambush upon entry in which a Rain Nin tried to imitate Naruto and steal their scroll. And then another, right after a decided codeword is set so that they can check and make sure that they are who they think they are.

I will my eyes to open and when they do, I collapse against a tree. The bond is itching for me to get a move on to find Sasuke, interfere with the exams and starts to wholeheartedly support me in wanting to sneak into the exams.

A smirk drags its way across my lips as I wipe my brow. I quickly pack my pouch and holsters, slipping them on, and then grab my head band, cinching it around my forehead.

Funny how this bond can be used to destroy itself, however inadvertently.

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	24. Rolling Snake Eyes

**Bound  
Chapter 24: Rolling Snake Eyes**

Getting into the Forest of Death proves to be no challenge at all. I'd been expecting there to be sentries standing guard around the perimeter of the exam area to make sure that no one sneaks in, but then I realize: Who in their right mind would want to sneak into a place like the Forest of Death?

So with nothing to keep me out but a five meter tall fence, I'm able to get into the forest with ease, bolting across the clearing that surrounds the forest and using tree trunks as boosts in order to jump up and over the fence, into the Forest of Death. Once I land cleanly on my feet, the bond kicks into overdrive and tracks Sasuke for me.

He's not too deep into the forest. Of course, it's only been fifteen minutes tops since he'd entered. And already, they were being ambushed? Someone must be out to get them. If that were the case I wouldn't be surprised, especially because of Naruto's outburst at the beginning of the first exam.

I know I should be going to find Rei since that was what I had originally set out to do. But the bond won't get off my back until I help Sasuke. I can't have it giving me headaches and mixing up my brain signals. I would be dead before I took another step. No, best to do as the bond wants first, and then go about my business.

I duck through the foliage, keeping my chakra low and the vibrations around me as steady as possible. I can hear shouts and see where the branches have broken from struggle. As soon as I'm close enough to clearly hear a voice, I slip into a thicket to cover myself.

I find this to be a mistake, however. The wiry branches and thick leaves of the thicket are too tightly woven to allow me to see much more than the dim yellow of the sun. I don't know what's going on outside of the thicket and won't be able to see if someone senses me and closes in on my hiding spot.

But This problem has an easy solution. I shut my eyes and press fists together, taking a deep breath. When I open my eyes, the outlines the roots, leaves, earth, and grass around me have melded together as the Genshindou activates and vibrations start to overtake my vision. While the Genshindou makes it harder for me to distinguish where one thing ends and the other begins, it makes up for it with all the miniscule things I can feel and sense with it activated.

Vibrations caress my form sweetly, alerting me to the slightest movements and sounds and heightening emanating chakras. I feel the resonance of the voices I'd heard**—**two, to be exact—and am able to place them as Sasuke's and Sakura's. It doesn't seem as though they know I'm nearby, which surprises me. I figure that Sasuke would have known that I'd come to help him. But he seems distracted, probably by the fact that they'd just been ambushed a second time within the first twenty minutes of this exam.

Yeah. Probably.

Sakura and Sasuke finish going over a password that they'd set moments earlier so that they could make sure they were them and not some imposter. Once Sakura's proved herself to Sasuke, she asks, "Have you seen—Naruto!"

I wince at Sakura's cry since, in my current state, I'm extra sensitive to the vibrations that reach me. As I rub my ear, nearby, brush rustles and the vibrations relay to me the shape of a person about the same height and weight as Naruto, though it can't be him because there's something off about his chakra. I wonder if it could be like what I felt back in the Land of the Waves. It's definitely vicious enough, but its intensity is far less fearsome.

"Ow, you guys all right?" comes a voice that sounds convincingly like Naruto's.

Sasuke makes a movement away from the other boy and says, "Don't come any closer. What's the password?"

"Right," answers Naruto. "The Ninki! 'We thrive in chaos of enemy tide, quiet shinobi don't need dens to hide. Our only concern is to watch and wait, until the enemy lowers the gate.'"

As if Naruto could have memorize that. Realizing this too, Sasuke sends a kunai flying toward the fake. The vibrations around the imposter shift as he lurches to the side to avoid Sasuke's knife.

"Sasuke-kun, what're you doing?" Sakura shrieks, alarmed by Sasuke's reaction. "Naruto got the codeword right!"

"And," Sasuke adds, "this time he was good enough to dodge my attacks."

"What are you talking about?" Sakura demands.

"So how'd you know?" says the voice of Naruto, warping into a spine-chilling, snaky voice mid-sentence. The vibrations flurry around me, pulsing as the illusion is dropped and then swarming around the shape of a tall man completely unrecognizable to me. "That I was a fake, I mean. That was impressive of you."

"I knew that you were listening from underground," Sasuke reveals. "That's the reason I made a password like that in the first place. The real Naruto would've never remembered it."

This enemy is not anyone to be messed with if he'd go to such lengths to spy on them, I note, biting my thumb. I wonder if Sasuke knows what he's getting into.

"I see," the man says. "'Watch and wait', hmm? This is going to be more fun than I thought."

If this guy plans on fighting them, and I'm sure he is, I should get out there now. Sasuke and Sakura won't be able to take him on alone, and I can't sense Naruto nearby with my vibrations at all. But that might be because this man's chakra is so overwhelming.

_Who is this man?_ I wonder, closing my eyes to see if the vibrations can give me a better visual. Instead, the bond flashes scenes through my head: the proctor of this exam throwing a kunai at Naruto and grazing his cheek, then appearing behind him to like the blood the drips from the wound; a man with long hair and a leaf hat, returning the proctor's first kunai with a grossly thick and long tongue. I shudder at the image of it, wondering how mentally scarring that had been for Naruto and feeling sympathy for him.

"You probably want my Earth scroll," the man outside is saying, "seeing as how you've got the Heaven scroll."

_Scrolls?_ I wonder and the bond fills me in quickly: The point of this exam is to collect two scrolls, one Heaven and one Earth, before the end of five days and then bring it to the tower located in the middle of the forest. I glower, annoyed at how I'm being filled in at such an inconvenient time. It would've been good to know the premise of this exam and all the things that had happened prior to my entering before I landed myself in this stupid thicket, sitting idly by while Sasuke and Sakura are being harassed by a foreign Nin.

Speak of the foreign Nin. The vibrations shift as he moves his arms and extracts an object that the vibrations wrap around quickly. It's small, thick, and cylindrical—it must be the Earth scroll that he had been talking about. The man leans his head back and allows the scroll to hover over his mouth. I think that he's going to set it on fire using a jutsu, but then the vibrations move out of the way as his tongue slithers out of his mouth, wraps around the scroll, and drags it down his throat and into his stomach. He then licks his lips and I start to feel overwhelmingly queasy.

"Now," he says quietly. "Let's see just who will be stealing the scrolls from whom. We'll fight to the death," he adds casually, just before the vibrations explode, moving numbingly fast.

I breathe in sharply, lowering my head. My fingers dig into the soil as I try to get a grip on the vibrations that bend and fold and twist around me. Suddenly, I'm being attacked from all over by nothing, absolutely nothing at all, but there's blood, so much blood, and my skin starts to burn, starts to shred, starts to peel off my muscles.

My head dips to the ground as I'm unable to keep upright any longer. I press my forehead to the cool, cool earth to see if that will help alleviate the heat, but it doesn't. It only seems to make my forehead burnburnburn, hot as hell. I give a little gasp and my eyes snap wide open as it all just…stops. Slowly, I right myself and feel someone outside the thicket heave before they vomit. When I feel as though there's acid burning up my throat as well, I know who it is.

Sasuke.

And I feel trembling, fear so much fear, and the undeniable steady pressings of being overpowered. Any thought that I had of coming into the Forest of Death to do anything else but help Sasuke is lost because now all I can think is Sasuke, Sasuke, _Sasuke_.

_What are you doing here!_ comes Sasuke's voice from the bond.

_Saving your skin,_ I answer, scrambling to get to my feet.

_Stay hidden,_ he orders and the command is so strong that it actually brings me back down to my knees. I want to break the earth beneath me. He can't keep me back forever. He needs my help and that'll bring me out, even if he doesn't want it to.

The bond always knows where to draw the line. Especially when it comes to an Uchiha's safety. It had already stuck me into the genjutsu that the man had undoubtedly cast on Sasuke, to help him cope with it a little better than Sakura, who is now completely paralyzed, whereas Sasuke is able to move, but just barely.

It's enough to save Sakura, though, when the man throws three kunai her way. Sasuke jumps from his spot, digging his own kunai into his thigh, and catches Sakura, picking her up and lifting her alongside him as he leaps into the treetops, away from the man.

I'm tempted to follow, but another order comes to me swiftly: _Find Naruto._

Every cell in my body knows that no, Naruto will be fine, I should be out there helping Sasuke, but the bond is planted into my very soul which is bound to my brain, and I find myself shuffling around the thicket, looking for a back way out. There's a little fissure where the tree is slightly upraised from rain waters gushing through and eroding the dirt away. It leads away from where the enemy is and I can see that it cuts straight to the other side of the tree.

I'm about to crawl my way through it when the vibrations alert me of something slithering through the thicket. I hasten my pace and start to pull myself into the space, but then I'm grabbed by my ankle and, like in a horror movie, I'm dragged out through the thicket by some unseen force. I dig my fingers into the soil, clawing into the earth to keep me hidden, to stop myself from being dragged out. Even the roots clutch at my clothes, fighting to keep me safe in the shadows, but I break through the wiry branches of the thicket and end up hanging upside down, swinging side to side by my ankle.

I'm face to face with a blurry pale mass, courtesy of the vibrations. I should deactivate them to see my enemy better, but I haven't got the patience to do that right now. I need to figure out how to get away from him and find Naruto.

"Well, well, well," he says, swinging me back and forth gently, like he's trying to rock me to sleep. When he speaks I can hear the smile in his voice. "What have we got here? A spy, no doubt."

"Yeah, sure," I answer, shrugging. I need to get away get away get away before this man can do me any harm. A lie comes to me easily. "I thought I'd be able to target these guys and take their scroll, but, hey man, you got here first. They're all yours. I was just leaving."

"I don't think so," he tells me, no longer sounding amused. This is my cue to take action. Drawing vibrations to me quickly, I swirl them together in a sphere roughly the size of a globe, and thrust it forward, toward the man's stomach as he reaches into his holster for a weapon.

My vibrations, naturally, catch him off guard and send him flying backward. His hand unravels from my ankle and I manage to land on all fours. Briefly, I glance over my shoulder to make sure he's really down, but then I make a run for it, realizing that it really doesn't matter because I need to get away get away get away fastfastfast.

_Sasuke,_ I think. _I should probably get to Sasuke._ But goddamn, I—

"Sasuke-kun, snake!" a shrill voice screams and I skid to a stop, looking up. Blue and pink blobs dart out of a tree, a long khaki colored mass trailing them. It goes specifically for the blue splotch as the pink is able to get safely to a faraway tree.

Sasuke manages to draw shuriken from his holster and shoot them at snake's open month. It's forced back and squirms a bit before it drops dead against the tree. I freeze when I see, emerging from the snake's throat, the man standing there, focused intently on Sasuke. How did he get to there so quickly?

"You guys shouldn't relax for even a moment," the man hisses. "Especially in the presence of a predator. Prey should always be trying their best to get away."

I can hear the malice in his voice as he says this. He doesn't care if he kills. All for a stupid scroll? This guy must be desperate.

The man's upper body dashes forward, coiling around the tree, his abdomen stretching out so that his body becomes snake-like. Without thinking, I jump to the nearest tree branch and continue my way up until I'm standing in front of Sasuke, weapon drawn to protect him. But before the man can reach us, a number of shuriken and kunai are impaled into the branch, missing the man by mere centimeters and bringing him to a stop. Our heads turn in the direction from which the weapons had been thrown, and I see a familiar splash of orange-yellow standing a ways above us.

"Naruto!" I say, relieved, and my shoulders relax.

"Ren?" Naruto greets, confused. "What are you—?"

"Long story," I dismiss tiredly. "But, boy, am I glad to see you. Late as usual!"

"Yeah, sorry about that," he says with a grin, his fingers moving to salute us informally. "Also, I forgot the stupid password."

Sasuke makes an aggravated sound. "Naruto!" he shouts. "I know you think you're cool showing up like that and saving us, but forget it!"

"Then what do you suppose we do to get out of this situation now?" I whisper to him fiercely, my grip tightening on the kunai in my hand. "We can't _sneak_ away, if that's what you're planning."

I can feel the man's unnerving gaze on me. "So much for a spy, hmm?" he asks, his lips pursing. "You seem to be working _with_ them. Who are you, girl?"

"Sasuke," I press, ignoring the man.

Sasuke deliberates, causing the hesitation to lag on and become too much. We don't have time to sit around—this man could make his move any second now and completely obliterate us. As I think this, my vision sharpens a bit, enough so that I can make out the faint outlines of shapes and figures. I'm confused as to what could have caused this change, but then my vision returns to normal. Well, as normal as it is when the Genshindou is in play.

"Are you telling me you just deactivated your Sharingan?" I guess, my eyes flicking over my shoulder to Sasuke who is pulling himself to his feet. He doesn't respond. Instead, he brushes past me, holding out the Heaven scroll. It clicks in my head.

He means to forfeit.

"Sasuke!" I start to protest weakly.

"Here, here's our scroll," Sasuke says, his voice shaky, his stance defeated. "Take it and leave us alone."

"Sasuke, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Naruto demands, his shouts filling every empty corner of the forest. "You can't just _hand_ it over!"

The man chuckles, his body unwinding from the branch. "Very smart, I see," he notes, cocking his head to the side in order to regard us wily. "In order to get away, the prey must provide the predator with a different meal. Very smart, indeed."

"Just take it," Sasuke replies, and the scroll goes airborne with a simple flick of his hand.

"Nonononono," I groan. This loss on Team 7's part would indirectly be my own loss. Sasuke cannot get away with giving up on behalf of the team when they don't all agree on his decision.

Thankfully, the scroll doesn't make it into the hands of the enemy because Naruto jumps from his landing and grabs it. He drops down behind Sasuke and I grin gleefully. Trust Naruto to do that right thing. Sasuke, however, isn't happy.

"You bastard!" Sasuke yells. "What are you doing? Do you even _understand_ what's—"

Naruto whirls on Sasuke, shoves the scroll into my hands, and punches Sasuke, who flies back, narrowly ramming into me. I start, unable to have seen that coming.

"Naruto!" Sakura exclaims.

I join in, completely thrown off by my teammate's actions. An intergroup issue is not what we need right now. "Naruto! That—he—what are you—"

"What are you playing at?" Sasuke finishes for me, leaping to the other branch to avoid any other surprise attacks Naruto.

"I don't remember that stupid password," Naruto huffs and jabs a thumb into his chest, "so I can't prove that I'm me, but _you _are definitely not Sasuke!"

"You idiot!" Sasuke spits, pulling himself to his full height. "I _am_ Sasuke!"

"No, you're not," remarks Naruto, glaring fiercely. "Because the Sasuke I know would never be so cowardly!" He points at the man angrily, demanding, "What makes you so sure that he'll leave us alone if you hand over the scroll? _You're_ the one too freaked out to understand the what's going on!"

"Oh, Naruto-kun," the man hums sweetly, and I get this sick feeling in my stomach. "You're right."

My insides lurch into my throat, making it thick and heavy and I start to shake so terribly and uncontrollably that I almost drop the scroll. I'm able to shove it into my pouch before the man makes a move and says, "Why bargain when I can simply kill you and take the scroll?"

I can feel through the tree, down to its roots, the ground rumbling. Naruto makes a run for the man, jumping into the air as the branch beneath me collapses and a giant snake erupts from out of nowhere, it's hissing overtaking every other sound that rings in my ears.

I'm able to catch myself on a branch I'm falling past and scramble onto it safely. I look up at what's taking place overhead, only to remember that I can't see very well because of the Genshindou. In a situation where seeing is better than feeling, I consider deactivating my bloodline limit when there's a sudden rush of chakra that surges through the air with such high voltage that I start shaking again. Because this time, it's not the enemy's.

It's Naruto's.

"Oh god," I breathe as my brain matches this vicious chakra to that of the demon fox that had leaked out in the Land of the Waves. "Oh _god_. Oh god oh god oh god oh god. I have to get back up there."

As I say this, the branch I'm on breaks again, throwing me off balance. A pretty line of swear words is yanked out of my mouth and, concentrating my chakra to my feet, I turn around and start running up the tree's trunk, avoiding the catastrophic fall of being pulled down as the giant snake's head slams against the tree.

Instinctively, I run to Sasuke as the snake straightens up and shakes its head. The man puts his fingers to his mouth and blows, a gust of wind blasting from his lips and propelling away what I can see of a blurry orange blob.

I reach the branch Sasuke's on just as the man redirects his snake at him. Through the bond, I can feel Sasuke trembling, feel his fear rising up like bile, sweating out through his pores and eating away at his central nervous system, freezing him up.

It whines for me to do something. The bond I mean. It throws irrational ideas at me until it calms a little and shows me one that might work. Without even thinking twice, I throw myself in front of Sasuke, my fingers weaving around hand signs so I can fend off this goddamn snake.

The vibrations slow. It drags against the snake's skin like sandpaper on wood. I watch as the reptile's speed noticeably decreases. But it doesn't slow it enough to completely stop it. Panic rises in my chest, but as the snake's mouth crashes into the considerably thicker tree branch than the other two I had been standing on, Naruto rushes into view, one kunai in each hand.

He stabs them into the snake's nose, his back to the enemy. His breathing is labored; his clothes are looking miserably bruised with dirt and splotches of blood.

I release the breath I'd been holding, the one that I'd been betting on my jutsu with, relieved to have a teammate like Naruto, always coming in the nick of time. And even though his chakra throws off my equilibrium with its intensity, I don't care. I don't care if I'm vulnerable or if I'm going to die or that this guy can jump off the back of his snake right now and kill us all because we're so worn and weak compared to him. I'm too wasted on fear to put any more effort into anything.

Luckily, I have Naruto.

"Naruto," I sigh, wiping my brow. "Thank you. Again."

"Heh," he laughs, raising his head to look at Sasuke and me. I see that his pupils have become cat-like slits, and the whisker marks on his cheeks more prominent and thick, just like in the Land of the Waves. "No problem," he says through gasps. "But I should ask, Sasuke: Are you all right, you big chicken?"

I can't help the laugh that slips from my lips, feeling the irony of the situation. But I've dropped my guard too low because, without my noticing it, the man has flicked out his tongue and wrapped it around Naruto, who is then yanked into the air by the waist. He holds Naruto, who's struggling to get free, in front of him, so that they're eye to eye as he makes a hand sign off to the side.

"Naruto!" I cry helplessly, watching as five flames of chi become visible on each of the man's flingers. _Do something,_ I command. Do_ something, you worthless bastard. Help him._ But I can't. I don't know what to do, what I _can_ do. I'm all out of ideas.

The dread rises in my stomach, comes to a boil, and churns around my insides, making me want to vomit.

"So the Nine-Tailed brat is still alive," the man chuckles, eyes gleaming. "And it seems that when your emotions are heightened, the power of the Nine-Tails overflows. Interesting. Very interesting indeed. And look," he says casually, lifting Naruto's shirt so that his belly is exposed. "Here's the evidence: The seal has surfaced and radiates on your skin."

The man smirks, jabbing his fingers into Naruto's gut. The Nine-Tails' chakra wavers uneasily before it is stifled fully. Naruto's body gradually goes slack and the man carelessly tosses Naruto away over his shoulder. I'm about to move to catch him, but then something tightens around my ankle and I'm turned upside down and wrenched into the air. I see the terror in Sasuke's face as he registers what's happening and I try to grab him to keep me from being pulled into the enemy's clutches or at least bring him with me. But I can't.

I can't drag him into this. I can't put him in danger too.

"And you," the man says, more annoyed than amused with me than he had been with Naruto. His tongue winds out of his mouth, revealing to me that he's used it to make me captive once again. "The way you keep getting in the middle of things, jumping in as I'm about to get my prey. You're almost as bad as that brat. But you can't help it, can you?"

"I don't know what you mean," I manage. Since I'm upside down, my hair hangs in the fabric of my headband and starts to push it off. I want to adjust it, but it hardly seems appropriate at a time like this. My arms dangle uselessly above my head and sway slightly from the momentum of being pulled up, like I'm waving at the man and cheering him on, egging him to finish me off.

"Don't play stupid with me," he says, smirking. "Do you think I don't feel the vibrations pulsing around me right now? They're uneasy. Unlike when there isn't someone around who can willingly control them. Yes, I've fought against the Shindou before," he says as my eyes widen and my breathing quickens. "Although yours is a form that I've never quite encountered."

"Cut the chit-chat," I snap, composing myself so I may glare at him effectively, though my voice is still considerably shaky. "What do you want, bastard?"

He chuckles again, the same arrogant way he had before. "You might want to watch what you say, girl," he answers, grinning. He reaches into my pouch and digs around until he finds what he's looking for. He extracts the Heaven scroll and holds it in front of my face. "I need to make sure I've got all the points covered," he tells me. I make a grab for the scroll, but he holds it just out of my reach.

"Now," he says. "Let's dispose of you so you don't get in my way anymore. You'll ruin all the pretty plans I've got for your dear Sasuke here. After all, you _are_ a Kagiru, aren't you?"

He smirks as he says the last part and I flinch, wondering how he'd deduced my clan so easily. _I've fought against the Shindou before,_ he'd said. But I haven't heard anybody call my bloodline limit the Shindou since—

"Sasuke-kun!" a voice shouts from somewhere in the forest. It's Sakura, I know, but it sounds so far away, even with the reverberations of her voice pounding so closely in my ears. "Sasuke-kun!" she cries again. "It's true that unlike you, Naruto is clumsy and he sometimes gets in the way, but at least he's not a coward, right? Ren is there, right in front of you, in danger—_why won't you do something_? Anything, anything at all? WHY DON'T YOU DO SOMETHING?"

"No!" I snap. "Stay out of this! Run while he's still—"

"That's exactly," the man says slowly, "what I mean." His voice is so smooth, so quick and quiet, that it reminds me of the hissing of his snake.

He's fast, I'll give him that. I almost don't see it coming. Almost. But the way that vibrations swing around him, I feel the pain even before he stabs his kunai into my gut. I gasp as he twists the kunai, feeling my insides being punctured and torn and burning, burning, so much burning.

"That should keep you incapacitated for a while," he says, letting go of the kunai, which stays impaled in my stomach, and brushing his hands off. "Goodbye, Kagiru-chan." He tosses me aside like I'm ordinary trash and next thing I know I'm falling.

"REN!"

Like an echo, I get weaker as the air whistles unpleasantly in my ears.

"Oh God, Sasuke-kun—_REN_!"

I start seeing spots, and though I'm sure the Genshindou has been deactivated, my vision is still blurry. I can feel my blood soaking the fabric around my abdomen, slicking down my skin. And all I do is fall.

Fall.

Fall.

Until something slams into me mercilessly, and though it's relatively soft and fleshy and warm and confident, it still hurts. I groan. The pain is beatingbeatingbeating through my body, pulsingpulsingpulsing with my heightened heart rate.

I'm placed on a relatively solid branch—at least, from what I can tell in my woozy state. I force my eyes open and am greeted by a grimly serious face with crimson red eyes. I lift my head to watch him as he gets up and walks away from me, but I have to lie back down when the pain proves to be too much.

"Sasuke," I croak, and immediately regret it because the aching in my stomach multiplies by three hundred percent when I speak.

"Heal yourself," he orders without looking back. "I know you haven't got much chakra left, but at least try to stop that bleeding before you die."

Normally, my reaction to such commands from Sasuke would be to scoff and ignore him. This time, though, he really knows what he's talking about.

I don't open my eyes as I reach for my stomach, sensing Sasuke's presence disappear from beside me. My fingers become soaked with blood. Mentally, I groan because it'd be too troublesome to do it aloud and risk feeling even worse than I already am. I feel around for the kunai, and once I've got a hold on it, I pull it out slowly, painfully, because to yank it out would mean causing more damage than I can handle, what with my chakra levels.

Once the kunai is out, I cast it aside and twine my fingers over my stomach, gasping. I touch the exposed tissue, trying to keep my mind from creating an image based on what I can feel, and surge my chakra to the wound.

Nausea grips me the back of my throat as I expend all my chakra into healing over the wound. The darkness inside my eyelids starts to shake. My head lolls to the side. My breathing temporarily subsides.

I'm so weak that I can't even check in on Sasuke and how he's faring with that man. Hopefully well.

But, apparently, not well enough.

I jerk upright, suddenly reenergized, which can only be a bad thing. Especially when my rapid return to health is a product of the bond kicking into overdrive. I push myself to my feet, my wound no longer anything that I need to worry about, not for the moment. Tightening my headband, I leap up the trees, higher and higher until I see them: Sakura and Sasuke sitting paralyzed and exposed in front of the man. He's holding the Heaven scroll in his hands as it bursts into flames.

"Goddammit!" I curse, swinging myself over to them. I'm careless though. The man senses me and, somehow, the look in his eyes immobilizes me where I stand.

"What a bothersome little brat. I thought for sure that that kunai would at least cause you to faint, if not bleed out. No matter," he mutters, turning back to my two friends. From his profile, I can see that his face has somehow changed. It's paler, more sickly looking, and there's a rim of black that lines his eyes. "My name is Orochimaru. If you'd like a rematch, then you better get through this exam. I'll see you again if you manage to defeat the Otonin who answer to me."

_Otonin?_ My mind flashes to Rei and the headband she wore. The little eighth note grips me and makes me feel foolish. I had been putting my faith in her to help me break the bond and now I learn she can't be trusted. Although I should have expected that. All hell would freeze over if anything ever went my way.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Sakura demands, the waning sunlight glinting off the sheen of sweat that is slick on her face. "We never want to see you again!"

"Maybe not," he says, chuckling and making an awkward hand sign, one that I've never seen before. The hairs on my neck stand up on ends at this unfamiliar gesture that can mean nothing but trouble. "But it won't go that way."

His head shoots forward, his neck elongating grotesquely so that his body doesn't have to move after him. I will my legs to stand, the bond screeching, scraping against the walls of my mind, ordering me to get up get up get up and go help Sasuke Sasuke Sasuke because that's who this Orochimaru guy is after.

Whatever paralysis spell Orochimaru has on me finally breaks, but by the time I'm up on my feet it's too late. Orochimaru has his teeth clamped on Sasuke's neck like a vampire, planting a seed of something I can already tell will bud into nothing but misery.

As Orochimaru's poison starts to leak into Sasuke, the bond smears the boundaries between Sasuke's senses and my own. My body starts to quake, my teeth clicking together so quickly that it sounds like incessant rainfall against a window pane. Orochimaru's head retracts, and his body falls through the wood of the branch.

"What did you do to Sasuke-kun?" Sakura cries, hysteria lacing her words.

"I gave him a little something to remember me by," Orochimaru says as fire begins to swarm up from my very gut and sets my insides aflame. The pain centralizes on the left side of my neck, just above my shoulder. When it becomes unbearable, Sasuke grabs at the pain at the same time I do. Our knees cave in and I'm pressing my forehead to the wood beneath me, clenching my teeth to stifle the scream that threatens to blast from my throat. Sasuke, however, isn't so able to overpower his side of the pain. Even with the bond sending Sasuke's excess pain over to me, a heartbreaking scream is ripped from his mouth. It is sent reverberating across the forest, so loud and clear that I'm sure everyone for kilometers around is able to hear us.

Oh god, it hurts so badly! Searing, stabbing, aching pain all at once from everywhere, _everywhere_, and it won't stop won't stop no matter how much I try will it away. _It's not my pain,_ I think, _not my problem not my issue not mine not mine not mine so stop stop it stop it now stop it please._

A strangled cry escapes my lips. I consider slamming my head against the wood to see if it would ease the throbbinghurtingpiercing pain. I know it won't. I know I'm being irrational. But I can't think of anything else. I'm losing my mind in this swimming agony, wanting to roll over and fall to my death because at least then it would stop, would stop everything everything and I wouldn't ever have to feel again and, yes, yes, the numbness, the sweet seraphic numbness of not feeling, of dying and not feeling _forever_ forever is starting to sound more and more appealing to me.

Really I've got to hand it to him: this anguish is exquisite. Whatever that man wanted to achieve, oh, he more than got it. It's almost like he's earned it. Being able to debilitate us to such a degree, I mean. He's earned his right to make us suffer.

I can faintly make out sobs that drip my name and Sasuke's name and Naruto's name. Tremulous sobs that shake me to the core as though they're coming from me and not someone so far away that I can't help them. They're desperate. They're scared.

God, they're scared.

"Ren? _Ren,_" they're crying, and really crying. "Sasuke-kun, he's—oh, god, Ren. What am I supposed to do? Ren?"

Gasping, I push myself up knowing I have to help because two of my three teammates are down and if I go down too then Sakura won't be able to take care of all three of us. My body protests with sharp, efficient jabs to my gut that almost brings me back down, but I can't give up. I have to help.

I manage to send what little amounts of chakra I've got left to my feet. It's enough to allow me to project myself to the branch where Sakura sits, clutching onto a writhing Sasuke, as though the closer she holds him, the faster the pain will go away.

I know that it's not working.

"Ren!" Sakura blubbers when she sees me. I'm gripping my side and wincing, wondering why my lungs are constricting and belittling the value of oxygen to my body. "Ren, Sasuke-kun—and Naruto! Naruto is—"

"Relax, Sakura," I soothe, kneeling down beside her. I reach out and take Sasuke, whom she's reluctant to let go. I pry her fingers off of him, though I let her keep her hand twined with his, and lay his head in my lap. Pushing the collar of his shirt down, I wipe down the part of his neck that Orochimaru had bitten. There gleams a black mark, reminiscent of the three tomoe in a fully developed Sharingan. How could such a little mark cause so much pain?

"Ren," Sakura says again.

There's nothing I can do. This is a jutsu that's way beyond my skill level. It isn't just an injury like I had thought it was. No, it's much worse.

It's a curse mark.

"REN!"

_Shut it, _I think, grimacing. I'm as worried as she is, but at least I can actually _do_ something instead of sitting around and crying. This isn't even supposed to be my problem. I'd come here to help me, do myself a favor and find a way to break the bond. And yet, I get dragged back to Sasuke.

It's always about Sasuke.

I put my fingers to Sasuke's neck and surge a quick jolt of my chakra into his body. He swallows a sharp intake of breath before his body goes slack as he slips into a state of unconsciousness, although his face is still contorted with pain. At least now it's not so bad that I've got to deal with it too.

"Get Naruto. I can't get him being in the state that I'm in," I tell Sakura, lifting Sasuke and draping his arm over my shoulder. I struggle to my feet with the extra weight to support, but manage well enough. "We'll find a place to hide out until Sasuke and Naruto wake up. And pull yourself together. You can't very well protect them falling all over yourself like that. Come on."

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	25. Break

**Bound  
Chapter 25: Break**

My being here is wholly unnecessary. Sakura can handle this situation fine on her own. Naruto and Sasuke are doing nothing but sleeping to regain what stamina they'd lost during our fight with Orochimaru. Sure, Sasuke is burning up and still grimaces in his sleep, but so what? He's a big boy. He can handle it.

I have my own issues to deal with, you know.

The bond, however, doesn't let me shake the feeling that I've failed Sasuke. Not that I can take full blame. Or any blame at all, really. I'd tried my hardest and gotten injured in the process too—there's a hole roughly the size of my head crudely torn from the middle of my shirt to prove it—and my chakra levels were low from having the Genshindou activated for too long. So it isn't my fault that this happened. The fact that this Orochimaru guy had put a curse mark on Sasuke was way out of my control. I couldn't have prevented it no matter what I did.

_Wrong!_ the bond screams at me. _It's entirely your fault. You were more concerned with your own little schemes than you were with Sasuke! He was behind you all that time, and all you cared about was breaking, breaking, breaking—_

I rattle its pestering away with a shake of my head, waking myself up a bit as well. Sakura's taking her shift sleeping as the night drags on, and she doesn't show any signs of awakening. What does she need rest for, though? She didn't _do_ anything.

I don't bother getting her up to tell her it's her turn to play sentry . I'm too angry at her to even want to look at her, much less talk to her. Instead, I pull myself over to Sasuke, slipping my fingers under the towel that I'd soaked with semi-cold water to cool his fever just a few minutes ago. Because no matter how bitter and resentful I am toward him, I can't shirk my duties as his doctor. That would be irresponsible. And the bond would never leave me alone.

Sasuke is still burning up.

Aggravated, I pick the towel up and sop it with my drinking water again, slapping it on his forehead without wringing it out. It's annoying that his temperature won't ease up. And it's not as though I can very well go out and collect herbs to heal him, what with Sakura resting and my irritation too overwhelming to want to bother with her at the moment.

I huff, watching Sasuke as he cringes in his sleep. My resolve to let him suffer weakens. I frown and reach out to him. I cup my hand over his cheek that is slick with either sweat or water from the towel and, as usual, when his skin touches mine, it feels like I've just put my hand over a fire. Although that could just be his fever. It's hard to tell. Either way, I have to recoil because the heat becomes unbearable.

My breathing starts to act up. My throat gets thick like I have to cry. I double over like I'm going to pray or beg for forgiveness when neither is my intention. I clutch my stomach as it writhes and rolls, the wound over my abdomen suddenly springing to life and aching again.

A hand comes to my back and I turn my head to the side. Through a wave of my brown hair, I faintly see pink wisps.

"Ren?" Sakura asks groggily. "Are you all right?"

I close my eyes and take a deep breath before sitting up. "Yeah," I answer, running my hand through my hair. "I'm fine. Just a little tired."

"Well," she says, her eyes flashing from me to Sasuke. "It looks like your shift has been over for some time now. You should get some rest."

"Hmm, yeah, sure," I say, dismissing her with a wave. I push myself to my feet, brushing the dirt off my hands and walking to the entrance of the thicket we'd found to hide in. I look out into the surrounding area. The vibrations aren't acting up too badly and I don't sense anyone loitering around the perimeter of the clearing that our thicket is located in. The coast is clear. "I think I'm going to go lay out some more traps around the area instead. And get some meat for supper. And water, considering we used most of it trying to keep darling dearest here cool. Which is to say: yes, he's still burning up like crazy."

She bites her lip and her hand flies to Sasuke's forehead. She picks up the towel and wets it again, before placing it gently back on him.

"I'll be right back, okay?" I say as she straightens his shirt.

"But," she protests, "shouldn't you be resting, Ren? You've hardly slept at all and during the fight—"

"I'm fine," I insist, stepping out into the open after making sure that there's no one around. "I mean, initially, I _did_ collapse when we first found this place—" I sigh at this embarrassing memory of how I'd been able to lay Sasuke down carefully before passing out. "—so you had to set up all the little booby traps around here yourself. I should do something to help too, besides guarding and sleeping. And I got enough rest from, you know, _fainting_," I grumble sheepishly, picking at the loose fabric around my wound. "We've got other things to be worrying about than our own personal health. And I think I saw a few herbs on our way over here that might help reduce Sasuke's fever. I'll gather some and bring it back to feed to him, all right?"

I mosey on past her and scoop up Naruto's, Sasuke's, and my own water canisters. As I'm about to duck out of the thicket, Sakura speaks up again.

"Hey," she says quietly.

I sigh, pushing my hair from my eyes and sigh, "What?"

"How did you know to come?" she inquires and I stiffen. "And how did you find us in here? How did you even get into the forest? Have you been following us this entire time, assisting us, helping us cheat? Helping _Sasuke-kun_ cheat?"

"Yeah, that's it," I growl, straightening up. "Because I was so desperate to participate in the exams and you guys are so important, right?"

She's taken aback by my angry retort to her question. "That's not what I—," she starts, but I cut her off.

"Don't flatter yourself," I say, waving her away. "I wouldn't be so kind. And if I had the choice of who I helped, it wouldn't be Team 7, despite the fact that I was once stuck in it. Don't look at this as me coming to save you. If anything, I've put you in danger of being disqualified, especially if the higher ups find out about this."

I've rendered her speechless for the time being and use it to my advantage. I slip out of the thicket, sneaking my way behind the tree so as to preserve the traps Sakura had set up. Once I'm out of Sakura's view, I press my hands together in the sign of the dog before flipping it over to the boar. I slam my hands palms down into the ground and feel the vibrations kick up. They form a shaky circle around the thicket and I'm able to keep track of the slightest movements that take place around our hideout.

I scowl, disgusted that I had even thought about putting up this protection circle around Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto. Without another glance back, I head off into the forest, toward the spot where I had seen the herbs and noticed a small stream trickling, though I don't really intend on collecting any herbs. The fever that he curse mark has built up is way out of my league. There's nothing to be done about it but wait until it dies down on its own, and I find myself hoping that it does.

Goddamn this bond-induced ambivalence! Why can't I feel one way or the other about the people I'd considered my teammates not a few weeks before? I'd had no problem helping them in our previous missions or in the Land of the Waves. I had warmed up to them even, really, truly cared for them.

My lack of judgment seemed to have gotten the better of me then. I'm wiser now.

No, I can't even say that. There are no excuses that could make this act of abandoning my friends forgivable. There's no amount of lying I could do that could save me from the immense guilt that starts falling on my shoulders as soon as I'm away from the thicket.

I could have done something, should have done something, _anything_ to help my friends, to protect them. I should have been tuning into what was going on during the first exam. I could have joined in at the first sign of trouble at the start of the second exam. I would have been more helpful to them. And now they're torn up and defenseless and it's safe to say that it is in fact my fault.

I shake my head violently and rub my arms down to stop this incessant shivering that has started up. My feet are jittery and my hands feel like they're going to tangle up into this messy knot because I keep twining them together. I've got to get out and go, go now, go far, go somewhere that isn't here; otherwise I'll think myself to death with all the could-have, would-have, should-haves of the past twenty-four hours. Granted, I'll probably think about it more when I'm alone, but at least I'd be alone. I wouldn't have to see my friends, wouldn't have to see the consequences of all the things I didn't do. At least I'd be able to run away and deny and make believe that I did all that I could have would have should have done. That I'd been able to protect my friends.

It wouldn't have made any difference if I had been here in the first place. It wouldn't have changed this outcome one bit.

I should have just stayed away.

And so, as I scramble through the heavy brush that only seems to get denser as I move away from my former teammates, I realize that I'd lied to Sakura about coming back. I might as well finish my business within the Forest of Death and then leave Team 7 be.

Somehow I start thinking about what Sasuke would think about my abandoning him. It's not so different from when I'd deserted him nearly five years ago and he hadn't seemed to mind then. Neither did the bond. But that was when it was so much weaker than it is now. Than it continues to be. And as I run farther and farther, my urge to run back to Sasuke grows so intense that it can no longer be considered a simple urge. It becomes a goddamn need.

Just as I'm about to turn around and give into this self-deprecating, resolute and unyielding need, there's a shift in the vibrations around me. I skid to a stop, taking in my surroundings carefully. I can hear the faint, trickling sounds of the stream that I'd remember seeing on our way over, but there's something else. A restless rustling in the trees above.

Slowly, I reach into the holster around my thigh to grab a kunai. Before I'm able to, though, someone drops from the canopy of trees above, surprising me and throwing me backwards. I trip over my own feet and stumble to the ground. I hadn't expected their assault to be so straight-forward and immediate. I yank my kunai from my holster and hold it at the ready for an attack, but then when I'm able to register the face, I lower my weapon, glowering.

"Ren! Fancy meeting _you_ here!" Rei vociferates, spreading her fingers out in a wave while she plants her other hand on her hips, casual as can be. She's wearing the same thing as she had been when Sasuke had presented her to me through the bond, but she's added a little primrose to her hair to accompany the lone eagle feather tucked behind her ear.

Her headband with the little eighth note on it winks in the sunlight.

"Seriously, though," she says, tapping her chin, "I hadn't been expecting to see you here, especially since you weren't in the first exam. Why is that? Your friends finally see how much of a burden you are? Whatever," she dismisses when I open my mouth to interject. "Doesn't matter, I guess. So how is it that you're here now?"

She watches me expectantly. I brush myself off, having picked myself off the ground while she was blabbering on. I return her look and ask, "Oh, sorry. Were you expecting me to answer? I figured you'd keep yammering to yourself, so I didn't bother listening to what you had to say."

Rei blinks at me steadily before breaking out in a fit of laughter. "Ah, Ren," she says, holding her stomach and wiping tears from her eyes. "Now. You and I _both_ know that's not true. So? What're you doing here?"

"Funny," I say as she plucks the primrose from her hair. I glance around the area, searching for other presences that could be waiting to ambush me. I let out a tired sigh when I don't feel anything. "I would have expected you to know."

"Oh, I do!" she gushes, smiling at me giddily. "But I'd rather hear you say it, doll. It's so much more satisfying that way. And I do so solemnly swear that if you simply tell me, I will help you without a trick."

She's still smirking and there's a glint to her eyes that I don't like, making it hard for me to tell if she's sincere.

"No catch," she promises, taking note of my hesitation. "None at all, Ren dear. I promise on my ancestors' graves."

"Do you? And how trustworthy have they been?"

Her lips press together in a thin smile. "Very trustworthy," she says, spinning the primrose between her fingers. Her words come out slow and dangerous. "But I wouldn't count on you to know. Anyway, we're digressing. Have we got a deal?"

She holds out her hand and smells the primrose, reveling in its scent as I debate on whether or not I should go through with this. The bond tells me to forget about it, which in turn makes me want to take her offer, but then I remember:

"_I'll see you again if you manage to defeat the Otonin who answer to me."_

"I don't have all day, Ren-chan," she says tiredly, tucking the flower back in her hair. She waggles her fingers back and forth. "Make your decision today, please."

There's a chance that Rei has nothing to do with Orochimaru. There is also a chance that she works directly under him and this is all part of this scheme. Is breaking the bond worth getting involved with her, if that's the case? Is my freedom worth making a pact with the enemy and betraying my team?

"Reeeeeeen," Rei says, propping her arm up on her hip. "It's now or never, girly. Come on."

I shut my eyes tightly, taking a deep breath.

"Deal," I say upon opening my eyes, and we shake on it. The bond writhes, but I find that it's easier to suppress it this time.

"All right!" she cheers with a clap. "Now, Ren, tell me. What is it that you need?"

"I want to know what you know about the bond," I explain. A sly smile sweeps over her lips and she cocks her head to the side fiendishly. "I've recently come across some evidence that says you can help me with it."

She hums, taking her chin between her fingers and screws her face up pensively. "Is that so? And what if I were to tell you that you've been sorely misinformed?"

"I wouldn't believe you," I retort. "Not after what you said when we first met. And not after what you said to Sasuke at the end of the first exam."

Her lips pull up into another one of her devilish smirks. "He told you about that, did he?" she says. "What a baby. But I digress. You're right. I do know a little something something about the bond. What's it matter?"

"I want to break it," I tell her, taking a step forward. "I _need_ to break it. And I don't have any inkling as to how to do that and I'm getting a little desperate because it's getting stronger."

She snorts, but nods, and starts to circle me. "I see," she purrs. "And you think that I know about how to break the bond, is that it? Because on that account, you are mistaken."

My eyes narrow to slits as she completes a circle around me and comes to a stop. She waves her hand impatiently and says, "Don't give me that look. You're right: I know about your silly bond with the Uchiha, but I don't know how to break it. That's witchcraft beyond my time. It's all voodoo and black magic stuff now. We've progressed through the ages so far as making contracts go, you know."

"You're lying," I snarl.

"I am _not_," she huffs. "I said I wouldn't and I won't. What you're not keeping in mind, Ren, is that that bond was conjured up by your lovesick ancestor some hundred odd years ago. It was a completely different time period and their methods of 'bonding' were primitive because contracts were first coming around. And also, once people caught wind of how dangerous and unrelenting blood bonds were, they dumped it and forbade it across the land. At least, among _my_ people."

Rei shrugs, flipping her hair from her face. "I suppose you guys didn't get the memo, though. Nevertheless, any information on blood bonding was destroyed when people started, you know, dying and stuff from not being able to live up to the conditions they had set or trying to break the blood bonds in unorthodox ways. I think that the only people who know about it now are the Kannagi Elders, and even they won't speak a word of it."

"You're _lying_," I say again, advancing on her. My frustration starts to burn my eyes and cause them to water. I can't be hitting another dead end, not when I'd been so close!

"I knew I shouldn't have wasted my time," I say, gripping the kunai that I'd pulled out at the beginning of our encounter. "I knew I shouldn't have bothered—"

"Putting your trust in me to get what you want?" Rei finishes for me, ever omnisciently correct. "But what else could you have done, Ren? Weren't you, and I quote, 'getting a little desperate'?"

The kunai flies from my hand before I can help it. Rei moves fast though and is able to catch the knife easily. She throws it up into the air and catches it again by the hole at the end of the knife, whirling it around her index finger.

"Temper, temper," she reproaches, tossing the kunai away. The smile that slinks over her mouth is vile and haughty, thoroughly reminiscent of a certain snake I'd encountered moments ago. "You should watch yourself, Ren. Otherwise, you'll be finding yourself in some terrible situations." She pauses for a moment. Her eyes flash and then she laughs, "Just like your silly ancestors!"

The vibrations around me start to waver as my fury grows. "Shut up," I order. "Don't you _dare_—"

"Ren," she says, surprised. "Are you actually offended by my teasing? And on the subject of your ancestors, no less. Despite all that they've done to you? I mean, really. The bond," she lists, counting them off on her fingers. "The right to live how you want, to do what you want, to be who you want. They've chained you, bound your abilities strictly to medicine, basically _forcing_ you to become a slave to the Uchiha. And still, you get defensive when you hear me mock them?"

"You're grouping me with them," I say, calmly as possible, before the vibrations go haywire and start ripping my skin to shreds. "That's why I'm getting frustrated."

"Hm, only frustrated?" she muses, rubbing her chin. "Seems like more than that to me. But never mind that. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said those things. But it's hard because the apple usually doesn't fall far from the tree, you know? It's evident in everything that you do. I would try to see you as an entity a part from the Kagiru, but that's a no can do. You've got too many connections. It's impossible to isolate you from them now. Especially knowing what I know and being who I am."

I take a moment to consider her words. _Especially know what I know and being who I am._

There's something she's not telling me. There _has_ to be more. Not that I'd gotten any substantial information from her in the first place.

"I don't," I say, massaging my temple, "understand who or what you are. What do the Kannagi have to do with the bond in the first place?"

Rei blinks at me. She takes a deep breath. Lets it out slowly. Like she's got to savor this breath. Make it last. Settle in the moment. And then she speaks. Deliberately. Defiantly. Like she really has to make a point with her words.

"I would think that you would have realized by now," she says, "or at least attempted to figure it out. But you're going off of names and random mentions, aren't you? It's a matter of luck that you were able to come this far. But I guess I should have expected much from you." She shrugs as though it can't be helped and sighs. "You don't deserve to have me tell you anything that could help, so you can give up on trying to get me to spill the beans. Find out who I am by yourself, and maybe then I'll be more serious about helping you."

"More seri—then what was this entire conversation for?" I demand. "God, what's the use of even _talking_ to you? Don't answer that," I growl when I see her mouth open to retort. "I don't care. I'm leaving now. Good bye."

I'm livid. After all this—all this torture, all this _fucking around_, first in the park, then with Sasuke, and even at this moment—she's acting like this is some game that can be offhandedly played. Like she doesn't realize how badly I need this information.

"Oh, now, don't be like that," she whines, coming after me as I stomp away from her. "Ren, darling—please don't leave me."

"Shove off," I snap. "I have no other business left here. Don't you have a team to get back to?"

"They're otherwise currently preoccupied," she says, and I wonder what they could be doing that she wouldn't be involved too. "The real question here though is don't _you_ have a team to get back to?"

"No," I say quietly, and Rei catches on to the melancholy in my voice.

"No?" she says with a giddy giggle. "_No?_ Why not?"

"Fuck _off_," I groan, combing my hands through my hair. "What does it matter to you, anyway, Rei? Why are you so concerned with my life when you don't even care enough to seriously help me with one of the most important things to me?"

"Oh, gag," she replies, screwing her face up in disgust. "Don't talk like that, Ren. Come on. Just tell me what's going on with you. I'll listen. I'm good in that way."

"Right," I scoff, trying to walk farther away from her, but she keeps bumping closer. "Because we've known each other for such a long time and are the best of friends."

She takes a single longer stride than I do and manages to get in front of me, blocking my way. Her eyes are gleaming that dirty green-brown that sticks to my mind and makes it hard to clean away. "Exactly," she purrs, smoothing down her hair. "You're getting somewhere with that train of thought. Now, why don't you open up that big, sensitive heart you have to me?"

"Why?" I demand, glaring at her with all I can muster. "After everything that you've done—or maybe I should say _haven't_ done for me, why should I let you in on _anything_? Most importantly, we're supposed to be enemies here, considering we're from different villages. And what with the way you hop-skipped into town with this holier-than-thou attitude toward me for what seems like the simple reason of annoying the hell out of me, why should I do anything for you except _this_?"

I swing out my arm and hit her square in the jaw with my fist. She staggers back, hands pressed to her mouth. I blow my hair from my face and shake my hand free of the pain as she bounces back and cries, "What the _hell_!"

But I'm done. I don't give her a second glance as I trudge away from her, profanities steaming out of my mouth so smoothly that it sounds like I'm reading it off a list. I need to get out of here. Fast.

"I'm done with this stupid test," I mutter, "this goddamn place, this goddamn town. And this people. All these fucking people."

"_Bitch,"_ I hear her mutter as the vibrations take a sudden violent turn. They grip my legs and pull me to a stop. For a second, I think that my anger has gotten the better of me, and now the vibrations were using my bad chi to their advantage. Then I realize that this could be an ambush and, since I'd instigated it, her friends are going to be dropping down from the trees above, ready to take me out. But that's not it. No. The way the vibrations are moving this time are unlike anything that could be caused my something in my surroundings. It's like a warning. A definite tell-tale sign of trouble. It's—

"Oh god," I mutter and whirl around, remembering the vibration circle I'd set up around the thicket. That's what this nudging feeling is. They're being attacked. And Rei.

That goddamn traitor.

Rei is still standing there, dabbing her fingers against her jaw line. "If you're going to apologize," she says, wincing, "forget about it. No way am I going to ever let that—"

I charge for her and grab her by her collar, throwing her roughly to the side so that I can pin her to a tree. For once, Rei is the one that's looking terrified. I can't say that I'm not pleased by these turn of events. And if there's something going wrong with my friends, I have to get the information I want quickly and get back. Forget running away, being a coward. I need to help, help somehow, help someway. Just help.

"What the hell are you planning?" I hiss at her, shaking her slightly. I can practically hear her eyeballs rattling in her head. "What is it that this Orochimaru guy wants from us? From Sasuke? Tell me, goddammit, or I swear I'll kill you."

"Listen!" she says, panicked. "I don't know what you're talking about, all—"

"Don't _lie_ to me," I shout. "I've had enough of that from you. What are your friends doing to my friends? You said that they were and I quote, 'otherwise currently preoccupied', didn't you? So what were they doing? Scouting out my friends? God, I knew I shouldn't have trusted you, _I fucking knew it_."

She tries reasoning with me. "Look, you're obviously unstable right now, Ren," she says, her teeth chattering beneath her words. "Why don't you just…let me go, take a deep breath and—"

I'm holding a kunai to her throat before she can say more. "Tell me, goddammit," I hiss again, my voice dangerously feral and low, "or I swear I'll kill you."

"We'd appreciate it if you didn't," sounds a voice from behind me, and something cold and sleek I can tell is a blade presses against my throat. It makes me second guess the kunai I've got in my own hand. "If you did that, we'd lose our ticket out of here. And besides, you'd lose your one resource to getting the answers you need, right?"

"Hiro," Rei greets, so very obviously relieved by the way she sighs and the muscles of her face relax. "Nao. Nice of you to finally drop in." Rei gives me this pointed look and smirks now that she's got back up. "If you would please, Ren."

"You're out-numbered, kid," one of Rei's teammates says. "You might as well let her go." He puts his hand on my shoulder and pulls me back as I reluctantly do as he suggests. As I let her go, however, I shove her against the tree so that she hits her head brusquely.

She winces, but shrugs it off and acts like it doesn't hurt. Rei fixes her collar and says to her friends after clearing her throat, "What's the report, guys?"

"There's a disturbance up ahead," says one boy as I shrug the other boy's hand off of me. The boy that had spoken has scruffy brown hair and I'm vaguely able to identify him by the picture that was on the card Kabuto gave me. I decide that this is the one Rei had called Hiro. Either way, these boys are generally good-looking, mostly because they're spotless—like they've taken time to wash up before showing themselves. I suppose it would be natural for Rei's teammates to be as vain as she is. "We should get moving before we get caught up in what's going on."

"We've also got our second scroll," Nao adds, crossing his arms. I take shifty, slow steps away from them and back toward where my team and I had made camp. The disturbance ahead, the vibrations that keep nudging me—could it be connected? I pray to god not. I hope that it's just the weird aura these guys are giving off. But the way the vibrations are running is definitely trying to draw me back to the campsite. "We might as well head to the tower now. Wouldn't want to chance running into another group."

"You're right," Rei agrees, nodding as I grip the kunai in my hand tightly, knowing that I'm outnumbered, but unable to keep from thinking about what I could do to kill them all. "Well, Ren dear, sorry to skip out on our lovely meeting so abruptly, but it doesn't seem like you want me around much longer anyway." She doesn't wink at me like I think she will or do something snarky. She merely looks at me stonily, seriously, like she's finally seeing me as a threat instead of some kid to play with.

"Hiro, sweetie," she says, and motions the boy with the raggedy brown hair toward her. When he doesn't move, she takes his hand and drags him closer. Then, she plants a kiss on his lips, which doesn't seem to faze either of her teammates, making me come to the conclusion that this is something that she does frequently. Or at least enough so that it's not out of the norm for her. Or maybe that's the kind of personality that Rei has. You stop being surprised by what she does after a while because she will do just about anything.

She breaks the kiss and mutters something to him with their foreheads pressed together, like they're lovers or something, and I catch her eyes flicking toward me for the briefest moments. His eyes do the same, though stick longer to me longer.

I don't care enough about what she's got to say to listen in or try to make out what she's saying by using the vibrations. They're too busy begging me to return to the campsite anyway. I'm not sure why I'm still loitering around with these people.

He jerks away from her when she's finished mumbling and says, "Let's go."

"Right," answers his other teammate who then jumps off.

"You best take care of your friends, Ren darling," Rei warns, making the skin on the back of my neck crawl. "We'll see you in the finals." She follows after the first boy.

The boy with the elegantly disheveled hair stays after. He won't stop staring and I start to think that they'd planned it so that he would finish me off and am immediately on my guard. All he does, though, is nod to me respectfully, like he owes me for something, and turns around.

And before he leaves, he says, "Rei's not kidding. You've better get to your friends. And quick. Especially considering—"

I don't stick around to hear what he's considering. I'm shoving my way through the shrubbery without a second thought, regretting having left in the first place, and now just wanting to get back get back get back because I reallyreallyreally need to help Sasuke.

God, it all clicks, now that I think about it. The knowing looks Rei's teammate gave me. The reason why Rei pulled him away and spoke to him in whispers. Why he wouldn't stop staring. That last warning was the final straw.

Oh, Sasuke. Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke.

Please be okay.

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!  
**


	26. Marked

**Bound  
Chapter 26: Marked**

Leaves. They keep whacking my face as I sprint through the forest, like I'm some kind of animal that needs to be tamed. To make matters worse, the leaves in this forest aren't the soft, dull leaves like the ones that grow on normal trees around Konoha. No, these leaves are sharp and I'm sure there's poison in them because my skin starts to tingle and become dizzy. Luckily, I'm able to heal myself as I barrel through the forest, although, admittedly, it's not easy and slows me down. It's better than getting to the campsite and passing out because the poison has been able to work its way through my body and stop my heart.

The vibrations have only been picking up since I started on my way back, becoming more relentless. They crumple against me, bumping, nudging, alarming me of danger, danger, danger. They're knocked back and forth without a definite pattern and it's really freaking me out, but I can't do anything about it until I get to the campsite, which doesn't seem to be getting any closer despite the speed at which I'm running.

I push myself harder, bolting through the woods, pushing myself as far as I will go, somehow meandering on through the forest on a path that I can't remember taking. Where where where am I? Why does my team feel like they're still so far away?

The vibration circle shatters. It's blown completely haywire. I can feel it trying to shift back to where I had set it up in the beginning, but there's something keeping it from doing what it wants to, like there are other vibrations pushing it away. But that's impossible. Who else could—?

_Vibrations,_ I think with a gasp of panic. _Sound. The Sound Nin._

Orochimaru.

I shove past the brush with a new fervor now and become entangled in vines that I can't get free of fast enough. Mercilessly I am attacked by branches and I wonder how they do it. How ninja are always able to panic themselves in this way, worry like this, like if someone dies, it's all your fault your fault your fault no matter what anyway says or reasons or proves to you.

I wonder how people live with these bonds haunting them day and night. Driving them to their deaths. Taking years off their lives. Why do people crave these bonds like drugs when all they do is burden you and tear your heart through and through?

Because, I think, crashing through the last of the brush where I see a spiky poof of black hair and jagged edges of blonde, the scenery clashing together the way it does when I have the Genshindou activated as it is now.

Because. It's better than because alone and hurting yourself; because, then, you haven't got anyone else to blame for your misery other than yourself.

The chakra of the people in front of me aren't the ones I'm excepting, aren't the ones I'd been hoping for. Shikamaru and Ino are ducked behind a row of bushes just outside of the clearing where I can hear voices and feel terror, where I know Sakura is alone and defenseless and hopelessly outnumbered.

_Goddammit_, I curse, my hands clenching into fists. What the hell are they doing? Why why _why_ aren't they helping Sakura?

All my sense has gone. Infuriated, I push through them, knocking them off their feet, and demand, "If you're not going to do anything, _shove off_!"

I burst into the field just as Sakura gets knocked back by the Sound boy, the one that I recognize to be Kabuto's attacker before the start of the first exam. He has his hands held, palms out, toward her. I can feel the vibrations swirling up around his arms. Jumping in front of Sakura, I pull the vibrations so they twist around the boy's forearms and squeeze them together so that they paralyze him.

"R-Ren!" Sakura stutters, relief causing her chakra to drop.

"Morning," I greet as the boy grits his teeth, trying to yanks his arms free of the vibration bonds. I hold him tight, taking note of the way the vibrations gather in his arms, in his very bones as though there are tunnels in there that help him channel them. "Sorry I took so long. But what a wakeup call, huh?"

"Who are _you_?" the boy spits.

"No one who matters," I answer. On the ground by my feet, I notice crumpled mass of green that looks vaguely like a person. "Is that—?"

"Lee," Sakura confirms. "He was trying to—never mind. Ren, these guys, they can—"

"Control the vibrations," I finish, blowing my hair from my face as I release the boy, who staggers back due to the now unbalanced force. "I know. Don't worry about it. Just watch Sasuke for a minute, all right? I'll be done in a second." I reach into my pouch and pull out the now smothered card that Kabuto had given me at the start of the first exam. I toss the card to Sakura and she catches it as it flutters down.

The boy scoffs and smirks at me. "Is that so?"

Ignoring him, I say, "Can you give me their names, Sakura? That way these guys seem more real to me."

"You don't want to be getting to know us," he tells me. "It'll make it harder for you to kill us. We, however, won't have any problem with killing you."

"Then I'll cause some problems," I say lightly. "Sakura, their names?"

"Listen," the boy spits, posing his hands as he had before, palms out, threatening. "I don't know what you're doing here, but if you think you stand a chance against us, you're out of your mind. We'll blow you away."

"I'd like to see you try," I say politely. "Your move, tough guy."

I've got him baited with this line. Immediately, I feel the vibrations change, moving toward me at a violent frequency. I'm not hesitant to react. I run forward, breaking through the sound waves with ease, pulling a kunai from my holster and tossing them at the boy. He's too shocked by how I'd been able to break through his sound barrier to counter my attack. This is when his teammate steps into the ring. She throws something to knock my knife astray, but I don't let it faze me.

Whipping the vibrations into thick coils that gather around my fist, I reel my hand back and aim for the boy's face. He's quick enough to dodge my attack, but I release the vibrations around my hand and send them pulsing toward him. They sink into his ear and have the same effect as his other teammate's attack on Kabuto earlier.

"Ren!" Sakura shouts to me and I turn my head to make sure she's all right. "The other boy—Dosu! Behind you!"

Sure enough, the boy with the bandages wrapped all around his face, save his left eye, has his altered arm poised so that he can take his turn trying to tear me apart with the sound waves. I pull at a few vibrations strings and am able to redirect his attack to his female teammate who takes the full blow of it unsuspectingly.

Now that I've got them alarmed and basically disarmed, at least for the moment, I deactivate the Genshindou to save my energy, ready to work the taijutsu point to my advantage.

I swing my leg up and am able to knock Dosu back. Then I duck as the other boy throws another punch, having decided that the vibrations wouldn't do much for him. I drag my foot along the ground and trip him up. Then I stand, weaving through hand seals, and feel the vibrations teasingly waving around my body. I launch them at the boy, but it's interrupted by someone forcibly shouldering me. And the numbness of needles stabbing my left forearm.

I grunt as my back hits the ground so hard that I'm winded. It takes me a few moments to recover and I reach to touch my forearm and come away with something red and sticky. Internally, I groan and push myself up, my left arm faltering under my weight. I touch my wound and feel four needles, evenly spaced, protruding from my flesh. My mind flashes back to Haku in the Land of the Waves, and for a second, I'm there again, watching my friends suffer and Sasuke die.

Sasuke.

"Looks like that girl can control vibrations too," says Dosu, wiping his cheek where I'd hit him. "But still, with three on one, you're dead as it is."

"Don't count on it," I mutter, getting to my feet and yanking the needles from my arm haphazardly.

"Count on it," a voice says from behind me, and I'm thrown forward by a kick to the back. I slam into the earth with bone-shattering force, but am able to brace myself in a way that keeps my bones from, well, shattering. I'm about to get up again, but then someone drops their foot on my back and grinds me into the ground. I wince and gasp, feeling the wound that Orochimaru had paid to my abdomen twisting and aching.

Dosu crushes down on me and has his arm positioned so that, if I should provoke him—hell, even if I just stay as I am—he'll blast me to pieces, and I can't exactly move the way he's got me pinned.

"Bye, bye, birdie," he coos, leaning in so that his arm is closer to my face.

"Oh no you don't!"

I turn my head. Bad move, I know, looking away from the enemy when he's about to kill me. But as I see Sakura scrambling to her feet, shuriken poised in her hands, I can't help it.

"No!" I shout, grappling to get loose. "Stay with Sasuke!"

"You're the medic," she reminds me. "_You_ need to be the one taking care of Sasuke." With that she flings her throwing stars at Dosu. He blocks them easily with his altered arm. She tries it another time from a different angle where Dosu can't block it if he wants to keep me down. Unfortunately, the other boy jumps in the way and blows the shuriken back at Sakura.

I watch as the girl sneaks up behind Sakura and, too late, I cry out a warning. She grabs Sakura by her precious pink hair, forcing Sakura to her knees.

"My," gushes the Sound girl, giving Sakura's hair a tug for good measure. "You've got such nice hair. So much more bounce and shine than I have. But instead of worrying about your looks, you should work on your skills as a ninja."

"Nice going, Kin," says Dosu. "Now, let's make her watch as we finish off her friends. Starting with this one."

The boy's foot comes down harder on my back and I gasp again. This is not looking good. And even if I activate my Genshindou again, what could I do? I haven't got a mind like Shikamaru's or even Rei's. All I've got are these damn vibrations.

"Zaku, will you do the honors?"

The other boy steps forward, grinning. He adjusts his sleeves. "I'd be happy to," he says.

"Not yet," Sakura says. She's pulled out a kunai and turns slightly so that she can smirk at Kin.

"Your tricks are useless against me, little girl," Kin says, giving Sakura a condescending look and pulling on her hair once again. Sakura doesn't even wince.

"You think so?" Sakura replies, and in one brilliant sweeping motion, she slices off her hair.

I've only known Sakura personally for a few months. You know, since we'd been put on these goddamn teams and sentenced to our deaths. But I remember being little and walking home with Sasuke and watching a group of girls with distaste as they hollered after him, vying for his attention. And I vaguely remember seeing Sakura's head of pink hair, so different from the others that it stood out vividly against the black and browns and blondes and wishing that I had pretty colored hair that made me different from the others. Or maybe I'm just doctoring her into the mental image in my head because she fits so well with those little girls from my childhood.

I'll admit it: I was resentful that I was so blatantly like the others. This was why I started the rumor that Sasuke liked girls with long hair. That way, the girls in my class would be more focused on how to make their hair grow the fastest and I would be able to rise above them in my studies. Not that it really worked, since Sakura still somehow managed to beat my test scores. At least it made me seem like I was the only one super serious about my studies, whereas all the other girls primped themselves constantly whenever Sasuke was around and tugged on their hair, like that would stunt its growth.

After all that careful care, all that pretty primping, for Sakura to butcher her locks like this is a big deal. Maybe she's finally able to let it go and grow up and realize that, by god, if Sasuke already liked her as a friend the way she was, then he wouldn't mind her if she changed her hair, especially if it was for his sake.

However, this bold move doesn't make the situation any better. She doesn't stand a single chance against these guys. Not alone.

I have to get this guy off me. Or Sakura has to distract him somehow so I can throw him off. Or, goddammit, it would be nice if Sasuke or Naruto would wake up right now.

"Kin, kill her!" Zaku cries, seeing the disadvantage of having Sakura loose.

"Nonononono," I mutter, grappling at the dirt around me. Dosu lifts his foot for a second like he's about to take off to help his friends, but I'm too hopeful. He drops his boot on the back of my head and shoves my face into the ground so that the sand burrows into my pores and turns my mouth ashy.

"Might as well take care of you now," he says, and I can feel the vibrations kicking up.

_Not good,_ I think, taking quick, panicky breaths. _Definitely not good._ Sakura's fight against Kin and Zaku doesn't sound like it's making very much progress. Zaku thinks out loud as he fights Sakura to psyche her out. His talking allows me to deduce that she's using the replacement technique and is attacking from behind, the side, then above, which is the usual tactic when trying to fool your enemy.

_That won't work, that won't do,_ I think, shutting my eyes tightly, hoping that I'll wake up wake up wake up, though I know I won't.

My body shudders with a sudden power that crawls into my arms and fingers and down to my very toes. Without thinking, I reach behind my head and grasp Dosu's ankle.

"Hey—what—!"

I yank his foot off my head, turning myself over on my back as his body weight is thrown off balance. Then I bring my legs to my chest and kick Dosu away before he falls on me. I stagger to my feet just as Zaku throws a bloodied Sakura away.

I wipe the grains of sand stuck to my cheek off with my shoulder and press my hands together, prepared to help Sakura, but then she shouts, "No, Ren! Sasuke—you need to help him!"

The bond whines in agreement and I let out a frustrated groan before ducking inside the thicket to help Sasuke. The towel that we'd been using to cool his fever has fallen off his forehead and the curse mark on his neck is smoking. I'm afraid to touch it, this juvenile thought in my head that, if I do, I'll catch it like I would the flu.

"D'you think we're gonna let you fix up your little boyfriend before we blast you away?" Zaku asks, looking at us like we're pitiful optimists. He holds his hands towards us and I brace myself to manipulate whatever vibrations he's sending our way, when two people slide into view, dragging a third with them.

Recognizing their chakras, I relax my shoulders and sigh, my head involuntarily drooping forward with fatigue that's suddenly catching up with me.

"Ino," Sakura mutters, surprised.

"I told you, Sakura," answers the blonde that I had so rudely shoved past earlier. "I won't let you beat me."

"Took you long enough, Shikamaru," I say, scowling at his back.

"I figured that you'd be able to take care of yourself," he answers, and I can hear the smirk in his voice. "You women are always trying to be independent—I thought that I should give you a fair chance at it before stepping in. Although I'm not sure why or how you're here, Ren. Just take care of your teammates now."

I scoff at this but know that he's got a point. About me needing to take care of my teammates, that is. I mean, look at us. I haven't exactly been doing a good job, otherwise we might not be in the state we're in now.

"Ino, why are you doing this?" Sakura feels the need to ask.

"I won't let you two be the only ones to look good in front of Sasuke-kun," she says and my eyes flicker to Sasuke who is, undoubtedly, unconscious. Show off, my ass. She just doesn't want to admit that she sincerely wants to help us out.

"The freak show keeps rolling on," mutters Dosu as Chouji, the one Ino and Shikamaru had dragged out by his scarf, suddenly tries to make a run for it. Seemingly suspecting that he would try this, Shikamaru's grip on Chouji's scarf is tight.

"What are you two thinking? Chouji demands. "These guys are too dangerous! We'll be eaten alive! SHIKAMARU LET GO OF MY SCARF."

"Yeah right, idiot," Shikamaru answers, tugging Chouji back. "This sucks, but we have no choice. If Ino is coming out, then we men can't run away!"

"Sorry to get you two involved," Ino says. "But we are a team."

"Don't worry about it," Shikamaru says, and my eyelids threaten to close on me. I wipe my burning cheek with my shoulder again. When I move the fabric of my sweater vest away from my face, small blotches of blood come off on it, staining the maroon with deep red.

"We'll give you a chance to run if you want," Zaku offers. "Fatty."

There's a pregnant pause during which it's all I can do to keep from falling over Sasuke and going to sleep. I'm too drowsy to think straight, and the present matter at hand sways in and out of my mind.

"What did he say?" Chouji says quietly. "I don't think I heard him quite right."

"I said," Zaku repeats, "if you want to, you can run away, _fat ass_."

"I AM NOT FAT," Chouji explodes as I brace myself, dropping my forehead into the palm of my hand, a migraine hitting quickly, violently. "I'M JUST PLEASINGLY PLUMP, DAMMIT."

My hand slides against the earth that's moist with morning dew and bumps against Sasuke's burning body. This brings my focus back into place and I straighten, wincing as the migraine worsens.

"Sasuke," I manage to croak, gripping the fabric of his shirt. "Right."

But I don't know what to do. Aimlessly, I reach into my hip pouch and begin scavenging when my fingers brush against something cool and smooth. Grasping onto it, I pull it out and hold it out in the palm of my hand.

A small glass vial plugged with a cork rolls unsettlingly on the platform of my hand before coming to a stop. The vial contains a golden silky liquid that doesn't slosh around so much as it sways.

As I wonder where the hell it could have come from, I notice a small note attached to the cork. I unroll it and read the words, "Trust me." written in stiff kanji.

Rei. I don't know how I come to this conclusion, but there is no doubt in my mind that this is a gift from her. How she managed to get it in my pouch is another mystery all together, but I don't have time to think about that right now because I have a feeling I know what it's for.

I yank the cork out with my teeth as I use my other hand to ease open Sasuke's mouth. I tip the contents of the vial through his lips, close his mouth, and make Sasuke choke the elegant liquid down his throat.

He sputters, tries to cough it back up, but I place my hands over his mouth so that he has to keep it down.

Once he's swallowed it, I keep my eyes on him to watch for any immediate effects of the potion. But the curse mark is only smoking more now, so much so that it nearly blocks out any kind of view I had of the fight in front of me. I press my hands to either side of Sasuke's face, leaning my forehead down on his to check if his temperature's lowered any, but it doesn't feel like it has.

Oh god. What if I had been tricked? What if that potion wasn't meant to heal, but to poison? After all, she hadn't denied working for Orochimaru. She could have been playing dumb, like the good little pawn she was.

I shouldn't have been so quick to pour it into his mouth. I should have tasted it myself, or at least inspected it to see what it had been made of.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," I mutter, raising my head and slapping myself a few times for good measure. It doesn't help my migraine get any better nor does it help me feel any better about myself.

"All right, I've got this," I pep, flipping through hand seals. Before I can do what I'd been planning to do, however, pain shocks through me. It's like a lightning bolt shooting out of a cloud that is my migraine and paralyzing the rest of my body just because it can. I grip the fabric of Sasuke's shirt, trying to stay strong and conscious, in case anything happens and my friends need my support, but I'm not holding up well.

The smoke from Sasuke's curse mark seems to fog my head as well as my vision, and for a second, I think that I've blacked out because I can still hearfeelsense everything going on around me, but I can't see a thing.

I take a sharp gasp of breath and bolt upright, my vision returning to me as suddenly as it had gone. I grasp the front of Sasuke's shirt and pull him up, calling, "Sasuke, wake up, goddammit!"

And as though that was all he needed to hear, his eyes flutter open. The fragile look on his face makes me let him go. That and the chakra that fills the thicket throws me off. A shiver creeps up my spine as something new, something different, takes the place of Sasuke's ever present spot in my mind, but only for a second.

The curse mark on his neck is still smoking, and as he stands, the coils swirl up with him and float around his body, encasing him like a snake would its prey.

"Sasuke?" I squeak, scrambling to my feet. I grab hold of his arm and echo, "Sasuke? Are you—?"

"I'm fine," he says, but his voice isn't insisting or reassuring. It's convincing and authoritative and I don't question him again. But I can't let him go. So he jerks his arm away and slips out of the thicket.

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura cries gleefully as he emerges. "You're awake!" Her voice noticeably falters at the end of her sentence. She can feel it too. There's something wrong with Sasuke.

I put a hand on his shoulder, and that's when I see it: black marks multiplying on his neck, crawling on the surface of his skin and smudging down the left side of his body. They slink down to the tips of his fingers on his left arm. I recoil and stutter, "S-Sasuke, what—?"

"Sakura," he says, calmly, clearly. "Who did that to you?"

"It was us," says Zaku haughtily as though he can't feel the chakra that Sasuke's emanating, the threat of his imminent defeat should he provoke Sasuke instead of just forfeiting like his teammate Dosu seems to have the idea of doing.

"Sasuke-kun," Sakura mutters. "Your…your body—"

Sasuke holds out his hand to admire the new addition to his once flawless skin. I can see the red glint in his eyes of the Sharingan and feel his fierce presence in my head through the bond. I want to shake it from him, shake this new found power out of his body and return him to the way he once was. But I get the impression that this is what he wants. This is what he needs to complete his goal.

"I feel fine," he says, and I can only stare. If this is what he wants, then I'm not to interfere in anyway. "It's nothing to worry about. I feel strong. Bursting with power! I got it from him."

_Him_? Of course—Orochimaru. The curse mark is what's doing this to him. But this power couldn't have just been granted to Sasuke. Not without some kind of compromise. So what does Orochimaru want exactly? Why Sasuke?

"I understand now," he continues. "I am an avenger. On the path I walk, I have to do whatever it takes to gain power. Even if it means selling my flesh to the devil!"

My breath catches in my throat. No, no, nononononono! What, how, why why why why? I don't understand what's happened to Sasuke, why this is happening to Sasuke, or _how_ this is all happening.

"So," Sasuke growls, zoning in on the Sound boy who'd spoken. "It was you that did this?"

But if there is one thing I know for sure it's this:

It isn't supposed to happen like this.

"Shika," I mutter, flustered. I wave my hands over my head, panicky, until I get his attention. "Shika, Shikamaru, get out get out get out!"

He doesn't need me to tell him twice. He yanks the body of a limp Ino, calling Chouji with him, as I press my hands together, ready to get involved, but then Sasuke stays my movements by holding out his hand.

"No," Sasuke snarls, the air of his chakra twisting up around him, encasing him. I watch with horror as the curse marks spread further across the right side of his face.

"Sasuke," I reply. "Calm down. Please. You're really in no condition to be doing this right now, so just—"

"Don't you want to avenge Sakura?" he spits at me.

"Well, yeah—I mean no! Not the—"

"Just stand up," he snaps, his chakra levels bursting off the charts. "Fight back. With this crowd, we need to stick together."

"Enough chitchat," Zaku growls. He holds his hands to us again, palms out, ready for an attack. The vibrations flurry up, matching the immense size of Sasuke's chakra as though that's the only way to go about beating him now, and I can already feel that if this attack lands, we're going to be blasted to bits. Even I won't be able to block this assault.

I shut my eyes, childishly believing that if I ignore all this for a moment, it'll be gone, it'll disappear, and we'd be safe at last.

The vehement explosion in the air should shatter my eardrums, kill me. But when I feel nothing, I gingerly open my eyes one at a time to find myself sitting a ways behind Zaku. There's a pit of sorts running along the ground like a fissure, toward where I had been not moments ago, where a thicket had been not moments ago, but now it's just a tangle of broken roots and rocks and chucks of the tree's trunk that had broken off in the blast.

A burst of air erupts from my mouth in the form of a gasping breath, and I bring a hand up to run through my hair, trying to make sense of what's happened, how I got here, how I survived.

"You okay?"

I look up to Sasuke at my side, the curse marks still smearing his skin. I know he's not the enemy, but I can't help feel the impulse of needing to—no, _wanting_ to—hide from him as I see him like that.

"Fine," I answer, my voice cracking with my uneasiness. On his other side is Sakura and next to her is Naruto. How had he carried all three of us at once? Could the curse mark really grant him that much power?

"Ha," Zaku chortles, distracted by and too proud of the destruction in front of him to notice his vulnerability. "Blew them to bits."

"And who would that be?" Sasuke wants to know, taking the spot beside Zaku. Before the Sound boy can turn to face Sasuke and figure out what's going on, Sasuke raises his arm and brings it down on him. Sasuke puts so much force into the punch that it throws Zaku back to his teammate, who's staying his ground out of the fight and watching with wide eyes, like he can't quite believe this is really Sasuke either.

Zaku is able to brace himself and skid to a stop. Sasuke doesn't allow him time to even think about how to counter his attack. Quick as ever, Sasuke flips through hand seals, ending with the sign of the tiger and inhales deeply. He exhales in sporadic bursts, and balls of flames form with each breath. They fly toward Zaku who thinks to blast them away with his sound waves again, but the sound waves merely extinguish the flame, revealing the real attack—shuriken whirling toward him—beneath.

The shuriken hit their mark without a problem, sending Zaku staggering even farther back. The air stirs beside me and when I look up, Sasuke is gone.

"Sasuke?" I call, scouring the area for him until I find him standing right behind Zaku, his foot on Zaku's back and the boy's wrists gripped in his hands. Sasuke's got this wicked grin on his face, so twisted and perverse that I'm not sure I've ever met him before or really ever knew what he was like.

"So these are the arms that you're so proud of?" Sasuke asks, and yanks on Zaku's arms so that there's a sickly crack that sounds through the air. My fingers dig into the ground and I flinch, too shocked and too scared to get involved.

Sasuke releases Zaku, letting him fall frailly to the ground. Zaku doesn't move and I think that he's passed out from the pain of having his arms broken. Sasuke glances over his shoulder at the other boy, whose eyes are wide.

"You're the only one left," Sasuke coos, like it's some kind of reward, having been saved for last. "I hope you present more of a challenge."

Power surges through me, a power that makes me cringe and want to crawl into a ball. It's so menacing and great and horrible, so unlike anything I've ever felt before, and it tries to consume me, convince me that it means no harm, no harm at all, but it's evident in Sasuke that its intentions are anything but good.

I wonder how Sasuke can feel this, how he can know how terrible this chakra is, how dangerous, how manipulative and unholy and disgusting it is, and not want to shy away from it. How can he so willingly accept it, let it use him as it is, let it fully have him and slowly shred him away?

No. Just as it had been with Naruto and the demon fox back in the Land of the Waves, this could not be the Sasuke that I knew—know. His judgment is clouded by the curse mark—any sense of who he was before the curse mark was activated is lost in this power. The real Sasuke would never be like this. _My_ Sasuke would never be like this.

Would he?

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	27. Excused

**Bound  
Chapter 27: Excused**

"Stop!" Sakura cries suddenly, snapping me out of my panic as she bolts toward Sasuke and throws her arms around him, accidentally shoving him forward in her rush. Sasuke's eyes slink over his shoulder toward Sakura as she quietly begs, "Sasuke-kun, please. Stop."

The nasty chakra that had been fluttering around the air creeps away slowly and I can feel Sasuke becoming Sasuke—fully, completely Sasuke—once more. Still, I sit frozen in place, determined to stay my ground for as long as I can. I clench my teeth as Sasuke collapses to the ground, Sakura helping brace him in sitting position.

"You're strong," the Sound boy admits after a silence, reaching into his pouch and extracting, thankfully, an Earth scroll and not a weapon. "It seems that we're not strong enough to defeat you yet, Sasuke-kun. And as a means of surrender, we offer you our scroll." He places it carefully on the ground. As he goes to pick up his teammates, he says, "It may seem a big favor to ask for you to let us leave in peace, but it seems there is a situation afoot that merits further investigation. And we promise: Next time we come face to face in battle, we will stay until the end, no matter how poorly we fare."

The boy carefully heaves Kin over his shoulder and nods to us before turning to leave. I sigh, figuring that, now that this stupid battle is over with, I should take care of Naruto. Sakura can take care of Sasuke.

"Wait!" Sakura demands just then. The boy glances at her as she shouts, "Who is Orochimaru? What did he do to Sasuke-kun? And why him?"

"Shut up, Sakura," I hiss, noticing two others have joined our party since Shikamaru's team entered. I don't want so many people to know about the dilemma between us and Orochimaru. Especially when we don't know much about it ourselves.

The boy looks to me briefly, considers Sakura's question for a moment before going ahead and answering, "I don't know. Our only orders were to kill Sasuke-kun." He nods to us one last time and, without another word, he hops off, leaving us alone, finally.

As soon as I can no longer feel his chakra, exhaustion gets the better of me. My shoulders slump and my head droops forward. I want to collapse completely, but I don't think that will help our situation at the moment.

The left arm throbs with rapid beats. I can feel the blood from my injury dripping down to my elbow. Damn that Sound girl. I could kill her if I were to ever face her again. But as that was highly unlikely, I would have to trust one of the other Genin to take care of her for me. Assuming they get that far.

I shake my head to clear it before surveying the area. Shikamaru, Ino, and Chouji start to come out of hiding in order to make sure that we're all right. Sakura helps Sasuke stand. Naruto is still out cold by my side. I weigh my options.

On the one hand, I could make a break for it right now. It's doubtful anyone will come after me—they don't have that kind of stamina left in them. Besides, they don't have time to waste if they plan to get both scrolls and make it to the tower by the end of day five.

On the other hand, these guys could really use a medic. I have chakra to expend. And I, in a way, owe it to them. It's the least I could do after all this. Since I didn't help at all when that was all that was required of me.

I let out a low, angry sound of indecision, reaching up to brush the blood off my arm. I give myself ten seconds to come to a verdict.

…five. Four. Three. Two.

[+]

I pick at the bandages that are wrapped around the injury the Sound girl had given me during our fight. The cloth, which is now stained with blotches of red, shoddily covers the wound, but I don't want to bother redressing it. Anko, the proctor for this second exam, sits on an opposite couch from me. She is leaning back in her seat with her arms and legs cross. She holds an expression of irritation on her face, her lips pursed so tightly that they almost disappear from her visage completely.

"What's with the stunning silence?" I say, slouching in my seat. "This can't come as a complete surprise to you. Unless you didn't hear me correctly? D'you need me to repeat myself?"

Anko glares at me before looking away as though she can't stand the sight of me anymore, which I'm sure is the case. "No," she says offhandedly, crossing his arms. "I've heard enough from you."

The Hokage sighs and rubs his eyes. He tips his hat back and says, "There is nothing I can tell you that you don't already know. There will, of course, be serious ramifications to your actions, Ren. As there always are."

"I have half a mind to disqualify Team 7 all together," Anko puts in, turning up her nose at me.

"You don't mean that," I sigh, propping my chin in the palm of my hand. She looks to me sharply, eyes narrowed to slits, as I continue on. "Okay, maybe you do mean it. But you can't _do_ that. Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto hadn't been expecting me to enter the exam. We hadn't planned for this. This is just one great misunderstanding."

"The point is," Kakashi interjects from his place by the door. "We know why Ren did what she did. However, I would argue that Ren's minor appearance in the exam hasn't changed the outcome one bit."

"You can't know that, Kakashi," Anko retorts, pounding her fist into the platform of her other hand and leaning forward in her seat. "When it comes right down to it, she's compromised the results! We can't trust that Team 7 would have been able to make it through that ordeal by themselves."

"Are you saying that you would have wanted them to face Orochimaru on their own?" I inquire, quirking my brow. "Look," I say as Anko opens her mouth to snap back at me. "I told you everything that I did within the Forest of Death. And Kakashi's right: If you break it down, none of it could have possibly helped Team 7 anymore than if they were alone." I take a deep breath and swallow thickly. "It really was all Naruto and Sakura and Sasuke. And the other Konoha Genin who got involved. I promise you. You can take my word for it or disqualify them. I don't care either way, to tell you the truth, but I'm sure they will."

"Disqualifications," the Hokage says briskly before either Kakashi or Anko can make further remarks, "won't be necessary. I believe her."

"Thank you," I say tiredly.

"Lord Hokage," Anko starts, but the old man raises his hand to stop her.

"Ren," he says, "you left the forest as soon as you could." At this, I avoid making direct eye contact with the old man. "That gives me reason to believe that you only entered because of circumstances beyond your control. Therefore, I will overlook this event and allow the exams to continue as they are. Kakashi, if you could please escort Ren out now, please. I'd like to speak to Anko alone."

"We're lucky that the Hokage is such an understanding man," Kakashi says once we've left the conference room and start to make our way down the hall. "Otherwise, we would all be in a handful of trouble right now."

I don't answer him. Because if we truly were lucky, there wouldn't be a problem in the first place. I wouldn't have this bond on my shoulders and I wouldn't be so deeply involved with Team 7's affairs. None of this would have needed to happen.

"Those bandages look like they need fixing," Kakashi says after a rigid quiet. I reach up to touch the coverings and feel that they're slipping down my arm. "They're useless hanging limp at your elbow like that. Why don't you go to the infirmary—"

"It's fine," I say, pulling them up and yanking on the ends of the bandages so they tighten. "I can take care of them myself later. But, for the record, this isn't my handy work."

"Of course not," Kakashi says smartly, causing the vein in my forehead to pulse. "You should still go rest up, Ren. You'll want to be in tiptop shape when you see your friends again, won't you?"

"Sure," I say feebly, flicking my unruly hair from my face. "Absolutely."

Kakashi gives me a suspicious look, but waves to me over his shoulder as he takes the lead. "I have some other things to take care of, Ren," he says now. "I'll see you soon. Take care."

"See ya," I answer as he leaves my line of vision. I sweep my hair from my face, running my hands along the wall as I walk, feeling the grimy smoothness of the wood.

Fine. I might have told the Hokage one tiny little lie. Or two. But for the most part what I said was true. I entered the Forest of Death because of the bond. I became involved with Team 7's encounter with Orochimaru because of the bond. I had no idea of Orochimaru's intentions, nor did I understand why he had chosen Sasuke to bare his mark. The Sound Nin—three of them, at least—were under his orders, but there's no telling whether they had gone in knowing of Orochimaru or they had encountered Orochimaru in the Forest and been enchanted by his ideas. And then I left.

However. I didn't tell the Hokage about meeting with Rei and I didn't tell him how long it took me to leave. The Rei issue wasn't important and, as for the second problem, all I had to say was that I left as soon as I could. Which is the truth. My exit just wasn't as prompt as I'd made it out to be.

Yes, I'd lingered a while, had helped clean everyone up before going to the tower. But Shikamaru was the one who had decided to stop me in order to wrap up my injury, thus delaying my flight from the Forest of Death. Technically making it his fault that I took a moment before leaving the forest.

Anyway, I left out a few details that may or may not have been important. Whatever. At this point, it doesn't matter. I got out, I've been pardoned, and none of the Konoha Genin are going to suffer on my part. It's fine.

Now I have all this time to spend in the tower without a single thing to do. I skip on going to the infirmary like Kakashi suggested. Instead, I decide that my time would be better spent wandering the tower to see who else has made it this far. Unfortunately, all the doors I come across are locked, and there are no windows for me to peer in through. Not only that but every section of this tower looks the same. I end up walking in circles more than once.

But I don't have the energy to become frustrated with the ridiculous uniformity of the place. My head is pounding and the left side of my neck burns with an unnatural fire that I'm sure doesn't have so much to do with me as much as it has to do with Sasuke and the curse mark and whatever the hell is going on in the Forest of Death. It strains me to try to ignore it and it only serves to wear me out more trying to endure it. There is no way for me to win.

I've almost completed a ninth lap around the same floor when someone calls my name. Except as the vibrations of the voice reaches my ears, the way the sound waves twist and hit my eardrums causes the hair on the back of my neck to stand on ends. A kunai is in my hand quick as a wit and directed at the throat of a Sound boy before he can utter another word.

"Speedy," he says, tilting his chin up as I press the kunai closer to his throat. "But ineffective. And predictable. I hope you didn't think that I couldn't have seen that coming."

"What do you want?" I demand, keeping my ground.

"And hi to you too," he greets. "My name's Hiro, if you don't recall. I helped warn you about the danger your team was in back in the exams? Right, well, I'm glad to see managed to make it out okay."

"Cut the crap," I spit. "Why are you bothering me right now?"

"You're not going to get any answers from me like this," he says. "Put the kunai away and I promise to tell you what you want to know."

"I don't have to trust you," I retort. "You're affiliated with that goddamn witch."

Hiro frowns. "I know she's done some bad things," he says, "but Rei is, ultimately, still my teammate. I'd appreciate it if you didn't speak of her like that." He lets out a sigh, as though Rei doesn't deserve the favor he's asked of me. "In any case," he goes on, "if you don't want to trust me, then you can't expect to get some honest answers from me. Therefore, why are you wasting your time holding a knife to my neck? Unless you find me to be a threat."

"You're good at playing ignorant, you know that?" I say, my eyes narrowing to slits as Hiro merely sighs and sags his shoulders.

"I only came here to try to talk to you about being kinder to Rei," he says, running his hand through his hair. "No need to get so touchy about it."

My posture falters under his words. "You came here," I echo, "to talk to me about being…_kinder_ to Rei?"

He nods and opens his mouth to elaborate, but I speak over him.

"You really are an idiot," I say, shaking my head. "What in God's name makes you think that I'll be any nicer to Rei?"

He smiles, amused with my behavior, I guess. It only serves to irk me. "I'll tell you," Hiro says. "But first, put that kunai away. Second, you'll have to come with me. We need to find a more suitable place to talk."

My fingers twitch around the hilt of my knife. Could I really trust this boy to answer my questions truthfully? He's in cahoots with Rei, after all, but—

But he had stayed after to warn me about the danger my friends were in. And during our conversation he had sounded sincere the entire time. And, being from the Sound village, maybe he knows something about Orochimaru. Maybe I could learn something that would help Sasuke in regards to that curse mark.

I bite the inside of my lip. The kunai slips back into my holster. "All right," I agree, deciding that, if you put together all the mistakes I'd made in the past forty eight hours, I couldn't do any worse. "Let's go."

"Perfect," he says with a nod. "And I promise that I won't pull any tricks. I don't have that kind of stamina anyway. That forest really wasted me."

I glower at him as he leads the way down the corridor. He doesn't _look_ wasted, I think, examining him from head to toe. In fact, he doesn't look as though he's been through the forest at all. Whereas _my_ friends—they had been through the wringer. This guy doesn't deserve to talk like that.

He takes me to the rooftop, where there is little more than a storage room and a pot of greenery to liven the place up. An afternoon breeze flits by, ruffling the shreds of my shirt from when Orochimaru had stabbed me and unraveling the bandages wrapped around my arm. I adjust them again as Hiro looks over, his eyebrows raised heavenward.

"I could fix that for you if you want," he offers, taking a step forward.

"No thanks," I say. "I'm a medic. I can handle it."

"Ah, right," Hiro says, tapping his temple knowingly. "Rei told me about that. But for a medic, you don't seem very skilled in holding yourself together."

The glare I send him only makes him laugh. "This isn't my handiwork," I find myself repeating, tugging on the bandages. "It was a friend of mine."

"A friend of yours," he echoes, holding his chin thoughtfully. "That's funny. I offer to help you, but you insist that you can take care of yourself. Yet you let a friend of yours take care of you out there in the forest? Must have been one hell of a friend to be able to get penetrate your stubbornness like that."

"Firstly, that's because he is a _friend_," I say, "and you are a kid from a village whose Nin attacked my friends a little while earlier."

He smiles. "Point," he agrees.

"Now what do you want to talk about, kid?" I prompt. "I don't have all day."

Hiro chuckles, shaking his head. He walks to the edge of the rooftop, where a rail pipe bars us from falling off. He leans against it as he says, "All right then. To get the point: I want to ask you to excuse Rei and her erratic behavior. Don't mark her off as crazy because of it just yet, I mean. There is some sense behind her quirky idiosyncrasies. And I guess she knows that being, ah, _normal_"—he puts air quotes around the word—"would make people see that she is a threat, but that would be too easy for her. She enjoys confusing people, catching them off guard. As you have probably noticed."

"Only a little bit," I grumble, crossing my arms. "So there's more to Rei than meets the eye—isn't that the case with everybody? It doesn't mean that I should try to look beyond what I see of people and befriend them all. It doesn't mean you should make this effort to vouch for her. Sometimes people just don't get along with certain others and they have to leave them be so you can move on."

"But without Rei," Hiro says, cocking his head to the side as though he wants to keep me in his peripheral. "You can't move on, Ren. And the reason I say that," he goes on loudly, as I open my mouth to protest, "is Rei knows more than gives away. So far as you're concerned, she's this crazy girl whose sole purpose seems to be annoying you, but that's really not it. She's trying to get your attention so she can tell you something."

"What a way to get a message across," I grumble, scratching my cheek. "What's she got to say that's so important, anyway?"

"She's mentioned it a few times to you already, hasn't she? It is, uh, _yours_. The bond, I mean."

I stiffen, exhaling through my lips. "What a chatty girl," I say, tugging on the bandages around my arm. "She told you about the bond too?"

"Only a bit of it," he says with a nonchalant shrug. "But there's hardly anything Rei doesn't share with us. We're her friends. Hard as it is to believe with the way she treats us now. She used to be much better." He sounds almost sad as he says this, but shrouds it quickly with as casual a tone as he can muster. "But the fact that she still tells us everything is the reason why _you_ must become her friend as well, Ren."

"Absolutely," I say, crossing my arms, closing myself in, "not. If she is truly out to help me, if that is her main priority, why doesn't she _just do it_? I don't understand!"

"There's no chase," he says, pushing away from the rail and turning around to face me. "Like I said: Rei enjoys torturing people, bending them until they break, until it doesn't become what _she_ wants, but what _they_ want. She has to have the upper hand in any and all relationships she has because—well, because she's heard of the bond, she knows of it, what it calls for, what it does to you. And she doesn't want to end up like that."

My breathing get stuck on the inhale. I shut my eyes. My nostrils flare. Goddamn that girl, God _damn_ her to hell! The spiteful little—

"I'll let you simmer on that," he says, brushing past me. "But, seriously: I don't think you're getting anywhere with that bond—Rei told me that her clan had most of the information on bond making and breaking destroyed because of how dangerous both rituals are. You might as well go talk to her about it. And I'm making this a personal request too because, so long as you don't take the bait she's laying out for you, she's going to keep being a total bitch, and I can only take so much of it before I strangle her myself."

"Hold up a minute," I say, grabbing the sleeve of his shirt to keep him from leaving. He blinks at my hand as though he can't believe I have the audacity to touch him, then meets my gaze. "What do you know about Orochimaru?" I say bluntly, and his expression drops.

His eyes become wide, his lips part like he has something to say but is too stunned to form the words.

"Excuse me?" he says.

"No," I say, tightening my hold on him. "Tell me about Orochimaru. Everything you know about him."

"Whoa, look, girlie—" He tugs himself free with ease, straightening his shirt as he does so. "I only came here to talk to you about Rei, and you go and drop a name like Orochimaru's? What does he have to do with anything? Just asking about him puts you in over your head."

"That's not the answer I'm looking for," I say calmly, my fingers inching to my holster. "I'm not asking for much, not as much as what you're asking for with Rei. Think of this as equivalent exchange. You tell me what I want to know. I'll befriend Rei and find out about the bond."

"How about you just ask Rei while you're finding out about the bond?" he remarks, walking away from me. "Sounds like a win-win situation for you. Whereas I—if I speak another word about this, I will be shot dead before I utter my next sentence. Goodbye, Ren."

I could flick a kunai at the door to the stairwell and shut it in his face right now. I could run after him and corner him, trap him and torture him until he tells me about Orochimaru. But I let him go. Because he's right: I can talk to Rei about it when I approach her about the bond. Later.

Assuming that I even go through with that proposal in the first place.

[+]

For the next few days, as I wait for Team 7 to arrive at the tower, I very briefly return to my house to get new clothes, since my current outfit is shredded and bloodstained. I could have stayed at my house a while longer, I suppose, especially since Team 7 doesn't show up at the tower until the last possible minute. But I wouldn't have been able to accomplish any more at home than I would have at the tower.

So to the tower I returned for the remainder of my week.

As the fifth day is up, I get word of their arrival. Kakashi invites me to meet with them in their assigned room, but I pass.

"Might as well see them when everyone gets together," I say dismissively. I am draped across the length of a sofa with my arm draped over my eyes. "Then I can congratulate them all at once. Otherwise, how many times will I have to say it over? No, it'd be much easier for me to say it later."

"Well, the moment when they'll all be together is," Kakashi says, glancing at the clock, "now. If they had arrived any earlier, they would have had time to rest and you would have had time to greet them all, but it's too late for that."

I sit up, scowling. "Your bad habits have rubbed off on them, Kakashi," I say. "So where's this congregation gonna take place? Should we head over as soon as possible?"

"Yes," Kakashi says and waits for me to arrive at his side before he sets down the corridor with me in his wake. It's not a very far walk from the room I'd been staying in, which is happy news for me. I hadn't been feeling well for the past few days, my neck always throbbing and head always pounding. All because of Sasuke, I'm sure, all the because of this wonderful bond that plagues me. I rub my eye with the heel of my hand as another wave of pain pulses through my body.

"You all right there, Ren?" Kakashi asks.

"Fine," I deadbeat, and that's the last I hear about my health from Kakashi because just then we enter onto the balcony of a large room. There is a stone carving of two hands pressed together in a basic hand seal against the far back of the wall, and there stands a clump of older Nin, some of whom I fail to recognize. But there is Anko, the proctor of the second exam who had scolded me for butting in, and Kurenai, the Jounin of one of the other Konoha Genin teams. Asuma, Shikamaru's Jounin leader, also stands amongst the crowd and waves to Kakashi when he sees him.

"Quite a gathering, isn't it?" Kakashi notes as I move closer to the rail in order to better peer down to the lower level. "The Genin will be called in in a little while."

I give a little gasp of mock surprise. "Could it be that we're actually a little _early_, then, Kakashi?" I ask. "The world must be ending."

"Yes, well, I tend to try to be on time for the important things," he says and, underneath this statement, I know there is an insult. "That being the case, I'll have to ask that you stay up here for the time being. There are a few official proceedings that we must go through with before the Genin will be allowed to go rest up before the third and final exam."

"Goody," I mutter, leaning against the railing and propping my chin on my fist. "Sitting around doing nothing is one of my favorite things to do."

"And Ren," Kakashi says, coming up beside me, "try to stay out of trouble. It would be hard to vouch for your case a second time around."

"Yeah, yeah," I grumble as Kakashi leaps down the balcony to meet with the other officials. As soon as Kakashi is there, the adults begin to scatter and take their places. The Konoha Jounin line up in the far back while the Hokage stands a bit closer to the edge of the short platform in front of the stone-carved hands. He heads a V-formation of proctors as the door on the other side of the room opens and weathered looking Genin come flooding in.

There are more candidates than I thought there would be. Rei and her team, of course, and all of the Konoha Twelve have made it through. There is also another Konoha team—the one led by Kabuto—that has made it through. A team from the Sand. And the three Sound Nin who had attacked us.

I grip the railing tightly, narrowing my eyes at them. The boy who had his arms broken by Sasuke—Zaku, I remember—has his arms dangling in slings. How he and his team had made it through with such a major handicap, I'm not sure. Those bastards. So far as I am concerned, _they_ were the ones who should be disqualified for conspiring with the enemy.

The Genin line up in their respective teams, one behind the other, making eight rows of three. They all chatter for a second before they're quieted by Anko's ear-shattering voice.

She calls attention to the Hokage, shouts something about how they were lucky to have made it this far, before handing the spotlight over to him. He begins to jabber on about a lot of nothing. I don't listen to a word he says. It doesn't matter to me at any rate. Instead, I keep my eyes on the jittery Genin and how they react. That's what's most important after all.

They all look fairly decrepit, except for a group from the Sand. I remember encountering them, the way the bullies had bothered Konohamaru's gang and then challenged Sasuke. The boy at the front of their row—the one with shaggy red hair and eyes thickly lined with sleeplessness—is completely unscathed. His teammates suffer minimal scuffs on their persons, but when compared to the other Genin, they appear godly in their cleanliness. I wonder how early they had arrived to be so well put together before I realize that they wouldn't have been able to clean themselves up anyway. They weren't allowed the luxuries that I was. They're here to compete after all.

I'm only here to watch.

Lined up next to them are Kabuto and his two teammates, then Lee's team, Team 7, Kiba's team, Shikamaru's, and lastly, Rei's.

As though sensing my eyes on her, Rei's gaze slips toward me. I grip the railing tightly as she smiles and splays out her hand in a wave.

"Hey!" Anko says, the vibrations of her voice banging against my ears like drums, causing me to wince. I rub my ears, trying to ease them from the senseless and abrupt beating they had to endure. This woman is infinitely worse than Naruto, I decide. "You on the end! Pay attention; show some respect to the village who's hosting you."

"Yes, yes, I'm sorry," Rei says contritely, her smile easily transitioning into one that vaguely resembles remorse. She bows apologetically. "I'm just so happy to have made it this far!"

I scoff, making my way around the second level so that I'm no longer in Rei's line of sight. Once I'm behind the Genin, I focus my attention on the Hokage because I might as well pretend I'm a part of this as long as I'm here. There's no better way to pass the time.

The old man is going on about how this exam is much more than a simple test to choose the best of the best. He says it is a war in miniature between our countries and that, not to dishearten the candidates, from here on out things will become much worse. There will be blood spilt. There will be, possibly, death.

If he's aiming to encourage these Genin on, he misses by a long shot.

The vibrations flutter swiftly. My gaze darts immediately to the epicenter of the ripples and I catch sight of a man landing on his knees before the Hokage. When he speaks, he coughs and wheezes, sounding frail and so sickly I'm not sure how he stands when he gets to his feet. I can imagine the sallow skin hanging from his cheekbones, the signs of sickness that must stain his visage. As a medic, I cringe, wondering how anyone in their right mind would let this man out of bed in the morning.

He asks to take over the proceedings from this point forward. The Hokage complies with a grunt and a nod. The man takes center stage and introduces himself as Hayate, the proctor for the next exam.

"Before we move on, however," he says slowly, taking deep breaths reminiscent of a dying person taking his last gasp at each pause, "there's something I'd like for you to do. Um…you see, there needs to be a preliminary. To see who makes it to the next round."

At the word _preliminary_, I stop grimacing at the man's ill-health in order to give myself the chance to be thoroughly surprised. _Now?_ I wonder, leaning over the rail in anxiety. What makes these adults think that anyone will be strong enough to make it through the preliminaries after the Forest of Death? But that's probably what they're anticipating—that not many of them will make it through. They desperately want and need to smoke out the best of the best, so as to keep the competition interesting.

Because above all else, this is merely a show with a few kids' lives on the line. What do a few Genin matter in this world?

There is always next year's lot.

But that's no excuse for the maltreatment they're receiving. That's no excuse to endanger these kids. My friends.

There is no excuse they can use to justify this at all.

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	28. The Killing Curse

**Bound**  
**Chapter 28: The Killing Curse**

I am in full understanding of Shikamaru's irritation as he indignantly cries, "_Preliminaries_? But what do you mean?"

"Why can't all of the remaining applicants just proceed directly to the next exam?" Sakura agrees, leaning around Sasuke in order to project her voice further.

"Well," Hayate coughs, only half covering his mouth with a small fist, "not to say that the first two exams weren't demanding enough, but the truth is: we still have too many applicants. Under the traditional rules of the exam, we have to have a preliminary test to reduce the number of applicants who'll proceed to the third exam."

"B-but—" Sakura protests, albeit weakly, and is spoken over by the proctor.

"As Hokage-sama mentioned, a number of honored guests will be observing you during the exam," continues Hayate, "so we must make the exam intense, tight, and fast-moving."

I knew it. This exam is only a sport to them. How nice it must be to be a spectator of this deadly game, never staining your hands, only enjoying a nice performance at our expense, at the cost of our lives.

We are dispensable. They don't care about us. They don't give a single damn.

"Hmm," Hayate say with another cough, "so anyway, now that you know something of what it's really all about, anyone who doesn't feel up to the challenge, either physically or mentally, can walk away. Just take one step forward. The preliminaries start now."

"NOW?" Kiba cries, sounding outraged. I wonder if any of them aren't furious with the current situation. By the looks of their clothes and their injuries, I'd say that not many of them managed to arrive with much time to spare. Which means no time to rest, no time for their injuries to heal, no time for them to resolve their shaken mentality after the brutality of the forest.

Maybe I'm just a coward and a weakling. But if I were one of them, this would be the part at which I bow out. I had been in the forest a mere two days, and by the end I barely had energy to stand, much less compete against twenty other teams to get to the tower. I was lucky to get out of there as it is. Not to mention I don't care about whether or not I ever become a Chuunin. The only thing I'm concerned about is breaking this bond.

"Well, I guess I'm outta here," Kabuto says with a small salute after a long silence.

"WHAT?" Naruto shouts, stepping out of line in order to see Kabuto.

"Um," says the proctor in his slow, feeble voice. He lifts his clipboard to eye level and skims over it. "You…are Yakushi Kabuto of Konoha, right?" He marks something off on the clipboard before looking up and saying, "Okay. You can go. And, uhh, in case I forgot to mention, from here on out, you fight as individuals not…members of a team. So you can make the decision that's right for you…without worrying about anyone else."

I almost laugh at the way he makes it sound so simple. "Oh, if only it were that _easy_," I sigh, grinning as I prop my cheek on my fist.

"Hey!" Naruto shouts, grasping his hand into a fist. "Kabuto-san! What's with you quitting!"

"I'm sorry, Naruto-kun," Kabuto says, stepping forward to make his way out. "But those guys we fought really beat the crap out of me. And ever since my scuffle with those Sound Nin prior to the first exam, I've been totally deaf in my left ear."

There's a bark of laughter from the other side of the group. Heads turn to face a seemingly unconcerned Rei checking her fingernails. Her teammates come off equally unsuspicious, but it's obvious that the laugh couldn't have come from anywhere else.

"And they're saying this could be a fight to the death," Kabuto goes on like he hasn't heard her. "I don't think I'm up for that!"

Naruto lowers his gaze, understanding Kabuto's point. I see the Jounin stir around the Hokage. Their mouths begin to move ever so slightly. I don't care enough to listen in on what they say, however. Like I said before, it's the Genin I'm more interested in.

The vibrations around Kabuto's team begin to sway enough for me to feel that they're mumbling amongst themselves as well. Something Kabuto's teammate says causes him to smirk. He says something back to them. I decide _they_ would make good subjects to eavesdrop on and twist the vibrations around them to reach my ears more easily.

The words come in short bursts at first, choppily, like someone is searching for a good radio signal by adjusting an antenna. "…opportunity…sheer brute strength!" comes Kabuto's whispers. I close my eyes and purse my lips as I try to sharpen my concentration. "…recent promotion, I would have thought you'd jump at the chance."

"Ah!" I say, smiling. "Perfect."

Kabuto's teammate scoffs. "You may think you're Orochimaru-sama's favorite, but don't push it, brat."

I choke on my next breath, haphazardly breaking the vibration trail before the next words can reach me. In return, the vibrations cut my ear. I wince. Reaching up to brush the blood from my cartilage, I wonder if I could have misheard. But I doubt it. You don't come across many names that sound like 'Orochimaru'.

But—Kabuto is from here. How could he know about Orochimaru, who had been aligned with those Sound freaks? Unless Orochimaru has ties within—

Pain shudders from my neck and, impulsively, I grab at it as though I'll be able to contain it within that one area. But, obviously, it doesn't work. I dig my nails into my skin as my bones begin to shake. I breathe deeply, but the oxygen intake doesn't feel like it's enough to keep me alive. I groan, pushing my hair from my face. I peer over the rail and, just as I'd expected, Sasuke is grimacing too with a hand pressed to the left side of his neck.

Sakura is gesturing wildly as she says something. I consider activating the vibrations to hear what they're saying, but this pain is overwhelming. I don't want to do more than stand. But the way her mouth moves tells me she's not making an effort to keep her voice low. The idiot. I'm sure she's babbling on about the curse mark, saying things that shouldn't be heard by anyone but our team.

Sakura makes an attempt to raise her hand to get the proctor's attention, but Sasuke catches it and yanks it down. He says something before tossing her hand aside. Naruto begins to defend Sakura, but Sasuke says something to quiet him, which is quite a feat. I have a second to be impressed before the pain begins to swell through my body again.

I double over as the pain becomes unbearable, accidentally banging my head against the rail. I curse loud enough for the group on the ground level to look up at me, garnering unwanted attention. But then a familiar voice says, "I'm out." and I'm no longer an interesting subject.

"Ahh," says the proctor, sounding on the verge of a sneeze. But he simply taps his clipboard and says, "Takaya Hiro from…the Sound, is that right? You're free to go as well."

I pull myself up, using the rail to support myself as the pain begins to fade slowly away. It is, indeed, the same Hiro who had spoken to me a few days ago about befriending his erratic teammate. He lets out a relieved breath as he pushes his hair out of his face and walks past Rei, who looks less than pleased. She doesn't acknowledge him as he waves to her. I assume that Hiro forfeiting hadn't been part of Rei's master plan. Still, she doesn't protest as he leaves so she must have a way around this tiny altercation.

"So," he wheezes. "Anyone else want out? Let's see a show of hands…"

The rest of the Genin stay quiet and still and Hayate coughs in understanding.

"As it doesn't look like anyone else will be giving up now," Hayate says. "We'll begin the preliminary matches." Hayate lowers his clipboard, coughing over it in order to meet eyes with the remaining Genin. "Ah…the matches will be individual combat as though this is a tournament. Since there are still twenty two of you left, we'll hold a total of eleven battles. The winners of those matches will advance to the third exam.

"This is a no-holds-barred fight," Hayate croaks before a cough overpowers his words. I purse my lips as his coughing fit continues. Could it be all an act, like how Kakashi plays on his laziness? Of all the facades to chose from, though. Goodness.

Hayate pauses a moment to clear his throat before going on. "Uh…," he hums, trying to regain his train of thought. "The combatants will fight until the other is either dead or unconscious…or until someone forfeits. If you feel that your opponent is overwhelming you, admit your defeat. If you value your life that is. And since we don't want a total bloodbath on our hands, any one of us might intervene if we sense that there is a clear winner. Buutt…don't count on it."

Hayate takes a well deserved breath that wheezes in and out of his lungs shakily. "Henceforth," he says, looking paler by the second. "Your fates will be decided by—" There is an audible click and whir. A panel on the wall begins to slide up, revealing a rectangular screen. Hayate motions to it feebly. "—this electronic scoreboard. At the beginning of each match, two names will appear on the screen to determine who will be fighting. And…not to hurry you all the the slaughter, but let's begin. The first two names will be announced now."

The Genin all look up in anticipation. The pain of the curse mark has worn me to the bone. I sink to the ground and sit on the edge of the second level platform, my legs jutting out from between the bars. I sigh and lean my head against the bar, watching as the names materialize on the screen. And I nearly fall off the second level when they do.

_Uchiha Sasuke vs. Akado Yoroi_.

I curse under my breath. What luck! It must be all of Sasuke's bad karma catching up with him, I think, as the proctor orders the other Genin to evacuate the ground level for the match. Even as terrible a person as Sasuke is, though, and as much as I like to see him get what he deserves, if he expends any chakra, any at all, he could risk letting that curse mark loose again, and there's no telling what kind of mood he'll get into when it's taken over him.

Although maybe this is for the better. At least this way, he's done and we can treat him. At least this way, we can take care of the mark so that it doesn't come loose again, like it had in the forest.

"Hey," Shikamaru says, nudging me with his foot and making me jump so badly that I almost fall off.

"What the hell!" I exclaim, scooting away from him. "What do you want?"

"What are you doing here?" asks Shikamaru with his usual scowl on his face. "I thought you said you were going home."

"I did," I say defensively, brushing off my pants where there's a scuff mark from his dirty sandals. "Or didn't you notice my change of clothes? See? New pants and shirt and everything. Come on, Shikamaru, quit being a worrywart. Relax and watch the goddamn match, won't you?"

Shikamaru opens his mouth to speak, but is interrupted and pushed aside by a bundle of orange.

"REN!" shouts Naruto as he comes bounding up to me, and once again I'm so startled that I grab onto the bars for dear life in order to keep from tipping off the second level.

"Naruto," I reply, uneasily, hugging the bar beside me. "You seem to be in high spirits for someone who just came out of the Forest of Death."

"Well, you know," he says with a wide grin. "When you've got skills like I do—"

Sakura knocks Naruto on the back of his head, shutting him up with ease. "Stop bothering her, Naruto," she says as he gets to his feet, rubbing his new injury. "How're you feeling, Ren?" she asks, crossing her arms. "Better since—"

"Yeah," I say quickly, reluctantly pulling myself up. "Perfect. I've had time to rest, after all. You should be more worried about yourselves. You're the ones who're gonna be fighting."

Sakura's lips press together and she looks at me like she doesn't understand why I bothering thinking of them at all. As though they hadn't been through anything too bad for the past week.

"It's about to start," I say, pointing down the arena toward the boys. Sakura's eyes widen as though she's just remembered about the match and turns her attention away from me to watch. I lean against the railing as Sasuke and his opponent, Yoroi, face each other. Hayate raises his hand before bringing it down swiftly to signal the beginning of the match.

Yoroi presses his hands together in a seal, focusing his energy into his right hand before reaching into his pouch for throwing stars. He takes his sweet time doing it, though, which allows Sasuke to pull out a kunai to defend himself. The throwing stars go flying and Sasuke easily sends them back with the knife.

The mark throbs. I flinch at the same time Sasuke does, but with the way he's moving he loses his footing and skids on the arena floor. Yoroi dodges the throwing stars and, in a flash, he's standing before Sasuke, fist pulled back for a punch. Sasuke rolls out of the way moments before Yoroi drops his fist down, breaking the tiles that line the arena. Digging his kunai into the ground to control the movement of his body, Sasuke kicks out his feet to hit Yoroi's arm, bending it so that Yoroi falls forward. Sasuke yanks his opponent over, trapping Yoroi's arm between his legs and locking Yoroi's neck under his knee in a chokehold.

But the other boy merely takes hold of Sasuke's shirt. His chakra begins to glow mistily around his hand and a wave of dizziness hits me. I groan, ducking my head and ruffling my hair, pretending that I'm sorely disappointed by the way this match is turning out rather than being affected by this sudden sickness.

I take a quick breath before returning my attention to the match. Yoroi brings his hand up and shoves Sasuke away. Yoroi gets to his knees as Sasuke tries to sit up, his limbs shaking, but without allowing Sasuke to do much more than that, Yoroi wraps his hand around Sasuke's forehead, his chakra growing brighter and brighter.

At first, Sasuke struggles against Yoroi, but then he seems to lose his strength. His arms fall to his side and he begins to gasp for air. Soon enough, I start to take after Sasuke. My muscles shake and my vision blurs. How is he draining his energy so quickly! He's not even _doing_ anything, Sasuke, the bastard.

_He's stealing my chakra,_ the bond hisses in Sasuke's voice. I swat the air by my ear like that will brush the bond away, as Sasuke starts to shout out, his chakra level getting weaker by the second, which, in turn, causes _me_ to become weaker by the second. The _idiot_!

"KNOCK. HIM. OFF," I cry with my hands cupped around my mouth, shocking Sakura who stands beside me. She looks at me as though I've gone crazy and I may as well have. Why else am I so concerned about Sasuke's well being? "DON'T JUST LET HIM PUSH YOU AROUND. God_dam_mit," I curse, banging my fist against the rail. And, whether or not he does it because of my recommendation, Sasuke manages to kick Yoroi off of him, putting some distance between him and the enemy.

Sasuke crouches, his breathing labored, and his eyes wander up to the second level, first skimming over me then Sakura and Naruto, who shouts, "How can you still call yourself Uchiha Sasuke? You're a disgrace to yourself! Aren't you embarrassed for everyone to see yourself as a big loser?"

Sasuke glares at Naruto before his eyes widen. He redirects his gaze back to Yoroi who charges for him straight on. Yoroi hold his right wrist as he runs forward, readying himself for another one of his chakra drains when Sasuke skids forward, coming to a halt in front of Yoroi. He kicks his leg up, his heel slamming into Yoroi's jaw and sending him flying.

The way Sasuke moves is reminiscent of Lee's movements from their battle prior to the first exam. Clever, I think as Sasuke jumps after Yoroi and becomes his shadow as he soars across the arena. This way, he'll expend minimal chakra. But his chakra levels are so low anyway he'll have to tap into his reserves, which could trigger the mark. There's no way for him to get completely around this.

My heart flutters apprehensively as Sasuke winces seconds into his attack. It only takes a few more seconds for me to feel the repercussions of the mark myself. My muscles tighten. The pressure on my brain grows numbingly heavy. The left side of my neck sets on fire, burning my skin and spreading in a whirl of pain. I grit my teeth, wondering what I can do to suspend this discomfort that doesn't belong to me, that I don't deserve.

_Fight it, fight it, fight it,_ I urge and my chakra spikes. At the same time, the burning recedes and oxygen comes more effortlessly through my lungs than it had been. I press my face to my palms, waiting for the weight on my head to be relieved, but it doesn't. My brain continues to feel like it'll implode at any moment.

Through my sandals, I can feel bodies slamming into the arena floor and hear grunts of defeat, but I can't tell who is who. My brain is so fuzzed, I can't even be sure whose chakra is most prevalent of the two.

"I'm halting this match before it goes any farther," Hayate's voice comes subsequent to a tense pause. "In other words, Uchiha Sasuke is the winner of the first match of the preliminaries and moves on to the next level!"

"He did it!" Naruto reiterates loudly, not helping my headache much.

I raise my head, biting the inside of my lip to try to distract myself from the pain, and glare at Sasuke as he sits up. Kakashi is behind Sasuke in a blink of an eye, using his knee to prop the boy up as he's about to fall over.

"Hey, Sasuke!" Naruto continues, his voice like knives to my brain. "You won, but in such an uncool way! You look like you were the one who was beat up!"

I whap Naruto's face away from my ear, mumbling curse words under my breath as I do so and somehow manage to find the strength to lift my foot the rail.

"Ren, what're you—" Sakura starts, but I'm down on the arena floor beside Sasuke before she finishes.

As I land, Sasuke grimaces and his breathing skips an exhale. I kneel down beside him and say, "Nice going. Way to push yourself to your limits, meathead."

Sasuke frowns at me, but is otherwise too wiped out to snap a remark.

"Uchiha Sasuke."

We look up to see a medic dressed in baggy whites and a hat with a red cross on it. Behind him, I see two other medics carrying Yoroi away on a stretcher. Pathetic.

The medic addressing us says, "We must escort you, too, and put you under the care of the Medical Corps, so that you get the best possible treatment—"

I scoff, waving him away. "No, thank you. I'm this fool's medic; I've got it covered from here. He's not going to go with you anyway. Not willingly at least. I doubt he'll even come with _us_ willingly."

The medic quirks an eyebrow at me and says, "You—"

"It's fine," Kakashi says, putting his book away in his pouch. "I'll handle it. You guys have no idea what you'd be getting yourselves into. He can come with me right now," Kakashi continues, lowering his voice. "And I'll seal away the curse mark."

I scowl at Sasuke when he looks at me accusingly. He hadn't wanted Sakura or me to tell anyone about the mark, but the adults would have been able to figure it out sooner or later.

"Can't it wait?" he prompts Kakashi, turning to the Jounin from his spot on the floor. "I want to watch the other matches."

"Absolutely not!" I say as Kakashi concisely agrees, _"No."_

"You've already made it to the final part of the exam," I say, pulling him to his feet. "If you stay here, you won't be able to recover in time for it. And we—oh, don't give me that look. We've got to seal the mark now. You know it as well as we do."

"Don't let your emotions cloud your judgment , Sasuke," Kakashi agrees with me. "This thing is spreading like a disease and it's close to the point of no return." He sighs heavily and motions us forward to doors on the other side of the arena. "I let you have your way once and it's only made you greedy. Now come on."

[+]

Kakashi has me give Sasuke a quick check-up as he makes little markings on the ground, up Sasuke's bare back, and around the curse mark that sits on his neck. There are kunai planted precisely at certain points on the previously outlined circles of which Sasuke is seated in the middle.

"In spite of it all," I say, flicking Sasuke's hair from his face. "It doesn't look like you're too terribly injured. A few days rest and you'll be up and running with no problems in time for the final exam."

"What's it matter when I won't be able to train before then?" says Sasuke, brushing my hand away. "I told you not to tell anyone about the mark."

The way he says it implies that he doesn't understand why the bond hadn't kept me from blabbering. There is a certain sense of satisfaction I get from how much little he knows about the grounds of the bond, and I won't be explaining it to him any time soon. In short, though, while it's true Sasuke had ordered me not to speak of the mark, the bond didn't enforce it because it can feel the terrible energy the mark gives off, the way it infects his pretty Uchiha blood. Therefore, I had complete freedom to tell anyone about the mark. And so I took advantage of it.

"You'll have plenty of time to train," I deadpan, adjusting my shirt sleeve. "This is only a precaution so you'll be in tiptop shape during the last round. Otherwise, you won't be able to train at all between now and then, idiot."

"There," Kakashi says, taking a step back and keeping Sasuke from issuing a retort. "This will only take a little while longer. Ren, if you could please."

I give Sasuke's head a brisk tap before I step a good half meter away from the seals that litter the ground. Kakashi nods in thanks and goes on to flip through hand seals before pressing the heels of his hands to the curse mark on Sasuke's neck.

Immediately, sharp stabbing pains work their way from all points of my body and worm their way to the left side of my neck. My stomach turns, twists, and knots and I swear someone must be splitting my head open because there is no other reason for it to hurt so badly! I stagger into a column that holds the room up. The cold stone doesn't soothe or numb—rather, it becomes like dropping boiling water on my skin. I flinch away from it.

Sasuke only gasps in pain a few times, and yet I'm falling over myself from the agony of this curse sealing. Another unfair price I have to pay for this bond.

Kakashi hums in thought as the markings he'd made finish reeling themselves in around the curse mark on Sasuke's neck. "Now," he says, "even if the curse mark awakens again, the seal should hold it. But the foundation of the strength of the spell lies in your own will power. You have to want it to work. You have to believe that you have the will to control it. If you don't, the curse will have its way again!"

I laugh. It's just like a magic trick. Like lying. If you believe that the coin really teleports from the magician's fingers to behind your ear, it does. If you keep telling yourself something is true, it is. It's seems that this rule holds true not only for the seal, but for life as well.

I wipe my face with the back of my hand, shoving away from the column. Sasuke sways where he sits, his lungs functioning shakily. He can barely raise his gaze to meet mine as I kneel beside him to hold him up.

"You're so worn out, I barely recognize you," Kakashi says as Sasuke's eyes flutter to a close and he falls on me. I sigh, pulling him up so has to get a better grip on him.

The vibrations shudder. I clutch Sasuke tightly, feeling his heart beating through his skin. "So defeated," I breathe, smoothing dirt from his face. "It almost makes me sad for you." His lip twitches endearingly as he sleeps and my chest constricts.

"You've mastered the sealing technique, have you Kakashi?"

The voice causes Kakashi to jump and whirl around as from the shadows emerges the narrow frame of Orochimaru. I merely close my eyes.

"How you've grown," Orochimaru hums silkily, trotting closer to us. "It's been a long time, Kakashi-kun. However, I'm not here to see you. I'm here for the boy behind you."

Sasuke, oh, _Sasuke_. I wrap him closer to me, breathing, breathing, breathing.

"Why are you after Sasuke?" Kakashi inquires, his usual calm quickly evaporating under Orochimaru's presence.

"Oh, you know how it is," he coos, waving his hand casually. "Two guys have something and the third guy has to have it too! You haven't had it for very long yourself. Know what it is yet?" Orochimaru chuckles, and when Kakashi doesn't answer, he says, "That Sharingan that's your left eye! I must possess it. I must have Uchiha blood."

"It's really not that great," I speak out, patting the dirt from the hem of Sasuke's shirt. It doesn't help ease the shakiness my hands have adopted in the past minute, nor does it make him any cleaner. Useless. "Nothing but a curse," I go on quietly, abandoning my attempt at trying to calm myself. "Nothing but a burden for everyone involved. It will only serve to kill you in the end."

Orochimaru's face drops. He doesn't take kindly to people telling him he's going to lose, I guess. He purses his lips before my face registers in his head. "Ah, _you_," he says, looking amused. "Yes, I remember you from the forest. The Kagiru girl. I've heard stories about your clan, but to think—the bond could truly be real, hm? Amazing." The grin on Orochimaru's face becomes disgustingly sly. He licks his lips devilishly. "That would come in handy indeed."

"What are your intentions?" Kakashi demands, stepping forward like standing between Orochimaru and Sasuke will do more to protect us.

Orochimaru gives Kakashi his undivided attention, like he's only remembering that Kakashi is still here with us. "The newly formed village, Otogakure," he says standoffishly. "It's _my_ home, you see? Is it becoming clear to you now?"

"So it's simply your greed," Kakashi says, "and foolish visions of grandeur, is that it?"

"I suppose you could say that," Orochimaru dismisses, looking down his nose at Kakashi. "And good help is so hard to come by these days. And I'll need all sorts of pawns at my disposal."

Orochimaru's eyes make their way back to me, but Kakashi takes another step in front of me, blocking Orochimaru's view of us. He wants to keep Orochimaru concentrated on him.

"And Sasuke," he says. "You think that he'll be one of your pawns?"

"Oh, no," Orochimaru says. "Sasuke-kun is very special; he's a real keeper, that one." Orochimaru narrows his eyes so that they more closely resemble snake slits. "The others—the ones going through the rigors of the exam right now—they are disposable."

Orochimaru. He would get along so well with my family had any of them been alive. Reverence of the Uchiha blood, believing that anyone else's life could be taken lightly so long as the Uchiha's could still be preserved—yes, he would be best friends with them all.

Kakashi shifts on his feet and poises his hand for an attack. "Stay away from Sasuke," he says, his tone of voice rough. "Even if you are one of the three Nin, the man I am today could take you down!"

"Kakashi!" I hiss in warning, my fingers digging into the flesh of Sasuke's arm as Kakashi's hand alights with a chattering chakra that coats the room in a blue glow. Even with the power that this move emanates, I can feel that it doesn't compare to Orochimaru. I had witnessed firsthand what he's capable of, after all. Kakashi would only end up getting himself killed if he continues this way.

Orochimaru's grin grows. It morphs into a chortle, then an all out laugh. It causes the hair on the back of my neck to stand. I won't be able to sit here like this any longer. I'm through standing in the sidelines. Something—I must do something.

"What's so funny?" says Kakashi, his posture faltering.

"It's just," Orochimaru explains, "you do one thing and say another. Understand, Kakashi-kun, that curse-binding spell you put on Sasuke-kun is useless. When a heart is sufficiently focused and ruthless in its desires, then for good or for evil, the end will justify the means. Sasuke-kun possesses such a heart. He has the heart of an avenger."

"That's how you got your hooks into him," Kakashi reasons, the chakra around his hand evaporating as he loses his concentration. "But Sasuke's not—"

"The day will come," Orochimaru interjects, turning away from Kakashi to leave, "when he will seek me out, hungry for more power. Meanwhile, weren't you offering to kill me? Would you care to try now? Or are you all talk?"

Kakashi flinches. I inhale sharply, the vibrations reeling in toward me quickly. Orochimaru stops dead in his tracks. He looks over his shoulder to regard me.

On his cheek is a single, thin cut that shines red against his sallow white skin.

"Shindou," he announces, licking the blood that begins to drip down his cheek. "Useful, isn't it?" He waves nonchalantly to us, continuing on his way out as though he hadn't been interrupted at all. But before he's gone, he adds: "I look forward to seeing _you_ in the future as well, Kagiru-chan."

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	29. Friendly Advice

**Bound**  
**Chapter 29: Friendly Advice**

Orochimaru is expecting to see me because where Sasuke goes, I go. That much is obvious. I'd been able to successfully resist following Sasuke around like a puppy to my full potential for the past few years, but being in such close proximity to Sasuke now, spending so much time with him, it's futile to even try to weaken this bond by weaning the amount of contact I have with him. The bond can only grow stronger by the second.

I'll admit: I'm not getting anywhere with the bond as I am. I can only do so much alone.

But I can't change. As a person, I mean. My character cannot bloom or develop or morph into something more. Because I cannot let anyone in, and I cannot let anything out.

I must keep this to myself because once someone is able to get through to me, then it's all over. All these years of trying to stay away from people, of trying to keep these bonds from affecting me will be wasted. And I can't allow for that to happen.

It's a shame that I've realized this too late.

God, what have I been doing? How did I let myself slip so far?

"Ren! Kakashi-sensei!" greets Naruto as we drop in beside him.

"Yo," Kakashi answers easily, saluting the blonde.

"What do you mean _'yo'_?" snips Sakura, her face screwed with anxiety. "Kakashi-sensei, tell us about Sasuke-kun! Is he all right?"

Kakashi and I exchange glances. Since the question was directed at him, I keep quiet and step forward to the rail, leaving Kakashi to reply, "He's fine. He's sound asleep in the infirmary as we speak."

Sakura is immediately relieved at the news. She's on the verge of asking more questions, I can tell, but, as I don't want to be reminded of the little burden anymore, I interject with an inquiry.

"Who's fighting?" I say, peering into the arena. I spot two Genin standing on opposite sides. My eyebrows pull together and down at the scene of a girl with an eagle feather in her hair directing an arrow toward a boy who stands still as a scarecrow. The boy's hair is ragged and parts of his clothes are frayed or torn completely. He's even somehow managed to lose a sandal.

Rei, while appearing a little worn, is faring much better than the boy. She has a few smudges on her face and clothes, but is otherwise pristine. Not to mention she has the advantage of an arrow aimed right for the boy who looks completely and utterly defenseless. What an audacious move, though, to pull out a weapon as conspicuous and strenuous as a bow and arrow. She really is unorthodox.

"Two Genin from the Sound," Sakura says, leaning over the rail to see the fighters as well. "Two teammates, pitted against each other. It's really…terrible." Sakura shakes her head as she looks on at the two in the ring. "She's beating him senseless, like the fact that he's her friend doesn't even occur to her."

"Maybe they're not friends," I mutter, propping my chin into the palm of my hand. "Maybe they're only on a team together for the sake of being a team."

Sakura looks at me from the corner of her eyes, appearing concerned about something I've just said. "That doesn't make it okay," she says. "There are other things to consider when it comes to attacking another human being."

"But in this competition," I note, flicking my hair from my brow. "It's all about personal gain, Sakura. There is nothing else to consider."

To this, she has no retort. Kakashi eyes me warily. I don't acknowledge him. I have more important things to think about.

I rub my eye, frowning down at Rei. "She's trying to get your attention so she can tell you something," Hiro had said, "about the bond." Which goes to imply that she _wants_ to help me. So why shouldn't I go to her? I could get answers and finally make some progress with the bond, which I do so desperately need. Besides, I think as Rei corrects her aim, if Hiro is telling me the truth about Rei playing up her mystery in order to lure me to her, then I really have nothing to worry about when I confront her about the bond. I'm sure that I could handle her on my own.

The boy's foot slides forward. He seems on the verge of attack. But then his shoulder sags and he releases a heavy breath. He raises an arm in the air and announces, "I'm done. I quit."

Rei sighs as well, lowering her weapon. "About time, Nao-kun," she says with a laugh. She slips her arrow back into her quiver and her bow over her head so that it hangs diagonally across her body. "I thought you were really going to make me kill you."

"'s not worth it," he mutters, shoving his hands in his pockets and walking toward the door his other teammate had exited through prior to the preliminaries. "Good luck with…" He waves his hand to motion abstractly to some situation between them. "…you know, _whatever_, Rei."

"Thank you," she answers, grinning slyly. "See you later, Nao-kun." Her eyes slink away from her retreating teammate and to me. I purse my lips as I catch her wink at me, but our interaction is so brief that I'm not sure that it actually takes place.

"The match goes to Kannagi Rei," Hayate wheezes, motioning toward the giddy Sound girl who bounds up the stairs and back to the second level. I notice that the other Sound Nin, the ones we had fought in the Forest of Death, regard her with extreme distaste. It's then that I see.

"Where's that other Sound kid?" I ask. I tap the palm of my hand and explain, "You know, the one with the windpipes in his arms?"

Sakura winces, evidentially remembering how Sasuke had taken the boy out in the Forest. The sick crack of bones rings in my ears as a reminder.

"He went up against Shino," Sakura informs, pointing to the boy with dark glasses on Kiba's team. "Somehow, his arms blew right off just as he was about to deal his final attack. I don't understand how it happened myself, but—"

"Who cares?" I shrug, watching the scoreboard for the appearance of the next two names. "I'm sure he got what he deserved. And besides, at least now he's out of the way."

Hayate angles himself toward the scoreboard. "And now," he coughs, "we announce the next contenders…"

I don't know what I'm hoping for by watching the screen. It isn't as though my name will be displayed. Still, as the scoreboard flickers to life and pixel-y names begin to appear, my chest pumps with anticipation.

_Tsuguri Misumi vs. Kankuro._

Two vastly unfamiliar names. This causes my interest to drop instantaneously. However, there is nothing for me to do but watch as the boy from the Sand—who I soon recognize as the one who had been bullying Konohamaru and his friends—easily defeats the other member of Kabuto's team. Kankuro reveals to us the parcel with which he had been threatening us on the day we met. It's a puppet controlled by strings of chakra, Sakura explains when Naruto calls Kankuro a cheater.

"It's the same as any of us using kunai or shuriken," she elaborates with a wave of her hand. "The puppet is just another shinobi tool."

"What a weirdo!" Naruto cries as the match is declared in Kankuro's favor. "This exam is turning into a never-ending freak show!"

"Look who's talking," Kakashi retorts. I snort and Sakura laughs while Naruto fumes. The casualty of the moment makes me nostalgic and immediately I try to shut it out. No more of this, I had decided. I want no more of this.

"Hm, Sakura," Kakashi says, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I don't think you'll be laughing for long."

"Ah? Why not?" asks Sakura, and Kakashi points at the scoreboard. She follows the direction of his finger and remarks, "Oh!" For on the board is her name and below it, _Yamanaka Ino_.

"Oh," Sakura repeats and her eyes dart across the way to Ino, who is scowling up at the scoreboard herself. "Well."

"_Well?"_ presses Naruto, nudging Sakura as his brow arches. "What are you waiting for Sakura-chan? It's your turn!"

Kakashi bops Naruto on the head. He grimaces, but Sakura doesn't seem to mind. Her expression merely hardens and she nods. As she steps around me, I tell her, "Good luck." She pauses to thank me before continuing on her way, her shoulders squared and her eyes set deliberately.

"What's her issue?" wonders Naruto with a frown.

"She and Ino used to be best friends," I explain to him, leaning my head into my palm as I rest my elbows on the rail. "I remember seeing them together all the time when we were younger. Ino was the ringleader; Sakura was the happy sidekick. I don't know what happened after that," I sigh, shrugging and picking a piece of lint off my shoulder. "Their animosity toward each other must have happened without my noticing. Either that or I'd moved out of the village by that time. In any case, there's a lot of competition between the two and I think this is the fight that they've both been waiting for. The one that's going to…settle things."

A fight to settle things. How poetic of them. And to have it fall during such a high intensity event. It must be fate working to have pieces put into place for bigger pictures. To crush more hearts. To bend more people until they break.

"You all right, Ren?" asks Kakashi at the abrupt silence I had fallen into.

"I am _a_-okay," I reply.

Once Sakura and Ino are in the arena, face to face before Hayate, Sakura takes a second to pull her headband from its place. The glare she has aimed at Ino is mirrored by the blonde down the bone. But I don't sense any real hate in their stares. It's all sadness and regret, disappointment and crazy anticipation. They are both determined to come out the winner. They are both on edge.

"Understand this," Sakura says with a smirk. "I'm not letting you anywhere near Sasuke-kun."

I cringe, my stomach doing a stupid somersault at the sound of his name. These people—why can't they get over him? It's as though they have their own bond tying them to the _glorious_ Uchiha. In this kind of environment, how could I have ever hoped to break the bond?

"What?" hisses Ino, taking a step forward.

"You're not even his type!" mocks Sakura, propping her hand on her waist. "And I'm not the weak, needy little girl I used to be. In fact, you don't register my radar anymore."

"Sakura," Ino growls, her face contorting with irritation. "I think you forget who you're talking to. Don't cop an attitude with me, you little crybaby."

Naruto shudders beside me, his fingers clutching the rail tightly. "Sakura-chan's going too far," he says. "That Ino gives me the creeps!"

"Sakura isn't one to throw her weight around," Kakashi says, "and she's not someone who would be intentionally cruel. She's riling Ino up just to make sure that she won't go easy on her."

"But why are they so intense!" Naruto asks, leaning over the rail as though that will help him understand the situation better, like he doesn't get the same way when he has someone to compete against.

"You're a grade A-idiot, you realize that, Naruto?" I say with a sigh, planting my hand on his head and ruffling his hair. Naruto makes an attempt to whap my hand away, but I retract my arm in the nick of time.

"Rivalries are a tricky thing, Naruto," Kakashi adds. "Not that I would know."

A smile begins to roll its way over Ino's face. She unties her headband from her waist as well and together the two girls tighten their headbands around their foreheads. Now, it seems, they can begin the match.

Without another moment to lose, Sakura dashes for Ino. Sakura presses her hands together in a basic hand seal. In seconds, there are two more Sakura's running alongside her, prepared for attack.

Ino scoffs. "This isn't some graduation exam!" exclaims Ino. "Don't think you can trick me with some basic textbook techniques."

She has severely underestimated Sakura's tactics, though. With a grin, Sakura flips her fingers into another hand seal. Briskly, she sends a burst of chakra to her feet, boosting her speed dramatically. Ino is too distracted by the doppelgangers that still linger behind that she doesn't even see her as Sakura delivers the blonde a punch right to her jaw.

Ino goes flying across the arena, but reaches out her arm to the ground to pull herself to a stop before she can get too far. She narrows her eyes at Sakura, who smirks and relaxes for a moment as Ino re-gathers her bearings.

"If you think I'm the same crybaby I was, you'll be sorry," Sakura points out. "Come on, Ino—stop holding back!"

Ino wipes her mouth, the serious expression on her face never wavering. At last she understands the threat that Sakura poises her to place in the finals. "If that's the way you want it," Ino shrugs, growing a smirk of her own, "then that's fine by me. The gloves are off."

Naruto makes a comment on how wonderfully Sakura is doing, but it's a compliment full of bias and rides on the assumption that she is winning even though they're only minutes into the match. To add to my irritation, Kakashi goes on to describe Sakura's talents for chakra control, playing up her skill with fancy words and high regard.

I roll my eyes, having heard this observation about Sakura one too many times. So she's frugal with her chakra reserves. Big _deal_. I can do that. I'm a medic for God's sake. I've had that skill down since I was five years old while Sakura was primping and pining after _Sasuke_. God, why hadn't _she_ been the one to be born with this bond? I'm sure that Sakura could pick up on the skills of being a medic quickly and easily. Yes, she would do perfectly as Sasuke's personal puppet. Things would have worked out much better.

This match goes nowhere. Sakura and Ino are too evenly matched. Each punch they throw is blocked, each kunai they shoot countered. If an attack does manage to hit, it's mirrored almost immediately by the other. I begin to lose interest like I had with Kankuro's match as Sakura and Ino's fight drags on. I find myself resorting to watching Rei for a few moments.

She's settled against the wall, her head tilted forward and her hands clasped over her stomach. She's fallen asleep. I almost laugh when I realize this, but as, at that moment, Sakura is sent teetering back by a stunning punch, I don't think laughing would be very helpful to the situation at hand.

Fortunately for Sakura, she'd been able to land the same attack on Ino, who also skitters away from Sakura due to the force of the punch. The two girls breathe heavily, their glares on each other unrelenting. But god I wish they'd just finish this. It's obvious that they're tired and wasted and any tricks they have left up their sleeves are no good anymore. Their drive to keep fighting until the other loses only makes me hope that they both end up failing out of the exams.

Which, admittedly, is not a kind thing to think. But this time around, I really am over caring and pretending to care for the wellbeing of these people. It won't do me any good to be concerned about them anyway.

The exclamation that pulls my attention back to the match is delivered by Shikamaru. Although he's standing quite a distance away from me, the utter disbelief in his voice carries to me without a hitch.

"Ino's lost her mind!" he cries, jerking away from the rail as he gawks down into the arena. I follow his gaze to discover blonde strands of hair scattering the space between the two kunoichi. Sakura's grinning smugly at Ino who tosses a kunai aside and presses her hands together in a basic hand seal.

"This ends now!" she proclaims, her hands sliding into a new seal that resembles something like a square with wings. "I'm going to make your lips say 'I give up'!"

"Sh-she can't mean—" stutters Shikamaru now, leaning over the rail. I don't understand what's going on, nor do I recognize whatever it is that she's doing, but apparently Sakura does because, instead of fretting, she snorts.

"I understand your impatience," she coos, "but you're wasting your time."

Ino harrumphs, "We'll see about that."

"I know what you're planning," sneers Sakura. "Your mind transfer technique—when you let loose your psychic and spiritual body upon your enemy, subsequently usurping their psyche and reducing them to helplessness while you posses them. But there a few significant flaws to that. One, your soul can only move in a straight path—and it moves very slowly at that. Secondly, if you miss your target, it takes a few minutes for your soul to get back to your body, which leaves you as vulnerable as a rag doll. "

If Sakura would just shut her mouth and attack, I think, this could be over right now while Ino's occupied, determined to use whatever technique this is, and we could move on. But, as per usual, Sakura has to be her snooty, know-it-all self.

"If you miss," Sakura grins wily, preparing to jump from the path of Ino's mind transfer and, thus, dodging the possibility of being possessed, "it's all over."

"No one will know what happens unless I try!" Ino shouts foolhardily, causing Sakura to flinch. Ino's muscles tense and Sakura takes this as a cue to skid to the side as Ino's body drops. The blonde slumps to the ground, drooping in sitting position, and Sakura's head falls forward.

All eyes flicker between the two, trying to figure out who is in control of Sakura. There is a short pause and then, slowly, Sakura lifts her head and declares, with a smirk, "Looks like you lose, Ino."

Hardly, I think as Sakura tries to straighten her posture and finds that she can't move. She blinks down at her feet and, to her surprise, finds strands of blonde hair roped around her ankles. Sakura attempts to yank herself free, but it's no use. She's not going anywhere.

"You fell for it," sings Ino pleasantly, her head raised, her mouth stretched in a smile. "Everything I did before, it was all just a ruse. I set a trap and you zigged and you zagged—right into it! Now." She plants a foot on the rope of hair she had charged in order to keep her chakra flowing to it and remakes the hand seal she had been displaying before. "Chances are one hundred percent that I'm going to hit my target, don't you think?"

Ino's body tenses at the same time Sakura's does. The blonde girl slumps forward again. Sakura's eyes go wide and flutters before closing. Her head lolls. And when she raises it, she has this eerie smile on her face that is so unlike Sakura that it's obvious that Ino is the one in control.

"What?" asks Naruto, confused. "What's just happened to Ino? And what's gotten into Sakura-chan? Doesn't she see? This is her chance! Get her Sakura-chan! _Go_!"

But it's no use, as Kakashi soon explains. "The energy from Ino's mind-transfer technique hit Sakura head on," Kakashi says. "She's finished."

"Mind-transfer?" repeats Lee, who had been watching the matches alongside us. "Then…you mean, Sakura-chan's not even—?"

"Exactly," Kakashi says. "Sakura's mind has been overtaken by that of Ino. Right now, Ino is Sakura. So. Her goal is probably to—"

At that moment, Sakura—or, I suppose, _Ino_—lifts her hand into the air and says, "I, Haruno Sakura, wish to withdraw from the match."

Naruto is in an uproar at once. "Sakura-chan! What do you think you're doing?" he shouts, leaning over the rail in such a way that I'm sure he's going to fall into the arena. "You can't give up now! Not when you've come so far! If you let yourself lose to that crazy Sasuke-chaser, you'll be a disgrace to all women!"

My brow twitches at this claim. I keep from punching him, however, and instead grab his collar to keep him from toppling over. "Naruto," I grumble. "Stay out of it. This isn't our fight."

His head whirls around to regard me. The utter disbelief he holds on his face throws me off and I let him go like his starting to burn me.

"How can you say that, Ren?" he asks. Without waiting for me to answer, he turns back to the match. He cups his hands over his mouth and continues screaming at Sakura, but they're words that I don't hear.

I don't understand what Naruto could have meant by his question. What I said is true, isn't it? This is Sakura's fight through and through to prove to Ino and to herself how much she's grown. This isn't our problem because this is _her_ life. The outcome of this match is fully dependent on her own strength; our intervention will have no effect whatsoever.

"Teamwork, Ren," Kakashi says. I blink at him. He returns my gaze without giving me any clue as to what he could mean by his claim.

Teamwork? "But," I start dumbly, tucking my hair behind my ear, "we can't help her right now. Not in this kind of situation."

"You'd be surprised," Kakashi says and his eyes dart back to the match. I follow suit just as Naruto pumps his fist into the air and shouts, "She did it! Atta girl, Sakura-chan! Yes!"

My brow furrows. "She…?" Sure enough, Ino is standing on her own again. Both of them are panting heavily, sweat smearing with the smudges of dirt on their cheeks. Ino is scowling up a storm while Sakura merely smiles deviously. "How—"

"Teamwork," Kakashi repeats and I take a moment to glower at him before redirecting my attention back to the match in time to catch Ino and Sakura darting forward, fists poised for a final devastating blow.

Their punches land hard on each other's jaws, so powerful that their headbands slip from their foreheads and the vibrations around me shudder. They're sent skidding in opposite directions. When they come to a halt, they barely have any energy to sit upright. They tremble as they try to hold themselves, bent on being the last one standing. But their determination isn't enough to keep their fatigue from overwhelming them. They sway dizzily before falling back, into unconsciousness.

Hayate's eyes dart back and forth between the two as though he can't quite believe what he sees and is expecting one of them to pop up so he can call the match. But neither of them get to their feet. The outcome is clear.

"Neither candidate," Hayate declares, "is able to continue. As a result of the simultaneous knockouts, neither combatant moves past the preliminaries!"

"WHAT!" exclaims Naruto like the decision to call the match a stalemate is severely misguided although Sakura and Ino have passed out. Kakashi and Asuma jump into the arena to pick up their respective charges. I purse my lips and back away from the rail as the Jounin return with Sakura and Ino in their arms. They lean the two against the wall as Naruto, Lee, Shikamaru, and Chouji rush up to their teammates.

"Are you all right, Sakura-chan?" inquires Naruto, crouching down beside her as Kakashi places her headband by her side.

Kakashi shushes him and orders them away to give the two girls room to rest.

"Neither of them are hurt so badly that they'll need the attention of the Medical Corps," Asuma says, chewing on the butt of his cigarette. "They should both regain consciousness within half an hour." Asuma props his hand on his hip and says, "I'm proud of them."

I grimace, stepping away from the group as Kakashi agrees and goes on to say something about how Team 7 has grown so much. I don't listen to hear if he mentions my name as 'part of the team' because I don't care. I don't need his praise or his acceptance or anyone's for that matter. I only need me.

"Quite the contrary, Ren dear. You need much more help than you care to admit."

I jump at the sound of the voice and my hand flies to my holster. I glance back at the group to see them start to disperse from Sakura and Ino. They don't appear to have heard the voice because they carry on, normal as can be.

"That's right—they can't hear a word I'm saying to you right now. 'tis the magic of spirit." Rei giggles at this, causing me to flinch. I shift on my feet in order to get her in my line of vision. She's still sitting against the wall, her head tilted forward with pretend-sleep, the smallest of smiles on her face. As though she can sense me staring at her, she raises her gaze to meet mine and winks. I scowl at her.

She presses two fingers to her lips and makes like she's blowing a kiss to me. It's then that I hear her voice again.

"Sad little Ren," it says mockingly, "all alone in the world because there is a bond on her shoulders that causes her to mistrust everyone and keeps her from getting close to anyone."

From her side of the arena, Rei throws her head back and laughs. She purses her lips and exhales through them, keeping her eyes locked with mine the entire time.

"Or so she thinks," she says.

I can't figure out how it is, exactly, that she's doing this. The vibrations just seem to twist into words and make their way from her mouth to my ears. She must take pleasure in the confusion making its way across my face because her smirk blooms across her face as she shakes her head and gets to her feet. She makes the simple motion of blowing her hair from her brow, but I know what's coming.

"Silly," says the voice, "little. Girl. Poor. Little—"

"Ren?"

Shikamaru says my name at the same time Rei does, and their voices eerily manage to harmonize. I step away from him without meaning to and touch my fingers to my forehead, wondering how she was getting into my head.

"Are you all right?" asks Shikamaru, his eyebrows pressing together.

"I'm fine, thank you," I answer crisply, nodding to him. "Just a little headache." I excuse myself to go back to Naruto and Kakashi, who are watching the next match alongside Lee and his team. Lee and Gai shout encouragement down into the arena, as it seems that Lee's teammate, Ten-Ten, is the next one up. She's going against the Sand girl, Temari, who stands confidently besides an oversized fan that is taller than her by a few centimeters.

I watch the match with disinterest. I don't know the abilities of either girls to see who will come out the winner, but it's apparent that the Sand girl is taking the match much more seriously than Ten-Ten. Not to say that Ten-Ten isn't trying her hardest. It's obvious by the techniques that she resorts to that she intends to win. There is something behind that gleam Temari has in her eyes though that shows there is more to these exams that advancing to the level of Chuunin for her. Which is definitely suspicious.

Ino begins to stir behind me. I turn as she cradles her head in her hands. With a groan, she rubs her eyes and blankly regards the men gathered before her who are too distracted to notice she's woken up.

"What…?" she begins, knitting her eyebrows together in confusion.

"You're not concussed, are you?" I snort, propping a hand on my hip.

She scowls at me and says, "Please. As if. But who—"

"You guys tied," I explain to her. Ino's shoulders sag and she regards me with disbelief. "Which means you both lost."

"I know what that means," Ino snaps, clenching her fists.

As though Ino's cheeky voice is an alarm clock, Sakura begins to twitch. She groans as her eyes flutter open. She goes through the same motions as Ino, the confusion, then the realization of the outcome of the match.

"So you finally came to, huh, Sakura?" asks Ino, as though she had been awake any longer. At that moment, Lee and Gai shout embarrassing encouragement to Ten-Ten and Sakura flinches at the volume of their voices. Ino sighs. "Our match is over and done."

"I…," grumbles Sakura, her eyes glossing over with tears, "lost?"

Ino scoffs lowering her gaze. "I'm the one who should cry," she says. "It's such a disgrace; a tie! You beat me to a standstill!" Ino sighs again, but the bitterness in her voice is all a façade. She seems to be taking her loss quite well.

Recognizing this, Sakura blinks at Ino in wonder and is surprised even further when Ino presents her with her headband, saying, "Here!" with the brightest grin on her face that I've ever seen.

"By the way," Ino adds, "you've blossomed into a lovely flower!"

This simple phrase is enough to cause Sakura's eyes to prick with more tears. She takes her headband and, with a wide smile, secures it back in her hair.

"Ah," I say, and Kakashi gives me a sidelong glance. I don't have to direct my gaze at him for him to understand that I'm talking to him. "What you meant earlier," I say, watching as Ten-Ten is blown away by a mighty gust of wind Temari creates with her fan. "The whole teamwork thing. Although we weren't able to help Sakura physically, the simple deed of supporting her, daring her and challenging her—it was enough to push her to her limits and help her, in a way, win the match. Naruto's shouts of encouragement allowed Sakura to regain her psyche. Sakura's rivalry with Ino made it possible for both of them to surpass expectations. To say the least, you were talking about how bonds work together with one's mentality to help a person grow. Is that right?"

Kakashi cocks his head to the side as Ten-Ten regains her footing through a series of simple back-flips. "Yes," he answers. "Something along those lines."

I scowl, crossing my arms. "And?" I press. "What am I missing?"

Ten-Ten, running out of ideas, begins to rummage through her pouch for one last resort.

"Those bonds," he says plainly and I roll my eyes. Kakashi's lost all his subtlety, his grace. He's getting old. "I can tell you're stuck, Ren. Of Team 7, you're the one to have progressed the least."

I grit my teeth.

"Which is not to say that you haven't progressed," he lamely amends. "But you're moving much more slowly than I would have expected someone of your caliber to have grown. You're too reluctant, too selfish."

Ten-Ten has extracted two small scrolls that she drops onto the ground. She skillfully spins a kunai in each hand, catching them by their hilt, and getting into position for her attack.

"If you don't try another tactic soon," he goes on, "you'll never be able to move on."

But Temari shows no worry on her face. In fact, she appears less than interested. She has closed her fan and holds it directly in front of her so that she's blocked Ten-Ten from her line of vision. How does she plan to defend herself when she can't even see her enemy?

"Bonds," he says. "They're hard to break for a reason. And not only because you have a blood oath."

Before Ten-Ten even makes her move, the winner is clear.

"Do you understand, Ren?" asks Kakashi.

I wish he would stop talking.

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**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	30. Deciding Factors

**A/N:** Oh my, I am feeling the pressure. After six months (!), some 163 THOUSAND words, and 3,500+ views, _Bound_ has made it to thirty chapters. I may be making this a bigger deal than it deserves, but I never imagined I would get so far, write so much, or receive so many views. I am eternally grateful to you. Thank you for reading, coming back, and continuing to stick around even when I take forever to update. Thankyouthankyouthankyou. I will never be able to say it enough!

-deardeer.

* * *

**Bound**  
**Chapter 30: Deciding Factors**

"I can't say that was wholly necessary," I comment as Gai and Lee retake their positions beside us on the second level. "You've gone and made enemies now, Gai, daring them like that."

"They need to know that the Genin of the Leaf will not be underestimated!" says Gai grandly, sweeping his arm across the arena as he has his arm around Lee, who concurringly grasps his hand into a fist and looks determinedly at his sensei. "We will not go out without a fight! We will not stand down to anyone at all, in fact!"

I glower at him as people come out to sweep away the assortment of weapons Ten-Ten's summons had scattered over the ground. After Temari was declared the winner of the match, she tossed Ten-Ten, who she'd caught coming down from the cyclone she'd created on her closed fan, into the clusters of deadly weapons Ten-Ten had summoned for her final attack. As if he sensed she was going to do this, Lee leaped into the arena to catch his fallen comrade, subsequently making comments on Temari's etiquette and then trying to attack her after he was provoked by her harsh retort.

Unfortunately for Lee, Temari was able to block his kick with her fan. Before this issue could escalate, Gaara spoke out against Temari's actions, scolding her and offending Lee even further. Gai intervened and reeled his pupil back in, but challenged the Sand Nin by saying, "Be prepared. You have no idea how strong this boy really is."

The Sand trio doesn't appear worried by Gai's words, though. In fact, they scoff and smirk at the idea of any of the Leaf Genin beating them. With their record so far of Sand 2-Leaf 0, I'm not surprised.

"Don't you lose to them, Naruto!" beams Sakura now, bouncing back from her match with Ino.

Appalled by Sakura's rapid recovery, Naruto only manages, "Sakura-chan? Are you feeling better already?"

"Don't worry about me," Sakura dismisses. "Mind yourself! If you lose now, you'll be a disgrace to all men. And Sasuke-kun will never let you live it down."

I flinch at the name and run into Kakashi in my attempt to put distance between myself and Sakura. Kakashi tries to nudge me back into the conversation. I shrug him off of me, but to shuffle farther from Naruto and Sakura now would give me their attention. I can't get away.

"Also," Sakura says softly. "Thanks for earlier. If it weren't for you screaming like an idiot, I would have lost to Ino."

"Yeah, I sure saved your butt," Naruto deadbeats and Sakura scowls at Naruto's lack of modesty.

Kakashi makes a point to lightly elbow me again. "I get it," I hiss at him as I slap his arm away from me. "Lesson learned, Kakashi, all right? Now shove off."

Kakashi smiles at me, pleased with himself, I'm sure. The rotten know-it-all. He thinks he's corrected my wayward path, but I had already figured out that I would need help with this bond before his stupid pushing. Why else would I have considered talking to Rei first chance I got? But just because I'm going to talk to her doesn't mean that I'm taking Kakashi's advice, not completely anyway, because I have no intention of continuing any means of communicating with Rei after I get my answers from her.

"Okay!" Naruto cries, fisting his hands. "My turn! Who thinks he can take me?"

"Who's next?" asks Lee, regarding the scoreboard hopefully. "Surely, it'll be me!"

The screen flickers weakly. The names that appear sorely dishearten both of the overly excited boys. Naruto curses and turns his back on the arena as though he's been deeply betrayed. Lee slumps over the rail with a small groan of disappointment. My amusement and delight threatens to bubble up my chest in the form of laughter.

_Nara Shikamaru_, the screen reads, _vs. Kin Tsuchi_. What a happy turn of events! I'd almost forgotten about needing to get back at that goddamn Sound girl for stabbing me in the forest. And for Shikamaru to be pitted against her! It's like fate wants me to be avenged through the most ideal circumstances possible. I wouldn't have liked for anyone better to fight for me than Shikamaru.

Hell, I'd almost forgotten that the fool has yet to compete for a position in the finals. Then again, he's probably not interested in the idea of more competition. At this point, he's only continuing on in order to save his skin from further beatings without considering what it could mean for him in the long run. But the bastard probably has the right mindset to make it just far enough to get him the title when all is said and done.

"DON'T YOU DARE LOSE, SHIKAMARU," Ino cheers into the arena as he and Kin take their places before Hayate, who is quick to start the match.

Shikamaru clasps his hands together in a seal and his shadow goes shooting across the floor. But, I'm sure that after witnessing for herself the extent of Shikamaru's shadow technique in the forest, Kin is able to anticipate what will happen should she let the shadow touch her. She darts out of shadow's path and projects her needles toward Shikamaru, who is able to duck under them as they fly by.

The needles impale into the opposite wall with a soft jingle of bells. This is new, I observe. She had used plain needles when she was fighting with us, but I suppose music wouldn't have been appropriate in the situation we were in.

Shikamaru has noticed the bells as well. He smirks. "What a tired old trick," he seems to complain. "I suppose next, you'll be flinging your needles in groups of two, one with and without bells, to mislead me into thinking that I'm safe once I dodge the ones I hear, until I'm hit by the ones without bells, am I right?"

"Chatty, aren't you?" she remarks, readying another set of needles between her fingers.

Shikamaru prepares himself for the oncoming attack just as he hears the bells ring behind him. Caught off guard, he turns his attention away from Kin to see what's waiting for him behind his back, but there's nothing.

"Shikamaru!" I shout, frustrated, pressing myself closer to the rail as he swivels around, realizing his mistake too late. Kin launches her needles and they pierce him, although he manages to do a little damage control by throwing his arms in front of his face. Ino groans as Shikamaru crumples to the ground rather exaggeratedly.

Kin laughs as she sees her chance to gloat. "Once I mastered how to avoid your silly shadow technique, you stood no chance," she sneers. "Now, for the coup de grace!"

Kin's body jerks as she tries to lift her arm, but for some reason, she's frozen. She continues to fidget in place as Shikamaru sighs and gets to his feet. He brushes himself off airily and grins.

"Looks like my shadow technique is working," he says.

"What are you talking about?" spits Kin, her eyes narrowing. "I don't see your shadow anywhere!"

"You mean you haven't noticed yet?" retorts Shikamaru. Kin blinks at him blankly and she searches the ground for his shadow. I follow suit since I don't see it either. But then I notice: There are two thin slivers of darkness stretching across the arena, starting from Shikamaru and ending in the shadow of Kin's right hand. That's when it occurs to me that the ringing bells could have been triggered by Kin tugging on that thread. However, the thread used in combat should be very fine—

"Exactly, idiot," scoffs Shikamaru and I scowl even though he's not speaking to me. "At that height, a thread so delicate wouldn't be able to cast a shadow. You see," he elaborates further, and his shadow begins to wave and expand, attaching themselves to Kin's feet. "I'm able to make my shadow as wide or as narrow as I want, within certain limitations, of course. Which means those little filaments of darkness are _mine_, tailored and fit to attach to you."

"Wonderful!" I say happily under my breath.

"What's with the mood swing?" asks Kakashi.

"What do you mean?" I reply, watching as Shikamaru slips a shuriken from his holster and Kin mirrors his moves exactly. Shikamaru readies his throwing star and Kin protests as her arm goes reeling back for the throw as well.

"Fool," she hisses. "While we're locked in this mimicry, anything that happens to me will hurt you too! You wouldn't—"

"It's a head-to-head shuriken attack," Shikamaru dismisses. "I'm sure you won't be able to hold up for long."

"You didn't cheer this much for Sasuke"—I glower at the Jounin—"or even Sakura," he adds. "You had quite the sour attitude before is all."

"That was different," I say as Shikamaru and Kin fling their shuriken toward each other. They brace for the attack. Kin looks absolutely panicked. At the very last minute, though, Shikamaru starts to lean back to avoid the throwing star and Kin's eyes go wide at Shikamaru's bluff as she too begins to lean backward. Shikamaru catches himself smoothly before he hits the ground and the shuriken Kin had thrown flies over his head. Kin, however, isn't so lucky. She's standing too closely to the edge of the arena and, while she's able to avoid being hit by the shuriken, she bangs her head against the wall brusquely.

"EAT THAT, KIN," I laugh as Shikamaru disengages his shadow, allowing Kin to fall limp to the floor, unconscious. God it feels good to see her get what she deserves.

Kakashi watches me when I join Ino and Chouji as they cheer for their teammate and Hayate declares Shikamaru the winner. When Shikamaru begins to ascend the stairs to return to his team, Kakashi says, "I know the situation was different. Sasuke and Sakura were your teammates."

"I don't know what you want me to say, Kakashi," I sigh, exasperated at his incessant digging into my business and only half-remembering what we were discussing. "I can give you all these excuses and explanations, but it's not going to help you understand any better."

"Try me," he retorts and I scowl.

"It's just," I start, blowing my hair from my face. I try to keep my voice low. "There's something about my relationship with Shikamaru that changes things." That's all I care to divulge to Kakashi at the moment. What he doesn't understand—and what I don't want to have anyone overhearing in case it raises questions that I don't want to answer—is that Shikamaru had been my first friend outside the Uchiha, had been the one to trigger my interest in the world beyond my family. Because of that, Shikamaru has always been the exception to every attitude and mindset I'd dedicated myself to. That's just the way it is with him.

"Ah," Kakashi muses with a nod. "I get it. It's simple really: You love him."

I frown. "I don't like what you're implying."

"Hmm? What do you mean?"

Without directly answering his question, I say, "I care about Naruto and Sakura too."

"I think you're missing someone in that equation."

With a wave of my hand, I scoff. "You know very well what I think of Sasuke," I say, leaning my head on my fist. "But, despite what I think of him, you saw me help him after his match. _And_ I went with him to the sealing and made sure he was all right after it. I even ventured into the Forest of Death to make sure he came out okay. That should tell you just how much I care about the little darling."

"It's about time!" shouts Naruto abruptly, breaking my conversation with Kakashi. "Thanks for waiting everyone; I'm gonna make this worth your while!"

Naruto jumps into the arena as I look up at the scoreboard. Sure enough, his name is displayed alongside Kiba's for the next match.

"If it's any consolation," I say to Kakashi as Kiba dives into the arena after Naruto. "I'm feeling much better after Shikamaru's win and will be sure to cheer extra loud for Naruto."

Kakashi sighs heavily, but otherwise keeps his face devoid of emotion as Naruto orders Kiba to keep Akamaru out of the match.

"He'll get in our way!" he insists, jabbing a finger at the dog.

"Whatever," remarks Kiba, patting his faithful pup who barks in agreement. "Akamaru fights with me, like always."

"Aw man, is that allowed?" Naruto demands, turning to Hayate.

"The rules are clear," Hayate explains. "Animals and insects used as part of a ninja's art are the same as any other weapons and tools."

Naruto crosses his arms and frowns deeply. "Fine," he concedes with a shrug. "You'll need the handicap anyway."

Kiba grits his teeth and mumbles something to Akamaru before getting to his feet.

"Naruto, don't you dare let that loser beat you!" Sakura seems to threaten, gripping the rail tightly, and Hayate starts the match without further ado.

Immediately, Kiba crouches, pushing his hands together in a seal. His chakra gathers and beings to outline his body with a freakish glow as its power flares. Kiba's general appearance becomes more feral as he sits on all fours and in a second he disappears. Naruto takes a cautious step back, but is still caught off guard when Kiba comes slamming into him, forcing Naruto off his feet completely.

Naruto skids across the floor and into the wall. He twitches as he tries to recover from the impact. I scowl and my eyes narrow at Kiba as he laughs and says, "He's already out for the count, sir!"

People start making similar comments. Their doubt in Naruto causes my irritation to spike. Kiba turns his back on Naruto, thinking that his fight is won, haughty as ever. The idiot. Because as soon as he starts on his way out, Naruto staggers to his feet.

"Don't," growls Naruto, his stare alight with determination, "underestimate me!"

Sakura and I holler our encouragement for Naruto into the arena as Kiba grinds his teeth and waves Akamaru forward. They dash for Naruto and, as they approach him, Kiba tosses a capsule at Naruto's feet. The capsule explodes into a cloud of smoke, covering Naruto, and Kiba dives into the fog.

Although I don't think either of them can see a thing within that cloud, Kiba has the advantage of being an Inuzuka, which means that Kiba's sense of smell and hearing rival that of the Inuzuka clan's faithful canine counterparts. Kiba can probably smell and hear Naruto through the haze, whereas Naruto can't sense a thing. Sure enough, the groans and grunts that escape from the cloud explicitly sound like Naruto, so I assume that Kiba is using the smoke to his full advantage. Even when Naruto has the sense to try to escape it, he's only free of the smoke for a second before Akamaru jumps on him and drags him back in.

There is a final, deciding, painful _thud_ and Kiba, looking satisfied, leaps from the smoke as it begins to dissipate, revealing a thoroughly beaten and defeated Naruto. Beside him sits a seemingly pleased Akamaru.

Kiba whoops and pumps his fist into the air, declaring his victory. "Good one, Akamaru," Kiba says, bending down as his pup runs toward him. "You were—"

Kiba stops, eyes wide in shock, as Akamaru clamps his teeth down on Kiba's forearm. It's clear that this has never happened before. But it soon comes to make sense when Akamaru transforms into Naruto, who mock barks.

"Where's Akamaru!" demands Kiba as Naruto releases him and begins to sputter and spit.

"You taste like _dog_," he grumbles and points over to a Kage Bunshin he had summoned. The clone, grinning, dangles the puppy higher in the air once he has Kiba's attention.

"Clever!" I compliment and Sakura cheers, "That was awesome, Naruto!"

It's unbelievable that he used to be such an insufferable little kid. He has made such great improvement since he left the Academy, and I think that people are starting to recognize this fact, now that he has Kiba backed into a corner. They probably never imagined Naruto to come so far. Granted, Naruto still may be stupid and foolhardy, but at least there's some calculation behind his actions.

"Way to show them, Naruto," I say under my breath with a grin.

I may have spoken too soon, though, because Akamaru suddenly bares his teeth and his fur spikes up and turns a feverish red. He writhes in Naruto's grip, whapping the blonde in the face and forcing himself free. Akamaru is quick to jump back to Kiba's side, snarling in a way that doesn't suit his small frame.

My eyes go wide and my mouth falls open. "What—?"

"Military rations pills," Kakashi explains smartly. "That's what Kiba fed Akamaru and that's what he's popping into his mouth now."

"Rations pills?" I repeat, affronted. "That's hardly fair! Naruto probably doesn't even know they exist, let alone realize what they do!"

I watch as Kiba crouches down into position and Akamaru leaps onto his master's back. Akamaru barks before subsequently transforming into a Kiba look-alike. Then Kiba's chakra levels spike and his overall appearance becomes even more feral and primitive.

Naruto protests Kiba's use of the pills, but his cries of outrage are at once dismissed by Hayate. Naruto doesn't have time to waste anyway because Kiba and Akamaru launch themselves at him, moving so quickly they appear only as blurs. Naruto throws himself out of the way and manages to escape with a single scratch to his arm. But Kiba would be a fool to allow Naruto a moment of rest. He and Akamaru charge in for another attack, grazing the top of Naruto's head, and then they double back around, but Naruto jumps into the air, avoiding this bombardment too.

Kiba and Akamaru skid to a stop, although their pause doesn't last long. They leap for Naruto once more, but this time they twist their bodies and turn into two whirling dervishes, crossing over each other like a double helix. And this time, Naruto isn't able to get out of their way fast enough.

Naruto is pounded from every angle and plummets to the ground once he's free of Kiba's attack. As Naruto struggles to push himself up, Kiba laughs arrogantly and taunts him. Too bad Kiba doesn't realize that all this will do is push Naruto to work even harder. Teamwork, I think with a deep breath. Whether Kiba understands what he's doing or not, he is only proving to help Naruto become a better ninja.

"Get up, Naruto!" Sakura calls.

And get up he does.

"Stubborn, stubborn," Rei tsks, and I flinch. "Your friends are putting on quite the show, aren't they?"

I unravel the words with the vibrations as quickly as they come, but even the faint whisper of them is enough to make my head spin. If I don't acknowledge her words, I think as Naruto manages to dodge yet another one of Kiba and Akamaru's spiraling attacks, then maybe she'll stop bothering me. But my tactic proves to be futile.

"I've decided that I like them," she says, and I try to keep my attention focused as keenly as I can on Naruto's match. "I'd love to be formally introduced to them sometime."

Kiba and Akamaru tear up the floor of the arena with their jutsu, kicking up debris and clouds of dust that obscure their vision. I guess seeing isn't an issue for them, though, considering the fact that their sense of smell can be used to find Naruto through the haze.

"Ignoring me won't get you answers, Ren," chides Rei as the dust in the arena clears and reveals three Kiba's all making way for each other. "Remember? Answers? You wanted some, didn't you? Or am I wrong?"

With my teeth bared, I tear my eyes away from the match to glare at her. She grins and waggles her dainty little fingers at me. Not _now_, I think, drumming my fingers against the rail. Any other time, but not now. This is no time for her to be asking me for my undivided attention because there are more important matters at hand.

She cocks her head to the side and furrows her brow as though she is honestly confused. But the smirk she carries on her lips tells me more than enough about how she's truly feeling: Condescension. Pity.

"Are you telling me that these people are more important to you than breaking the bond?" she asks, scornful disbelief in her voice. "What have you become, Ren? Letting these inferior bonds get in the way of your life's mission. How utterly pathetic."

_Don't listen to her,_ the bond soothes, sending shivers down my spine. _They're not so bad, these ties. Nothing short of miraculous. Embrace them, embrace them…_

My brain is on the verge of bursting. Too many disembodied voices at once. God, if someone could see what goes on inside my head, I'd be put in a psyche ward posthaste. I shut my eyes tightly and focus the vibrations together. I will Rei to speak again so I can sense the frequencies of her voice and block them from my ears, but she doesn't. The sly witch.

"New technique?" Sakura says suddenly, aghast. "When did he have time to come up with that?"

I open my eyes in time to see a barrage of shuriken be fired at Naruto as Kiba tries to keep him from releasing his new technique. Naruto is able to dodge all the throwing stars, luckily, but it does delay the implication of his new jutsu. In the time that Naruto manages to recover from dodging the stars, Kiba comes up behind him, poised for what could be a devastating blow.

And there is a devastating blow, but not in the way we had been anticipating: It comes from Naruto and takes the form of a fart. I don't know whether to laugh or be embarrassed or totally appalled by Naruto.

"The idiot must have been concentrating too hard," I say, slapping a hand to my face as Kiba plugs his overly sensitive nose and stumbles back. That's what he gets though, I suppose, for putting his face so close to Naruto's ass.

Seeing Kiba discombobulated, Naruto takes this chance to go through with his new technique. He makes four clones that, on his signal, swarm Kiba. One knocks Kiba onto his back, and three circle him and kick him airborne. The final Naruto brings a foot down mercilessly on Kiba and sends the boy slamming into the ground with a force strong enough to knock the oxygen from his lungs. The way he moves is reminiscent of Sasuke's barrage, which only goes to show another way that Naruto is growing from his old, reckless self. He's learning from what he observes and employs the new tactics to his advantage. What a wonder.

Hayate kneels beside Kiba to confirm that Naruto has won the match before formally declaring it. Sakura erupts into a chorus of cheers and I clap lamely beneath them as Naruto makes his way back up to the second level. I've lost my enthusiasm for these matches now. Rei has, once again, worn me out with her mere presence. I want these preliminaries to be over already so I can escape her. So long as we're still here, though, I should at least try to keep standing no matter what she plans on throwing at me.

"Nice going, Naruto," I say, patting his head once he reaches us. Up close, he looks much more battered and bruised. He has cuts on his cheek and arms that I hadn't noticed when he was down in the arena, and his clothes seem even dinkier than they had during the match.

"It was nothing!" he chimes, unscrewing the cap on a small bottle. I blink at it as he scoops a small amount out on his finger and scrutinizes it.

I feel compelled to ask, "Where'd you get that?"

"Hmm?" He twists his mouth in thought as he smears the salve over a wound. "Hinata gave it to me. She said it's an ointment for—wow!" he exclaims as his cut begins to smoke and heal. "This stuff really works! D'you want to try some, Sakura-chan?" he asks, offering her the small container when he sees her gazing on curiously.

Sakura declines, although she still looks confused by the way Naruto's skin had reacted to the salve. It's not like it's normal, anyway. That's the fox demon's chakra at work.

"The next match," Hayate says, motioning to the scoreboard, which finishes for him in pixel-y letters that read, _Hyuuga Hinata vs. Hyuuga Neji_.

Family against family, is that it? These exams have a funny way of taking care of business. First conveniently having Sasuke go first, then putting Sakura against Ino, and finally this. If I didn't know any better, I'd think that all this is rigged.

Neji enters the arena leisurely, with an aura that he knows he's going to win. Hinata makes her appearance hesitantly, keeping her body stiff and her limbs close. Her body language screams fear. Even when she speaks there is a slight tremble to her voice. It makes me doubt that she'll be able to hold her own during this fight, especially with the way Neji carries himself so confidently.

"I never dreamed that we'd find ourselves fighting each other," Neji says tensely. "Lady Hinata."

"Brother Neji," she acknowledges and Naruto starts.

"She's his sister?" says Naruto, his eyes darting between the two quickly.

"Not quite," I say, frowning at the scene of the two facing off. I don't like this one bit. Maybe it's the way Hinata makes herself out to be so fragile, but I have a feeling this isn't going to end well.

"Both are members of Konoha's oldest and most illustrious family," Kakashi explains, "through whose veins flows the most elite and accomplished blood—the Hyuuga clan. But they're not brother and sister."

"Then how are they related?" asks Sakura.

"Distantly," I say with a look to Kakashi. "They're cousins, basically."

"It's more complicated," he says. "I guess you could say that they're related in the same way that a tree branch is related to the trunk."

"Yes!" agrees Lee. "Hinata-san is a member of the main house of the Hyuuga clan, and Neji is a member of the branch house that supports it."

"So it's family fight family," Sakura says. "That'll be hard on both of them."

"Yes," Lee says again and goes on carefully, "but there's been a strain between the main house and branch house of the Hyuuga clan for some time. Relations aren't exactly friendly." Lee's gaze flashes to the two Hyuuga down in the ring as though trying to see physical proof of the tension between them before he continues. "I don't know the details of it, but it sounds like a pretty common tale among older families. The first generation of the Hyuuga clan made all sorts of rules and decrees that favored the main house of the family in order to preserve the family line and retain the purity of their blood. It's said that the branch house still holds a grudge to this day."

Lee has the basic gist of the situation between the two houses. I can attest to that. I know the story of the Hyuuga clan quite well. Their situation isn't much different than mine after all. I had researched the Hyuuga clan in the very beginnings of my quest to find a way to break the bond. But the main issue that kept coming up was that the bond between the Hyuuga main and branch houses is a tradition of sorts, whereas the bond between the Kagiru and the Uchiha had been made on a foolish whim. Not to mention the curse placed on the Hyuuga branch house is one that has to be implemented on each person within the branch, whereas mine is one passed on through blood.

My fingers tighten around the rail as Hayate begins the match. Neither Hinata or Neji make a move and they end up staring at each other for a few apprehensive moments. Then Neji speaks.

"Before we begin," he says placidly. "There is something I'd like to say, Lady Hinata."

This catches Hinata's attention. She allows Neji to go on, although I'm sure that even if she hadn't wanted him to speak, she wouldn't have protested. She is, to say the least, too frightened and nervous to stand up to Neji, despite the fact that she is in the main house and has power over him. She's just too soft.

"You're not cut out to be a shinobi," Neji says contemptuously. "Withdraw from the match. You're all sweetness and light. You wish for harmony and avoid conflict. You agree with others without resisting and you have no self-confidence."

Well, what a way to start. For someone who comes from the branch house, Neji sure has some nerve speaking to Hinata the way he is. Not that I should talk. I had about the same flagrant disregard for my family and the Uchiha. Besides, what he says, I think, has some cruel truth to it. I can't see Hinata fighting and risking her life like other shinobi. Being part of the main house, maybe she was raised to be more of one of the protected, not a protector.

"You have a world class inferiority complex," Neji continues. "That's why I think you'd be more comfortable staying a Genin. But the exams can only be taken by three man teams, so you went along with it for the sake of your teammates, didn't you? So from the start, you've been a reluctant participant, haven't you?"

"Ah, I—I," Hinata stutters, fidgeting on her feet. She keeps her eyes diverted from her cousin, but I can tell by the way her gaze seems unfocused that she has other things on her mind. "N-no. I…I really have been meaning to change myself, so of my own choice, I—"

"As I thought, Lady Hinata," Neji retorts, irritated. "You are a spoiled brat of the main house. People cannot change themselves!"

I clip my hair behind my ear, scowling as Hinata becomes disheartened by Neji's lecturing.

"Losers are losers. Their personality and strength will not—"

Bloom or develop or morph into something more.

Neji and I aren't so different in a certain respect, but it still doesn't keep me from being bothered by the words coming out of his mouth. When he puts it the way he does, it makes me feel like I'm back with my parents, being told what to do, how to do it, and that I must do it. Listening to Neji makes me want to defy his every rule and break from the mold he has set for the world.

That's when I decide: I don't agree with him. Because it's not a matter of _will_ these people change, but a matter of if they _can_ change, if they're _willing_ to change. Change is not something we can bypass or opt out of. It is forcibly set upon us by the attitudes and harassments of the people who support and oppose us, by the events that make and break us, and from them we must be the ones to choose to blossom in the sunlight or shrink back into the shadows. But no matter which we decide, it will not keep us from morphing and transforming and taking on new manifestations.

Something must come out of everything. No energy can be wasted, no cause left without an effect. The result of that something, that energy, that cause, that is change. And we must make the most out of it. We cannot always keep choosing to shrink into nonexistence.

Hinata recognizes this.

I breathe in deeply, my throat drying out from the heavy intake of stale air. They need better ventilation in this room to help shake out the tension that gathers here. Not every detail can be satisfied, I guess.

Teamwork. I could laugh at the irony of this moment. Even without my consent, _teamwork_ has wormed its way into my mindset and eaten everything I used to believe in so vehemently. And now, with the help of these people I had so brusquely pushed away and rejected, I must create a new mentality, one that will work more effectively than my previous thought process had.

And I have to trust and believe with everything that I am that this will work. Anyway, what do I have to lose?

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!  
**


	31. Soft Spot

**Bound  
Chapter 31: Soft Spot**

But regardless of what Hinata had previously stuttered about wanting to change herself, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that she will actually follow through with it. She stands there, shaken by Neji's words, when anyone else would have snapped and launched themselves at him to prove him wrong. At least, by now, _I_ would have.

She must have been told from the very beginning the words that are streaming from Neji's mouth. She must believe that she's weak and useless and hopeless. She wouldn't be so psyched out otherwise. While she may realize that she can't continue the way she is, she isn't keeping herself from becoming smaller and smaller in Neji's eyes. How does she expect to grow when she can't shake these insults off her back and improve upon them?

Neji continues to blabber about how people are judged and discriminated against, how there are the elite of us and the failures, and how there is nothing we can do to change our destinies. I don't know why he keeps running his mouth. He wants to mess with her head, I understand that, but I hope he doesn't think that talking her ear off is going to help him win. Besides, if he already knows that he can beat Hinata, he should just get it over with and quit making the poor girl suffer.

"I've seen many things with this Byakugan," he is saying as I twist my hands around the rail, dying to shut him up. "And so I know this: This courage you're displaying is just a bluff. In the truest part of your heart, you're desperate to run away from here right now."

Hinata sputters a defense that is ineffective against Neji as Sakura asks Kakashi, "Byakugan? What's he talking about?"

The Byakugan of the Hyuuga clan: A kekkei genkai belonging to the Hyuuga that Sasuke's Sharingan can be traced back to, Kakashi explains.

"It's similar to the Sharingan," Kakashi continues, "but in its penetrating perceptive ability, it surpasses the Sharingan completely."

The vibrations buzz as Neji activates the Byakugan, veins cobwebbing from the outer edge of his eyes all the way back to his temples. Hinata freezes at the sight of them. Her gaze shifts back and forth and she brings her hand up to her mouth as she bites her lip.

This show of insecurity makes me nervous for Hinata. She has to realize that what Neji is saying can't possibly be true because, if it were, there wouldn't be a point to much anything. That's why she has to prove this asshole wrong. Or at least put up a fight. She can't let him walk all over her like this.

"Just now," Neji says, cocking his head to the side thoughtfully, continuing to deprecate Hinata although he has already made his point quite thoroughly. "When you averted your eyes to escape my stare. You glanced toward the upper left, recalling a painful past experience. Then when you glanced to the lower left, you were envisioning your own mental and physical agony. You were foreseeing your own defeat. Even now as you bring your arms up as though to shield yourself, your body is signaling a desire to put distance between us. You don't want me to keep digging deeper into your heart because everything I have said so far as been spot on."

"Trust us," I growl, glaring down at Neji, "no one wants to hear you blabber anymore." Nobody needs a Byakugan to see what he's describing in any case. So long as you have a basic idea of knowledge of body language or, you know, some smidge of _empathy_, you can tell how Hinata is feeling. And I can tell that Hinata is on the verge of tears. She is on the verge of breaking along every crack that has been beaten into her soul. She is on the verge of giving up.

"The way you're touching your lip is another one of those behaviors," Neji says contemptuously. The vibrations simper around him, taking in the chakra he's emanating from his Byakugan. "It expresses your attempts to quell your anxiety and doubts. It's completely clear whether you admit it or not that you can never change yourself!"

"YES SHE CAN," Naruto hollers, on edge. The vibrations snap and deflate, returning to their normal frequencies as Neji is distracted by Naruto's blaring voice. "You can't just go on yapping like this, deciding these things for people! Show him, Hinata! Beat this idiot up!"

Hinata blinks at Naruto in awe, the faintest flush creeping across her face, and Naruto continues his speech.

"Or, you know, at least talk back to him," he encourages. "Just hearing him has made _me_ made and it's _you_ who has to fight him."

Neji takes a moment to scowl at Naruto before giving Hinata his undivided attention again. To his surprise, the expression Hinata holds on her face is one of sheer determination. The tears are gone, the cowering and whimpering girl stripped away. She has taken Naruto's words to heart and she will not back down.

I sigh, patting my hair down as Naruto grins down at the girl. Trust him to always say the right thing in the most obnoxious ways possible. I smile at the hopeless fool adoringly and muss his hair. He swats my hand away with a frown.

"Come on, Ren," he complains. "I'm trying to watch."

"Right," I laugh with a shake of my head. "Sorry."

"You're not going to forfeit?" Neji almost laments. "Then I won't be held responsible for what happens here."

Immediately, my mood is shot. My blood simmers at his statement and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The bond starts to kick in. I am instantly, irrationally protective of Hinata with every fiber of my being. I think it's the small but extremely significant ways that make her similar to Sasuke: She's part of the Hyuuga main house, like Sasuke is—was—part of the Uchiha's main house. Not to mention, if the rumors about the Uchiha being descendents of the Hyuuga, then maybe the bond recognizes the familiar blood—however miniscule the familiar portion may be—and latches onto it because Sasuke isn't around.

"If things get out of hand," Kakashi says softly to me, "remember: Hinata is our concern. The medics don't get involved nearly quick enough. Ren—"

"Even if she wasn't part of the main house," I interject, blowing my hair from my face, "she would still be my main concern."

Hinata activates her Byakugan and the vibrations flurry once more, bending to her will. They swim around her body in perfect swinging motions, flowing, ebbing, careful, precise. Her feet slide into position and she raises her hands daintily, one higher than the other.

"I don't want to run anymore," she announces. "Brother Neji: let's fight."

Neil sighs, relenting, and the vibrations begin to take to his form too. They, like the vibrations around Hinata, swirl elegantly as he takes a stance identical to Hinata's. The veins around his eyes bulge, spindling across his temples as before.

"They have the same Hyuuga style after all," Lee mutters, fisting his fingers. "Their stances are exactly the same!"

My teammates inquire after what Lee could mean, but I tune them out because there's no reason for me to be lectured on something I already know.

It probably seems a little odd that I know so much about a clan with whom I'm hardly ever associated. But I mentioned before about how the Hyuuga relationship between their main and branch houses isn't so different from that of the Uchiha-Kagiru relationship, right? The Hyuuga branch house is there to serve the main branch, protect them to the end of their lives, at the cost of their lives without question. They know that it's their duty and uphold it with pride. (Or so my father said. But it's evident in the way that Neji acts toward Hinata that he has nothing but resentment for his cousin.)

My father believed that the Hyuuga branch house's attitude toward the Hyuuga main house was the paragon of loyalty and said that it was important for me to adopt the same kind of approach when it came to the Uchiha, Sasuke especially because he was my charge. This was what gave me the idea to dig into the Hyuuga clan's history before I left the village six years ago, which is why my knowledge of their clan is so extensive. Not that it really helped me in finding a way to break the bond. Their curse was easier than mine, more simple.

I hadn't understood how the branch house handled their enslavement so well when I could barely stand the blood oath. Then again, they were all family. And Neji here is a prime example of how sometimes that isn't enough to keep one from rebelling. Admittedly, I should be more sympathetic to Neji's situation. He's damned with the knowledge that he may someday have to give up his life for a member of the main house, that his life and experience may someday be wasted for the sake of someone he may or may not be on good terms with, just like me. But I find it hard to relate to him when he's being so abrasive toward a girl who, until a few moments ago, was shaken by his mere presence.

I realize I'm being unfair, judging Neji so terribly when I treat Sasuke the same way, but the main difference is that Sasuke can hold himself up. He, unlike Hinata, doesn't step down when I challenge him. He can handle himself.

_Not that he should be forced to take care of himself always,_ a small voice chides me and I'm surprised and alarmed to find that it's not the familiar nagging voice of the bond but my own. _You already tried that, and look where it's landed you._

Hinata and Neji move in for an attack and I'm snapped out of my musings by the waves of vibrations that emanate from them. Hinata presses her hand forward. Neji ducks and knocks her arm away by the wrist, careful not to touch his hand to her. Their motions are graceful and, in a certain respect, almost polite. There are no gruff punches or quick blocks that are followed up by any kind of rough fighting that had been previously displayed in matches prior. Their feet skitter around each other like they're dancing until Hinata finds an opening, skids her foot back and slams her palm into Neji's chest.

Neji stumbles for a second before regaining his footing. Hinata promptly raises her hands back into their original position, defensive.

"Did she get him?" Sakura asks.

"No, it was just a scratch," says Naruto, dismayed.

"But a scratch is all it takes," Lee explains. "That's why the Hyuuga are the most illustrious family in Konoha."

"The Hyuuga have a special taijutsu that's been passed down from one generation to the next," elaborates Gai. "Unlike the taijutsu that Lee and I specialize in, which is all about bruises and broken bones—a style that you could call 'iron fist'—the Hyuuga clan employs the 'gentle fist' to inflict damage to the enemy's keirakukei, through which the chakra flows. That leads to the breakdown of the internal organs, destroying the foe from within. It doesn't look like much, but the effect grows gradually after the initial attack."

"There's no way of strengthening the internal organs," Kakashi adds, "so any enemy struck with that blow is going to succumb."

"What kind of people are they to be attacking the keirakukei?" Sakura mutters as Neji comes at Hinata with another attack. Hinata swiftly pushes him back, however, dodging and manipulating his movements.

"Hey, hey," Naruto says, turning away from the match for a moment. "What's this keirakukei thing, anyway?"

Sakura groans at Naruto's confounding cluelessness and Lee takes the stand to explain for her.

"The keirakukei is a network of energy lines spread throughout our bodies, like our veins," he says. "It's a system of vessels that carries our chakra through our bodies."

"Like passage ways for our chakra, huh?" Naruto repeats.

"Yes," Lee affirms. "But it's also delicately intertwined with the organs that manipulate chakra. If you attack the keirakukei, then the inner organs suffer as well."

Naruto grins at Lee's intellect and remarks, "Hey, you're actually really smart" for which he gets berated by Sakura for being rude. Sakura, seeing Naruto fittingly punished, considers Lee's words and says, "It just doesn't seem possible. I mean, the keirakukei is just a track of energy lines within the body. How do you attack something you can't see?"

"With their Byakugan," Kakashi says, "they can see it. Besides, the attacks of the gentle fist style are different from normal attacks. You take your chakra and release it through the energy portals in your hands, forcing it into the body of your foe where it can do massive damage to the keirakukei."

Besides, I think, using the Hyuuga technique, to even hit in the general area of the targeted organ can hurt your opponent. The way your chakra spreads through your opponent's body disrupts their normal flow because the foreign chakra, in a way, contaminates their keirakukei.

Neji, despite being fantastically countered by Hinata, doesn't appear anymore impressed by Hinata's skill than he had been at the beginning of the match. He shoots forward and catches Hinata when she tries to graze his shoulder. Two fingers, pressed into her right bicep, and a hand slammed against the left side of her chest. Right for her heart.

Hinata lurches. Her eyes widen. Blood spurts from her lips.

In the wake of our shock, Hinata simply reels her hand back, finding that she must use Neji's close proximity to her gain before she loses it. But Neji catches her hand by the wrist and jabs two fingers into her forearm.

I realize: The chakra around Hinata no longer weaves around her as strongly as it had with the vibrations. The vibrations still move delicately with her form, but their attraction to her chakra has weakened so gradually and so much that I had hardly sensed it as it decreased.

Neji tightens his hold on Hinata's wrist and pushes her sleeve up. Along her arm, small bright red dots puncture her skin. Hinata inhales sharply.

"So," she says. "From the very beginning."

"Yes," Neji admits, unwavering. "My eyes can see tenketsu."

I take a deep breath. Although Neji may be the antagonist in this situation, I can't help but be amazed by his skill. The tenketsu—as Kakashi explains to Naruto—are points along the keirakukei. They are no larger than the tip of a needle—which is why, during this battle, it's so impressive that Neji has been able to accurately pinpoint them—and, when hit accurately, the manipulator may influence the pathways of their opponent's chakra any way they please, from enhancing their opponent's chakra to stopping it from circulating to certain areas completely.

My mother had a diagram of the keirakukei that she showed me once during my lessons. Someone had taken on the painstaking duty of poking holes along the keirakukei picture where the tenketsu were, so that when the diagram was pinned against a shoji door, light would leak through and the tender spots would glow.

I would be lying if I said I didn't want to learn how to master using the tenketsu to my advantage. I'm a medic after all; I could control my chakra enough to be able to press those points and use my opponent to my benefit. There isn't much I can think to do with vibrations alone, I mean. Besides, the Genshindou takes up too much of my energy. Learning the tenketsu locations would be easier. In theory.

Not that that would ever work. The exact locations of tenketsu can only be estimated without the Byakugan, since not everybody keirakukei moves the same way. Depending on the way you use your chakra, the points could be closer than usual or farther apart. There are too many variables to take into consideration when trying to memorize the network of tenketsu, my mother said. The technicalities of it would be enough to distract a shinobi from being able to pay attention to any other threats that are present in a real battle.

Neji throws his palm into Hinata's chest once again, knocking her back. She slides along the arena floor as Neji speaks and I know once he starts my admiration from him will dissipate faster than it had come. "Hinata-sama, this is the difference in talent that can never change," he says. "This is the difference that divides an elite from a loser. This is the unchangeable reality. From the moment you said you wouldn't run, your defeat was inevitable. The only possible outcome was your present despair. Withdraw," he advises once more.

The breaths that come from Hinata are ragged from the effects of the gentle fist. But she pushes herself to her feet and says, "I won't go back on my word. Because that is also my shinobi way."

At this, she takes a brief moment to look at Naruto, as though to confirm that this is the right decision. When she sees that he is watching her intently in return, I'm sure that her resolve sets in stone. And, I mean, it really is nice that Naruto has given her the courage and support she needs to keep fighting, but at this rate, things aren't going to be all fine and dandy for her in the end. But, if she's anything like Naruto now, she won't be stopping until she absolutely cannot continue any more.

"Good god," I moan, massaging the space between my brows. "How do you get these ideas into people's heads so easily, Naruto? Honestly."

Sakura grins and Naruto says, "Wha—but this is Hinata. I never knew she was this incredible."

"She's a lot like you," Lee agrees.

"Yeah," Sakura says. "I've noticed that she's always watching you, Naruto."

Naruto blinks at Sakura, oblivious as to what she could mean or why Hinata would want to watch him, but doesn't worry about it for too long. He goes back to observing the match.

Hinata's chakra flickers weakly as she tries to reactivate her Byakugan. The strain proves to be too much on her body, however, and she ends up hacking up more blood.

Every move Neji has made in this match has been pristinely calculated. By cutting off her chakra flow by means of the tenketsu, he has nullified the effectiveness of the gentle fist. By wasting no time in attacking her most vital organ, he has destroyed any chances of her making it out of this match safely.

"It's almost not fair," Sakura notes quietly. "This guy's level of strength is just too much for her."

I purse my lips. I don't want to sound like a pessimist, but at this point, it would only serve well for Hinata if she forfeits. Should she continue—

"You can do it, Hinata!" cries Naruto, gripping the rail so tightly that his knuckles turn white, and without a doubt Hinata's chakra sparks and flares. The veins along the side of her eyes bulge as the Byakugan is reactivated, and she darts forward.

Her hand flies for Neji's shoulder. He ducks and retaliates with a shot for Hinata's left arm. She swings out of the way, leans toward Neji, her hand shooting out to hit his ribcage. Another swift move to the right is enough for Neji to avoid the attack, but Hinata brings her other hand forward, right to the spot Neji settles himself into, and for a second it seems that she's got this hit, but Neji shifts marginally and meets Hinata's wrist with his, diverting the hit and knocking Hinata off balance.

She sinks forward. Neji thrusts his hand up and clips her jugular, the heel of his hand crashing into her jaw and sending her reeling backward once more.

She staggers, coughs. More blood drains from her mouth and when she raises her head, there are streams of light scarlet dripping down from the corners of her lips, disappearing under her jaw.

My fingers drum the railing anxiously, knowing that this match is getting way out of hand. I wait for Hayate to call it in Neji's favor, but so long as Hinata remains standing, nothing will be said. Just because she's still on her feet doesn't mean that she should be allowed to continue! From looking at her, I can tell that she's not going to make it farther and the damage that Neji has dealt her will only continue to grow worse that more she wears herself out. Her heart—her heart especially. You cannot take its strength for granted. You should not overestimate its ability to endure even the simplest attacks.

At this rate, she will not make it.

But she still barrels forward, she still retains her determination to prove herself, though she is moving too slow and her stance is full of openings. Openings that Neji doesn't let slip past him.

He steps forward, jabbing his hand into her diaphragm, and stopping her from coming any closer. Hinata's breath catches in her throat, her pearly white eyes widening as more blood spews from her mouth and stains the front of her shirt. She doubles over when Neji moves away and then falls on her face, another stream of crimson spurting from her lips as she collapses.

I grimace at the sight of the defeated girl. Looking to Kakashi, I wait to see if it's our cue to intervene, but he doesn't show any sign that we're to get involved yet. I sigh heavily, aggravated, and glowering into the arena.

An aunt I had who was a psychiatrist once told me: "It's advised that one considers their goals before making any major changes in their life." Shame she never mentioned how quickly we should approach the process of changing or achieving our goals. Because Hinata is making a major change to her life at the present, but I don't think that she has her goals sorted out. I understand that she wants to change and that she wants to become a better person and that, probably, she wants the most important person to her to recognize her as a strong person, but to tackle all these things at once—it's enough to overwhelm anyone.

"You don't understand anything," Neji is saying. "From the beginning, your attacks have done nothing."

"A deciding blow to the heart," Gai notes grimly. "I feel bad for her, but she won't be standing anytime soon."

And then, at last, Hayate raises his hand and says, somewhat rushed, "Seeing as how the match can no longer continue, I—"

"Don't stop it!" demands Naruto, startling me. I narrow my eyes at the blonde boy and hiss, "What are you doing, Naruto?"

Sakura is in agreement with me. "Really, what are you saying!" she says, frowning. "She's at her limit; she's already collapsed!"

"No," Naruto says with a grin and Sakura and I exchange looks. "Come on, Hinata!"

We redirect our gazes back to the arena. I can't speak for Sakura, but I am alarmed to find Hinata pushing herself to her feet, holding onto her side. She's more foolish than Naruto! She should stay down if she knows what's good for her, but no, she continues to straighten up and face Neji, a triumphant smile on her face.

"Goddammit," I curse, bringing my fist down on the railing. "What is she—!"

"Acting tough is useless," Neji sneers. "You can barely stand; I can see that. You were burdened from birth with the destiny of the Hyuuga main house. You've hated yourself for your own weakness and frailty, but you can't fight your nature or change your fate. There's no need for you to suffer anymore; just _let it go_."

"You're wrong, Brother Neji," she says, almost pitying the older boy. "I can see it now that, more than me, it is _you_ who are torn and suffering, caught between the destinies of the main house and the branch house of our clan."

As Hinata speaks, Neji's chakra flashes, and by the time she's finished, he is charging at her once again. This time I don't have to wait or watch for a signal because I know: _Now._

I grip the rail tightly in my hand and leap over it, directly into Neji's path. The vibrations respond to my sudden movement by swirling alongside me as I stand before Neji, my hands poised to send the vibrations reeling at him, but, just as quickly, there are Jounin all around me. Hayate stands not centimeters behind me, one arm outstretched to tap Neji's headband. Kakashi and Kurenai each have one of Neji's wrists and Gai has his arms wrapped around his pupil's head.

"Ren," Kakashi acknowledges, and jerks his head toward Hinata.

"Right," I mumble, glaring at Neji while Gai quietly berates him. I shuffle around Hayate as the Jounin one by one detach themselves from Neji. "Hi, Hinata," I say and she blinks at me, puzzled. "Not sure we've been formally introduced. I'm Kagiru Ren. Nice to meet you. But if you could, I'd feel a lot better if you would sit down."

She continues to stare at me, looking like a deer in the headlights. I sigh and reach for her just as a shudder passes over her body. Her eyes go wide and foggy and blood suddenly deluges her mouth. I grab her as she starts to fall and lower her to the ground carefully, laying her on her back.

"Hinata!" Kurenai cries and is at once by her student's side. Gritting my teeth, I run my hands down Hinata's arms, chest, and stomach. I roll up her sleeve at once and, administering chakra to the tips of my index and middle finger, begin tapping the red spots where Neji has blocked her chakra. Without her chi congesting her keirakukei, it'll be easier on her chakra-sensitive organs, her heart in particular, which is the main concern here considering what Neji has done to her.

"Hey, Hinata!" prods Naruto, somehow appearing next to me, kneeling to check Hinata's condition. "Are you all right?"

"She doesn't look good," Sakura says and I look up to find her standing a ways from Hinata's feet. "She's so pale."

"We really don't need people crowding her at the moment," I say, pressing my hands to Hinata's wrists to feel her heartbeat. It's slow, rough. Each beat isn't a soft thud like a normal heartbeat, but a struggling convulsion every few seconds. Hinata's eyelids flutter, but they don't manage to stay open very long. "That's right, sleep," I huff. "It'll be easier on all of us."

"Hey. The failure over there."

Naruto meets my gaze, confused, before he turns to see Neji scowling at him.

"A couple words of advice," Neji says. "One: A true shinobi would have too much class to make a spectacle of himself by cheering during a serious match. Two: You might as well accept who you are. Once a failure, _always_ a failure."

Naruto, riled up, glowers at Neji and gets to his feet. "Want to try me?" he growls and Neji smirks. I know what's coming before it happens.

"Naruto, don't—!" My protests are wasted as Naruto runs at Neji. Luckily, Lee jumps into Naruto's way, arms outstretched, barricading Naruto from going any farther. Naruto skids to a stop in time to keep from ramming into the other boy.

"Naruto-kun," Lee says easily, "I understand almost painfully well what you're feeling, but we should limit the fighting to the matches. Whether a loser can defeat an elite through sheer force of will—that's something to look forward to in the final rounds, even when his opponent could very well be me. But Naruto-kun, if it's you in the finals, there will be no hard feelings!"

Naruto frowns and rolls his eyes. "Yeah," he admits grudgingly. "All right, I get it, okay?"

Hinata emits a sickening gurgle sound that garners my undivided attention. Remembering my training, I take a deep breath and focus in on my patient closely. I move the vibrations so that they encase her securely, but not so tight that she will feel any discomfort. This allows me to keep track of her heartbeats better as I keep my fingers on her wrist. The vibrations fluctuate in time with her pulse, which accelerates, stutters, and nearly flat-lines, and then stutters again.

I curse as blood, for the nth time, ejects from Hinata's mouth. I curse again as Kurenai's hands flutter to Hinata's chest, and she feels exactly what I had. When she moves her hands away, I take over. Placing one hand on the right side of her chest and one hand on her lower ribcage, I send little shocks of my chakra into her body, trying to stabilize her heartbeats. Faintly, I hear Kurenai calling for the other medics, the ones that are supposed to be doing what I am so desperately trying to achieve.

"Hey, kid!" one of the medics shouts at me. "What do you think—"

"Her heartbeat is erratic," I explain quickly, sending another wave of chakra into Hinata's system. "She has to be stabilized. Where's the stretcher?" I demand when the medic stares at me blankly. "Come on, what do you think you can do? She's not going to last out here! If the rate at which you come to a dying person's aid is any indication for how fast you work, she's especially not going to get better at _your_ hands."

Another medic swarms Hinata, pressing his hands to Hinata's chest, and his face darkens. "Girl's right," he mumbles and shouts over his shoulder, "She doesn't have ten minutes! Let's get her to the emergency room, right away! Move it! You too, kid," he says, jerking his thumb to signal that I can leave. "Get out of the way."

"You—"

I'm cut off when I'm lifted up by my armpits and set on my feet. Kakashi nods at me as I shake him off and the medics lift Hinata onto a stretcher. Naruto is brushed out of the way and he stares after Hinata as she's carried away. His fingers clench into angry clubs and he glares fiercely at Neji, who only scowls in response.

Naruto bends down, sweeping his hand through a pool of Hinata's blood. He stands, raising a fist, blood oozing from between his fingers. "You," he says to Neji, "are going down."

Neji scoffs, and leads the group gathered in the arena back to the second level. I brush off my shirt, secretly lamenting that I'd gotten my new clothes dirty. "I'm not even going to fight," I sigh, retying my belt. Here I was, hoping to not get involved, and now I'm falling all over myself trying to help these people. I'm really in over my head.

It doesn't seem so bad.

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	32. Finalists

**Bound  
Chapter 32: Finalists**

When I have a chilling feeling that I'm being watched, I look up to the second level, directly into the eyes of Rei. She has her elbows propped up on the rail and her head in her hands, smiling down at me as if I'm a puppy she considers buying. I glare at her. She waves daintily in return and blows me a kiss.

"What skills you have," her disembodied voice coos in my ear. "You must be happy to be useful for once."

I turn away from her and head back to my group. But even then I know she's still watching me because, for some reason, she doesn't seem to have anything better to do.

"Nice work back there," Kakashi compliments, patting my shoulder as we climb the staircase.

"Whatever," I grumble, pushing Rei out of my head. "'S not like I _did_ anything."

"I didn't know that your medical knowledge was that extensive," Sakura interjects. "I mean, I remember Kakashi-sensei saying something about you coming from a family of medical shinobi, but to have learned that much from them, your training must be rigorous."

I mumble incoherently to avoid admitting anything. Not that my medical training is so super top secret that I can't discuss it. I'd just rather not talk about my family, and to get into my training regime would require that.

"I'll catch up with you guys," I say to Sakura and Kakashi as we cross Shikamaru's team. "I want to see how these guys are doing."

Kakashi and Sakura nod at me and continue on their way. I glance over my shoulder for Naruto, who has been stopped by Kankuro, the Sand boy with the scarecrow. I only have a moment to wonder what Naruto could be doing, fraternizing with the enemy, when Shikamaru calls my name.

"What're you doing?" he asks.

"Just wanted to see how Chouji is holding up, being one of the lasts to go and all that," I say, filling the space beside Shikamaru.

"Yeah, you're in trouble now," Shikamaru says, leaning over the rail to see around Ino and speak to Chouji. "Only the strongest are left. What'll you do? Especially with that Sand guy; the look he has in his eyes worries me." In unison, Chouji, Ino, Shikamaru, and I look over to the opposite side of the room, where Gaara stands on the other level, in order to confirm Shikamaru's observations. Shikamaru's mouth sets in a grim line. "He's the most dangerous type, I feel."

"I'll simply," Chouji says with an apprehensive smile, "withdraw right away! So it won't matter."

Asuma leans down to his pupil's level, his ever present cigarette dangling at his lips, and singsongs, "You'll be giving up your chance for an all-you-can-eat victory barbeque once the exams are over."

"Hey, don't bait him with food," Shikamaru groans and I laugh as Chouji stutters a protest, obviously torn now.

"Don't worry," Asuma says, giving Chouji a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "If things get bad, I'll jump in and stop the fight. Just like with Hinata!"

"You hear that, Chouji?" Ino says excitedly. "You can go for it. Asuma-sensei will be looking out for you."

I scoff and say, "Oh, I'd take his word for it, especially since he was the only one of our Jounin team leaders to not jump in during Hinata's match."

"And Ren here will even lend you a hand," Asuma goes on, winking at me as if I haven't just spoken a word against him. I roll my eyes. "You saw how she took care of Hinata's injuries down there, right? You'll be fine, Chouji. If that's not enough to convince you, just think of all the barbeque!"

"Yes!" Chouji cheers. "All the meat I can eat!"

"Anyway, Shikamaru," I laugh, shaking my head at Chouji's hopelessness. "How're you doing after your match? Your strategy was wonderfully executed if I do say so myself."

Shikamaru shrugs tiredly. "The sooner this is over, the better," he grumbles, massaging his neck. "It's troublesome having to fight these matches so soon after the end of the second exam."

"You know," I say, "it won't totally kill you to be excited about some things."

"Hmph. Is that why Naruto is in such good form?" he asks, lolling his head to the side. "That idiot—"

Shikamaru is cut off by a thundering roar that Chouji releases. We stare at him in shock as he pumps his fists into the air and cries, "I'M SAFE!"

Shikamaru and I peer over at the screen, which announces that the next match will be between Gaara and Rock Lee. Farther down our level, Lee himself is cheering, excited to be going at last. Gaara has already made his way down into the arena and is standing stoically, his arms crossed and his gourd slung over his shoulder on a white sash, waiting for his opponent.

Finally, Lee leaps into the arena, grinning at Gaara. Lee breathes deeply before taking up a stance that looks more like he's posing than getting ready for a fight. I guess being brought up under Gai could do that to you, though.

Before Hayate starts the match, something shoots through the air, right for Lee, who sees it coming and catches it in his hand. He frowns as he holds what looks like the cork from Gaara's gourd.

"Please don't be hasty," he says, tossing the cork aside.

Gaara doesn't answer.

"There's something about that gourd that's not right," I note, squinting at it to try to examine it better. "The vibrations around it are uneasy. It's like there's something inside of it that keeps shifting around."

Shikamaru purses his lips and says, "Everything about that Sand guy seems a little off to me. Lee better be careful with him."

"All right," Hayate announces, raising his hands. "Let's begin the match!"

Immediately, Lee dashes for Gaara. When he's close enough to the other boy, Lee jumps and twists his body in a familiar motion, aiming for Gaara's head. In the few moments before his kick lands, sand erupts from the gourd on Gaara's back and stops Lee's leg. Lee quickly pulls back, but the sand swirls thickly around the two and knocks Lee back with gusto.

I guess it makes sense that Gaara's gourd is filled with sand, since he's from the Sand village, but that doesn't help explain how he's making the sand move so easily without any effort. During the time that Lee has moved and the sand has started weaving, Gaara hasn't shifted an inch.

Lee darts for Gaara once again. The sand slithers in front of him, but Lee changes direction at the last minute, deciding to attack from another angle. He attacks Gaara from the side this time, fist poised for a punch. But again, the sand sprouts up like a wall between them, and this time it engulfs Lee's hand so that he has to kick off of the sand in order to get free.

"Shika," I say, "how do you think he's doing that? He hasn't even lifted a finger and—"

"I don't know," he answers, regarding the two boys in the arena with the utmost concentration, trying to figure it out for himself. "It's weird. His chakra doesn't even fluctuate as the sand moves. It's like it's going all by itself."

I blink at him incredulously. Then I turn and look down our level to where the other Sand boy still stands with Naruto. Naruto has given his attention to Kankuro who seems to be saying something. I adjust the vibrations in order to hear what he's telling Naruto.

"…independent of Gaara's will, protecting his body" Kankuro says, regarding the sand, I'm guessing, which would confirm Shikamaru's theory. "That's why, to this day, there's never been a single person who has ever wounded him."

I startle at this news, releasing the vibrations back to their normal positions. I go back to watching the match as another one of Lee's punches are blocked by a wave of sand. If the sand really does move without Gaara intending it to, then there's no way taijutsu will do anything for Lee, especially not if the sand is able to continue keeping pace with him. By the looks of things, Lee is wearing down faster than Gaara is.

Lee leaps away from Gaara, and the sand comes after him, sprouting up like grabby hands at each spot Lee lands. Lee gets away by jumping atop the statue of the two hands pressed together in a basic seal. The sand doesn't advance any farther, deciding instead to slink back to the ground and settle there while Lee is out of its reach. Gaara gazes up at Lee blankly as Lee tries to figure out what to do next.

"Lee!" booms Gai from the other end of the second level. He presents his underling with a thumbs-up and says, "Take them off!"

I warily look to Gai wondering what he could mean by that. He should probably be more careful with his words before shouting something like that in public.

"B-but!" stutters Lee. "Gai-sensei, you said never to do that unless I was protecting the lives of those precious to me!"

"It's all right," Gai says. "I'll allow it!"

Lee grins at his sensei before making himself comfortable atop the hand structure. He begins to tug his legwarmers off, revealing the band of weights strapped around his ankles. Lee unclips the bands one at a time and, once he's free of them, he appears rejuvenated. He pulls his legwarmers back up, takes a band of weights in each hand, and stands.

"Right!" he cheers, dropping the weights off of the statue. "Now I can move more freely."

We all watch as the bands fall and, unexpectedly, crash into the ground with such force that they break tiles, creating craters where they've landed, and send dust flying. My mouth falls open in disbelief, wondering how Lee could even lift his feet much less _move_ with those things around his ankles.

After Gai gives him the cue to go, Lee jumps off of the statues, flipping through the air and landing behind Gaara. He's a blur of green as he makes to punch Gaara's face, and Lee's fist is centimeters away from its intended target when the sand shoots up in a thin sheet, barely quick enough to deflect the attack. Lee doesn't let this deter him. He slips in front of Gaara and throws his foot up. This time the sand has to catch his foot by his toes in order to stop him.

From then on, I can only see the sand move and a flicker of Lee's attack, but I manage to keep up with the vibrations. An attempted punch from behind, blocked. An aim for Gaara's gut, blocked. And then Lee does a reversal, appearing behind Gaara just slow enough for the boy to turn around face his opponent, but again, Lee is gone, in the air now, tumbling down at Gaara. At the last moment, Lee extends his foot and finally, his hit lands. Lee's heel slams down on Gaara's jaw just as Gaara's sand begins to extend to protect its master, much too late. Lee jumps away, then, to avoid the sand, and watches as Gaara merely straightens up, looking irritated.

"Go, Lee!" cheers Gai. "Explode!"

Ever the obedient student, Lee heads right back in. This time, he's moving so quickly that he's no longer a blur, but a flicker within the arena. The vibrations shift around him, on Gaara's right, then swiftly to Gaara's left. The sand has a late reaction and makes to shield Gaara's right side, leaving him open to Lee's punch from the left, which knocks Gaara back and across the arena. Fortunately for him, the sand catches him, keeping him from sliding against the ground, but the damage has been done.

Beside me, Shikamaru gulps. "Wow," he mutters.

"Yeah," Chouji agrees, his voice trembling. "He's moving so fast I can't even keep track of him!"

I stay quiet because the vibrations begin to surge and fluctuate, pulling toward Gaara as something odd indeed begins to happen. His face begins to crack and crumble, falling off like a mask, and as each piece drops away, the vibrations pulse and heighten and rub against my hands so hard that it feels as if my fingers have gone numb. I take a deep breath and watch as underneath the crumbling face of Gaara, his real visage is shown and, although they have the same complexion, the expression of pure, twisted, sick pleasure that is revealed causes chills to run up and down my spine and my hair to stand on end.

The sand writhes around him, swirling thickly at his feet, and then reaches into the air like the most unruly vines, growing around Gaara, encasing him. Once it has him fully covered, the sand evens out over his body and somehow seems to seep into his skin, keeping the color of his clothes, the folds of the fabric, and the paleness of his face. And at once the vibrations stop tugging toward Gaara, instead settling around him like nothing has happened.

I am both baffled and impressed by this defense that the sand has provided Gaara. But if Lee is able to maintain his speed and strength, it doesn't matter what Gaara does; Lee will get through the sand shield, break the shell, and get to Gaara before the other boy is able to do much. At least, that's the idea.

Lee exchanges a look with his sensei before he starts to unravel the bandages around his hands, and I recognize this move right away. He grins at Gaara before bolting in a circle around the boy, causing eruptions of dust to billow in his wake. The sand feebly scuttles along the ground, trying to follow Lee's movements, but, unsurprisingly, it doesn't seem to know from which angle to protect Gaara.

Gaara is flying through the air before I see Lee kick Gaara's jaw, the same way Sasuke had been sent flying when Lee used this technique against him. Lee subsequently follows Gaara, the sand flying after belatedly, and we can only hear Lee pounding on Gaara as he soars around him. Then, just as with Sasuke, Lee is shadowing Gaara. There is a brief moment of pause wherein Lee winces, the strain this technique is causing him finally showing its effects. But Lee recovers quickly and his bandages wrap around Gaara's body, and they are headed in a spiraling nosedive. At the rate they're plummeting for the arena floor, this move will be the one to end the match.

At the last possible moment, Lee detaches himself from his opponent, who crashes into the ground with such force that pieces of the tile fly into the air, and the cloud of dust caused by the debris is so overwhelming that we can't see the results of Lee's move. Though everyone undoubtedly expects this to be the end of Gaara, I don't think that he will be taken down so simply. Especially when the vibrations don't calm to the normal state of things like it usually does between matches.

The dust clears. In the midst of the tiles that now stick up like ragged spikes, Gaara lies, eyes closed, sand shell cracked all over. Parts of the shell begin to fall away, becoming nothing but streaming sand, collapsing in on itself. Because inside, it is empty.

Stunned, Lee doesn't sense the sand morphing behind him until Gaara appears from it. Even if Lee had felt Gaara's presence earlier, it wouldn't have mattered. Moving so quickly, attacking so brazenly—it must have caused Lee's body to be under so much stress that his muscles won't be responding well to any kind of movement. So as Gaara, crouched and holding his hands together in a seal, sends a tidal wave of sand rushing at him, Lee's body shudders as he tries to push himself out of the way. Seeped of energy, however, Lee is unable to escape the sand and is thrust back, into the wall behind him.

He groans and drops to his knees, helpless. Gaara, without hesitation, sends his sand soaring for Lee again. In a feeble attempt to defend himself, Lee holds his arms in front of his face as the sand crashes into him. There is a splintering crack as the wood walls of the arena break, and the sand's force dies down, simpering to the ground, nothing more than sand once again.

The attack has pushed Lee back so hard that it has created a crater in the wall. Lee, while appearing well worn and beaten, is still upright. His breathing comes in fast, shallow gulps. The boy is a mess, I think, as Gaara's sand begins to take shape again. I don't know how Lee isn't losing consciousness at this very second, but sure enough he's able to roll to the side as Gaara's sand comes slamming down on the place he once rested.

The sand comes after him still, grabbing onto his limbs any chance they can get. Lee manages to break free of the sand's grasp, darting across the arena and landing a second of rest as he waits for the sand to catch up to him. He holds his arms in front of his face once again as the sand charges for him. Down the way, Sakura shouts for him to get out of the way, give up, but the chances of that happening are exactly zero.

Just when it seems like Lee won't be able to dodge the sand this time, Lee leaps out of the way, and again the sand crashes into the ground, breaking the tiles and pulling up dust. The sand sinks into the cracks as a meter away Lee straightens up, striking his pose to egg Gaara on.

I don't understand how he's still standing, how he still looks so well! At this point, Lee should be so wasted from his previous attack that continuing to dodge Gaara's advances is out of the question for him. Lee is pushing himself too hard, and if he keeps going he won't be walking for much longer.

Lee takes a deep breath, crosses his arms in front of his face, and closes his eyes. Curious as to where this could lead, Gaara allows Lee the moment, which could be a grave mistake on his part because Lee's chakra flares and the vibrations around him explode. The air surges with Lee's energy, pulsing and pushing, ripping up the ground around him as he clenches his fists and brings his arms down to his sides. The veins on his forehead pop and his very skin changes a copper red with the eruption of his energy supplies. And then he moves.

The ground is torn up behind him as runs around the arena. Stones fly out of the tail of dust he leaves behind, pelting on us on the second level so roughly that we have to cover our faces, miss part of the match.

When the stones stop hailing on us, we scour the arena for the two fighters, but they're nowhere to be seen.

"Look—there!" Shikamaru says, pointing, and we follow his gaze to find Gaara shooting up into the air, his skin cracking as the sand that encases his body begins to fall away.

"But where's Lee?" Chouji chokes as Gaara's sand reaches for him too late. Before long, Lee makes his presence known, but we can only tell by the way Gaara is mercilessly knocked back and forth in the air without an apparent cause. Lee moves so fast that the vibrations around him throbs violently, like the pumping of a deep bass in a song. And despite the fact that Lee is definitely beating Gaara right now, this can't be good.

Finally, after brutally slamming Gaara around in the air, Lee impales Gaara in the gut, pushing him back to the ground. Lee grips Gaara's sash as the Sand boy falls and, with a fierce tug, pulls Gaara up again like a yo-yo. Then, with a vicious cry, Lee smashes his hand and foot into Gaara's chest.

The blur that is Gaara shoots toward the ground, which bursts upon impact, sending more debris flying at us. Determined to keep my eyes on Lee, I block only the lower half of my face and squint into the arena to keep most of the wayward dust from entering my eyes.

I see Lee tumble out of the air and plummet to the ground gracelessly, landing on his side because, I'm sure, he can't hold himself up, not after that kind of attack. He gasps for breath as he waits for the clouds of dust to disappear so that he can see how his opponent is faring after such an assault. Lee manages to sit up and, as all the plumes of smoke fade away, Gaara is shown. Beneath him, his gourd has become a thin layer of sand, bracing him from the fall. Gaara glares at Lee and holds out a hand to him, as though Gaara is imaging crushing Lee in the palm of his hand at that very second.

From the cracks in the arena floor, sand sprouts up, taking the shape of two monstrous hands. They grab for Lee, who tries to lean his body away from them, but it's no use. He can't even budge in the shape he's in. The sand gets a hold of Lee's left arm and leg, wraps around his two limbs as tightly as they can as Lee struggles to get out of their grip. Lee gets so far as to clamber to his feet, but then the sand tightens, twists, and Lee cries are accompanied by the stomach-turning snap of bones. Blood oozes through the sand, staining the ground.

Gaara doesn't seem satisfied by this, though, because his sand continues to creep in on Lee, rolling around him in a sphere, almost engulfing him completely when, suddenly, the sand is whipped away. As the sand falls away, Gaara sits up and his eyes go wide when he sees Gai standing in front of Lee. Gaara spasms and grips his head as he returns Gai's glare.

"Ren," Kakashi calls my way, and I lean over the rail to acknowledge him and find that, for some reason or another, he's raised his headband off his Sharingan. He jerks in the direction of Gai and Lee and, understanding what he means, I nod. Propping my leg up on the rail, I propel myself into the arena. With a swift and easy landing against the rubble, I am quickly at Lee's side.

"Thank you, Ren," Gai says quietly and I disregard it with a wave. I won't be able to do much, but the goddamn medics assigned to this examination don't come around nearly fast enough.

I pull the vibrations close to me, prepared this time to give my full attention to my patient. Lee's heartbeat is shaky, but nothing to the extent of Hinata's condition, luckily. However, Lee is still a wreck. His muscles are torn, his bones are broken, and his chakra reserves are so drained that his recovery could be seriously hindered. And torn muscles and low chakra levels and simple fractures are one thing, easily taken care of and healed, but the severity of the damage the sand caused when it squeezed around Lee's arm and leg is what worries me the most. Because there, the bones are so shattered that, yes, they may heal, but they'll never heal right. There will be stiffness in his joints, a slowness that he won't be able to rid himself of, even if he goes through rigorous physical therapy, which means that his career as a ninja could very well be over. You can only come back from so much.

My mother told me once, during one of my lessons, that, aside from the 'illness' that is old age as some people consider it, there is always a way to reverse an injury and bring your patient back to their former glory. She had that kind of skill—or so I heard from the other adults in my family. But, seeing as how her untimely death brought an end to my lessons, I never really learned the secret to being able to heal any wound, no matter how serious. And this kind of injury is well out of my league, which isn't a surprise to me, although it does serve to be very disappointing. I almost wish my mother, at least, had survived the massacre that day, and really survived, not just long enough to tell me that I need to brave this bond on my own. But now is not the time to be mourning.

I press my hands to his arm, deciding that it will be best to stop the bleeding and stitch together some of his muscles since it is the about all I can do. My hands glow and grow warm with my chakra as it wraps around and soaks into Lee's body. I can sense his cells regenerating, his body gladly absorbing any and all the chakra it can.

"Why," Gaara mutters, still clutching his head. I glower at him, wondering how he has the audacity to even speak to us right now. "Why are you helping him?"

Gai pauses before saying, "He is my beloved comrade."

Gaara scoffs and the sand helps him to his feet. "Whatever," he answers, moving out of the way as Hayate declares him the winner.

I exhale deeply, keeping track of Lee's heartbeat closely with the vibrations. It's slow, even. He must be asleep now, which is good. I've stopped the bleeding in Lee's arm and mended the muscles there and am I moving down to heal his leg when his finger twitches. My head bobs up. I watch his face closely as his eyelids begin to flutter. Before I realize what's happening, Lee is standing up, although his form is nowhere near as precise as it was.

"Lee!" I hiss, scrambling to my feet as well. "What in God's name do you think you're doing!" Then I notice: His eyes are clouded over, like he's under a genjutsu. The vibrations cue that his heartbeat is pulsing at the rate of a person who is sleeping, though, and I remember when I'd asked Kakashi a few months ago whether it'd be possible to master the art of sleepwalking. Now, I know, maybe the thought isn't as impossible as Sakura had made it out to be. But if I had to go through all the trouble that Lee had endured in order to push my mind into that trance, I think I'm okay with never mastering the art.

Gai turns around at my shout. His eyes go wide as he sees Lee, getting back into fighting form. He takes Lee by the shoulders and says, "Lee, it's all right—it's over. You're in no shape to be—" Noticing the glazed over look in Lee's eyes as well, Gai becomes teary before he steps forward and sweeps Lee into a hug.

"Gai," I chide. "Get that boy off his feet. He has no business standing in the state he's in."

But he's laying Lee down even without my advice. Hayate moves immediately to Gai's side as I catch sight of Naruto jumping down into the arena and making his way to us. He glares at Gaara as he passes him.

"Emergency unit, please hurry!" Hayate calls to the men in white who hasten, apologies flying from their mouths.

"Excuse us," they say, and Hayate and Gai move aside as the men in white pull Lee onto a stretcher.

"How's he look?" one of them asks, and it takes me a moment to realize that he's talking to me.

"Uh, he's breathing okay," I say lamely. The medic gives me a dubious look as he scans over Lee's body, prodding here and there with gentle fingers, the other medics following in his lead to get an understand of the extent of the damage. Something snaps inside of me as I realize I'm one of them. I can't shirk my duties because they're always slow to the serious situations and they never seem to be able to do enough for their patients. The truth is I'm the same way.

"I've managed to stop the bleeding in his left arm and heal all the torn muscles there as well," I say then, crowding around Lee alongside them. "Still, his muscles are torn all throughout his body. His bones are fractured, mostly along his arms, but I'm sure that there will be hairline fractures in other parts of his body too. The ones I'm worried about mainly, though, are the ones on his left side. They're not fractured or broken—they've been crushed. There isn't much we can do for that except let it heal and hope that they come together well enough that he'll be able to move somewhat swiftly when he fully recovers."

"Crushed?" the medic asks, appalled. "But—"

"Hey, do you see this arena?" I ask, motioning around us. "Why don't you try to put it together in your head, huh? This wasn't a normal match." He didn't have a normal opponent, I keep from adding.

"Then," the medic says. "Then—"

"I know," I say grimly, diverting my eyes. "Good luck explaining that to his superior."

I break away from the medics and meet up with Naruto as Lee is towed away. The medic with whom I'd been speaking stays behind and gets Gai's attention. He explains to the Jounin the situation with Lee. At the news, Gai's eyes widen and he is rendered speechless. Gai's shoulders slump and he trembles and I fear that he's going to go down as well, but he continues standing.

"No way," murmurs Naruto as he overhears the conversation. His gaze follows after Lee as the medics carry him out of the arena. He turns to me then and says, "_Well?_"

I blink at him, asking, "Well what?"

"What's Thick-brows supposed to do!" he demands. "He kept saying he was desperate to fight Sasuke and that Neji guy; can't you do anything to help him?"

I take a deep breath and stare at Naruto, biting the inside of my lip. People think: Just because you can take care of people and heal them, you have some kind of divine power granted to you from the gods or something. But that's really not the case. And when you admit it to them, they think you're lying, holding back, doing less than you care to because you have some kind of ultimatum to keep people from living too long for the sake of our planet or whatever shit they like to spew.

This is why I hate being a medic, why I hadn't wanted to tell Sakura or Naruto about my abilities in the first place. Now, not only do they know but so does the whole of the Genin class participating in the Chuunin exams. And already Naruto is pestering me to do more than I'm capable, making me feel like a total failure for not being able to live up to his expectations.

Luckily, Kakashi appears behind Naruto in a heartbeat, an arm wrapped around the blonde boy's head to prevent him from speaking anymore. "But maybe," he says to Naruto, "that was his undoing. It was his choice to use a forbidden, self-sacrificing technique in a last ditch effort to win. He sacrificed himself to honor the unspoken oath, the oath that exists between him and Sasuke and Neji-kun and even you, Naruto. He risked his life so that he might have the chance to fight you all." Kakashi releases Naruto and pats him on the head as Naruto scowls. "Don't forget that," he says and, with a glance to me, adds, "You did well, Ren. Don't let yourself think otherwise. You're going to become a great medic someday."

"Sure," I answer with a roll of my eyes. "Someday. Which may not be soon enough. Thanks anyway."

Kakashi sighs, but leaves me alone to speak softly to Gai. Instead of waiting for Kakashi, Naruto, and Gai like I should, I make my way back up to the second level. It isn't long before the three follow after me. As I pass Shikamaru's team, I wish Chouji good luck on his match and walk to Sakura, who waits alone at the other end.

"Ren," she greets upon seeing me. "How is Lee?"

I give her a small smile, one that barely reaches my cheeks, and say, "He'll be okay."

This isn't enough to convince her, I know, but Kakashi and Naruto have made it to us now and our conversation is cut short as the last match begins. Chouji and the remaining boy from the Sound, Dosu, takes their positions in the center of the destroyed arena. I only half-watch the match, although I should be offering more support for Chouji. But the match ends quickly anyway, with the Sound boy coming out the winner and Chouji having to be carried away by the medics for his injuries. I'm not sure how this happens, but I'm just glad that these exams are over. Maybe I'll finally have some time to refine my policy on these bonds I'm trying out. The way I'm going about it currently is wearing me down too quickly.

Hayate officially declares the preliminaries over and calls the other nine contestants into the arena to line up before the Jounin running the exams. The Hokage is standing in the center of the Jounin, as usual, grinning at the Genin as they file into a neat line. Naruto is second in the line, between Dosu and the girl from the Sand, Temari. Shikamaru has reluctantly taken a spot beside Gaara and—

Rei meets my gaze, grinning devilishly my way. She looks briefly at Shikamaru, winks, and wags her pinky at me. I grit my teeth, exhaling through pursed lips as Rei smirks. Before returning her attention to Hayate, Rei mouths something to me that I hear not seconds later.

"Don't worry," she says, "I'll play nice."

I wonder if she really doesn't have anything better to do. She already got me to notice her and, like I'm sure she wants, I'm planning to talk to her later about this bond. So why does she insist on harassing me and my friends still?

"To those of you who have won your bouts and qualified for the finals of the third phase of the Chuunin exams," Hayate says and I drop the subject with a sigh, "although one of you isn't here, congratulations."

"Um," Sakura says softly at the reminder that Sasuke is gone. "Sensei, I want to ask you something."

"Something about Sasuke?" Kakashi guesses and, by the guilty expression on Sakura's face, he's right. "I'm sorry to say that I don't know all that much about him right now either. But don't be too worried."

Sakura waits for more reassurance, but when she doesn't get any she nods and turns her attention back to what's going on down below. Kakashi and I exchange a look and I sigh heavily.

"I'll check," I whisper to him in order to keep Sakura out of the loop. "But, like you said, I wouldn't be too worried about him. He's unconscious for god's sake."

Kakashi shrugs as I close my eyes, honing in on the bond and pulling myself into Sasuke's head. As I said, there is no unusual activity going on, nothing about which I should be concerned. Anyway, not at first. Because somewhere, deep down, there is a sudden onset of dread that starts to fill my stomach. Even though the bond senses nothing worrisome on Sasuke's side, it's still suspicious enough of something to cause me to be anxious.

I look to Kakashi. He reads the alarm on my face, but he preserves his cool and smoothly says, "Sakura, Ren, I'm going to step out for a bit, so be sure to listen carefully to the explanations of the finals for me, okay?"

Kakashi is gone before Sakura replies. Which leaves me to deal with Sakura's overwhelming apprehension for Sasuke.

"Honestly, Sakura, stop thinking so much," I say, poking her forehead as Hayate hands the spotlight over to the Third. "I get that you're supposed to be the brightest kunoichi of our age and all that, but that doesn't mean you have to always be running that pretty brain of yours through horrible situations. Sasuke will be fine, if that's what's got you in a panic."

Sakura regards me with surprise before a feeble smile springs up on her face. "Yeah," she agrees weakly, pressing her hands together. "Of course."

I frown at her as she pretends that the Hokage has her undivided attention as he speaks. I don't know who she's trying to kid, but she's not doing a very good job at it. Still, I let her off the hook for the moment and listen to the old man, whose gravelly old voice reaches our ears.

"We want you to show off all your powers with no reserves," the Hokage is saying, "which is why the finals will commence one month from now."

"Whaat?" Naruto interrupts, pouting. "We're not doing it right here, right now?"

Just like Naruto to rush ahead with things. Only a fool would want to continue without resting up first.

"This break," the Hokage says, "you can say, will be for preparations. In other words, this period of time allows us to relay the results of the preliminaries to the rulers and shinobi leaders of each land, and to summon them to the finals, and it also serves as a preparation time for you applicants. Basically, it's time to understand your enemy and yourself."

_Get to know yourself._ How ridiculously cheesy, I think, scoffing. The Hokage goes on about how the Genin should use this month to their advantage and analyze their opponent's tactics more thoroughly, and maybe develop new techniques of their own if it comes down to that.

"Each of you must embrace the opportunity to practice hard, learn some new tricks, and of course get some rest," the Hokage finishes. "I'd like to let you all go now, but first there's something that needs to be done for the finals."

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	33. She's Got Spirit

**Bound  
Chapter 33: She's Got Spirit**

"Oh, come on," Naruto groans. "I have to get my training started now!"

"Don't be so impatient," the Hokage says, nodding to Anko as she steps forward with a plain box in her hands. "There are slips of paper inside the box Anko is holding. Each of you, take one."

Anko announces that she'll come around in order to avoid crowding and walks over to Dosu, who pulls out the first slip. Once each contender has a chosen a piece of paper, the Hokage has them read off the numbers written on their piece.

"I've got eight," Dosu tells them.

"Hmm, I have one," Naruto says.

"Seven." Temari.

"Five." Kankuro.

"Three." Gaara.

"Nine," says Shikamaru, and he's barely got the word out of his mouth when Rei cheers, "Ten!"

"Slowly," the Hokage orders, and Rei apologizes with what's supposed to be a meek smile. "Go on."

Neji and Shino have picked the numbers two and six respectively, and there is a short pause as Ibiki, who has been standing behind the Hokage this entire time, scribbles something down on his clipboard. He whispers something to the Hokage, who nods.

"And now," announces the Hokage then, "I will reveal the match order for the tournament style finals."

There is a small upheaval among the Genin as Shikamaru and Naruto protest the way the matches have been picked, but they are ignored. The Hokage orders Ibiki to show them the match arrangements and the proctor raises the clipboard to the Genin. I squint at the clipboard try to make out the matches, but it's useless. The pairings have been drawn up on a little piece of paper and only the Genin standing down there can see the results. But, assuming that they're going numerically, Naruto had one, which means he must be going in the first round against…Neji? It looks like Naruto will be able to avenge Hinata sooner than anticipated.

And Shikamaru. He has number nine, which means that he'll be going in the last round against…Rei.

"Terrific," I mumble to myself, my eyebrows knotting together as I watch Rei standing next to my best friend.

"I'll play nice," she had promised, but there's no telling how much I can trust her, especially not in this situation where she's supposed to be proving that she can be a ninja without any reserves. I'll have to hope that whatever she throws at Shikamaru, he'll be able to defend himself well enough to stay alive at least.

"Now then," the Hokage sighs. "It's time for you to go plan your strategies, rest up, or whatever you please. We're all finished here, unless any of you have questions."

Shikamaru raises his hand. "May I?" he asks, and when the Hokage urges him on, he says, "You said this was a tournament, so there's only one winner, right? Does that mean only one person can become Chuunin?"

"No, that's not the case," the Hokage says. "For the tournament, you will be observed by many judges, including myself, the Kazekage, and the rulers and shinobi leaders of countries that will be requesting missions from us as well. Based on your performance in the tournament, the judges will assign you an absolute value, and all those who are deemed to have sufficient abilities to be a Chuunin can become Chuunin, even if they lose their first match."

"Do you mean," Temari speaks up, "that all of us here could become Chuunin?"

"Yes," the Hokage says. "However, it is also possible that none of you will become Chuunin. But the further you advance in the tournament, the more opportunities you have to prove yourself to the judges. Does that answer your question, Shikamaru-kun?"

I snicker as Shikamaru, miffed by the way the Hokage had turned the question around on him, sags his shoulders and grunts in affirmation for the Hokage, who quickly congratulates the Genin and dismisses them until a month from now.

And then the preliminaries are over.

[+]

"What a relief!" I say, throwing my hands in the air. "I thought they would never be done. As much as I hated sitting at home all day doing nothing, I think I prefer it to seeing action and not being able to participate in it."

Sakura doesn't seem to hear me because she continues to stare absentmindedly into the arena until Naruto shouts up at us, waving his arms around to get our attention.

"Sakura-chan!" he calls. "Ren! Where's Kakashi-sensei gone off to?"

"Don't tell me you're seriously going to start your training _now_," I groan, leaning against the rail. "You've got to learn to rest, Naruto."

"I don't have time to waste!" he protests, clenching his hands into fists. "Not if I'm going to beat that jackass." I see him briefly glare at Neji, who's already on his way out of the arena with his teammates, cool and collected as ever.

"Kakashi-sensei's probably gone to see Sasuke," Sakura answers as I frown at him. "At the hospital, Naruto."

Naruto grins in appreciation, thanks Sakura, and then speeds out of the arena, pushing past people who had made it to the doorway before him. I watch as Sakura lowers her head, downcast, and I sigh, pursing my lips.

I'm not sure how Sakura is able to spend so much of her time and energy devoted to someone like Sasuke. I mean, I suppose he's become more bearable since joining Team 7 and, yeah, the fact that he's a skilled ninja, comes from an impressive clan with an impressive kekkei genkai, and has inherited the trademark Uchiha good looks doesn't do anything to hurt his character, but the amount of effort it takes to maintain a healthy relationship with him is so tiring. If you hang out with him enough outside of missions and training and all that, you'll notice that he takes more than he gives. And if that's the kind of person Sakura wants to be with, then all the power to her, but I definitely don't see the appeal in it. There'll be no convincing Sakura otherwise, though.

But, ultimately, I don't believe Sakura loves Sasuke as a person so much as she loves the idea of Sasuke. She likes the Sasuke that she thinks he is, the Sasuke that she's created to fulfill all her little fantasies if she can get close enough to him, not that he'll allow that. That's what's got her so smitten in the first place: The challenge of being with him.

"Hey, Sakura! Reeeeennn!" Ino waves us down from the other end of the second level. She props one hand on her waist as she cups the other around her mouth to amplify her voice. "Are you guys coming or what?" she demands. "Let's go before we're left behind!"

I nudge Sakura forward when she doesn't move. "Come on, Sakura," I say as she turns to look at me. "Won't do you any good to worry about Sasuke just yet. Save it for the tournament. Otherwise we'll never get out of this forest."

Sakura takes a deep breath, rolls her shoulders back, and gives me a small smile. "Yeah," she agrees.

I mirror her expression. "That's the spirit."

[+]

As my luck would have it, I run into the Hokage as we're all filing out of the arena. He doesn't bring up the fact that I'm still on house arrest, so I assume that my sentence has been lifted. I think he can see that I'm no longer a threat to Konoha's reputation as a village that can keep its people together.

The fact that I'm not thinking of running away anymore doesn't mean that I've given up on breaking the bond. I will go through with my original plans regarding the bond no matter what it takes because the bond…isn't normal. To have such a connection with someone that they can get inside your head and control you isn't exactly the kind of symbiotic relationship I'm looking for. Besides, if I'm going to have a bond with someone, I want it to be one that I've created on my own accord, not something that's forced onto me. Above all, my freedom of choice is what matters most.

[+]

It's been a few days since the end of the preliminaries and today was the first time I'd visited Shikamaru. I had been planning to leave him alone for the most part of the one month break to let him recuperate and train, but since Naruto was training too, which, in turn, meant that I had no one else to hang out with, I decided to go see Shikamaru.

I mean, I suppose I could have gone with Sakura to visit Sasuke, but I already know he's fine. In fact, I happen to know that he's sneaked out of his hospital room even though he's supposed to be on _bed rest_, and is currently training with Kakashi in some godforsaken location, pushing himself as always. But whatever. He'll be okay. At least with Kakashi there, Sasuke won't be able to kill himself. Besides, any time spent with Shikamaru is three hundred times better than any time I could have spent in Sakura or Sasuke's company, even if Shikamaru and I weren't able to hang out long.

While I was over at Shikamaru's, I asked him what he knew about Rei. I made sure to ask him in such a way that it made it seem like I didn't know her because, for all intents and purposes, around the other Genin, I _don't_ know her. I'm not supposed to be associated with the enemy, after all.

So, after irritating Shikamaru into answering one last question about his upcoming match, I said, "The girl that you're up against. She's from the Sound, isn't she? I missed her match because I was helping Kakashi deal with Sasuke, so fill me in. What's her deal?"

And, at first, he didn't seem to know how to answer. Finally, he said, "To tell you the truth, I'm not sure. She bumped into me after the first exam, and she seemed normal enough then. But during the preliminaries, her techniques were just…" He scratched his head, pressing his lips into a tight line. "I can't figure out how she was able to execute the any of the ninjutsu she used, so until I'm up against her in the tournament, I don't really know how to fight her."

I had been dangling my feet over the side of his porch, but, hearing his answer, I stopped swinging my legs and narrowed my eyes at him. "Hold on a second," I said, pulling my feet up and turning in order to face Shikamaru. "You've _met_ her?"

All right. I realize that it wasn't my place to be so critical of Shikamaru having met Rei when I'd had entire conversations with her, but I couldn't _trust_ Rei. What if she had told him something terrible about me or my family or this blood oath? Although, I should have considered, if she _had_ told him something, I would have heard about it from him by then.

To my relief, he said, "Not quite. She just ran into me by accident when we were all filing out of the exam room to go to the second exam."

"But your encounter with her had been long enough that you were able to assume she was 'normal'?" I asked.

He massaged the bridge of his nose. "Well, she apologized to me like a normal person would have," he said.

"That's not enough to determine whether or not a person is normal," I said, folding my arms over my chest. "She's putting you under false pretenses, Shikamaru."

"Like I said," he sighed and leaned his head into his hand. "I realized that after I saw her during the preliminaries. Trust me, Ren, I understand that she's a threat."

"All right," I said, nodding. "Good. Now. What kind of ninjutsu did she use? Maybe I can help you figure out how she does it."

Shika scowled. "What makes you think you can help?"

"I'm offended," I said, adjusting the headband around my neck. "Shikamaru, come on. I mean, she's from the Sound village, I deal with vibrations—" I tapped his broad forehead and he flinched with each poke. "—is it all making sense now?"

Shikamaru whapped my hand away and dismissed, "Yeah, yeah. I get it. But I don't think it'll do any good. You can manipulate the vibrations because of your Genshindou, Ren, a skill that I can't learn no matter how hard I try because it's not in my blood. Any advice you could give me won't make any sense. I don't understand vibrations like you. I can't explain her ninjutsu anyway," he said, pushing his shogi board, which we'd been playing with, into his bedroom. "Like I said: I don't understand how she did what she did, so I wouldn't be able to properly explain it to you."

I ruffled my hair, and said tiredly, "You are making excuses, Nara Shikamaru, and I don't appreciate that."

"It's nothing _you_ need to worry about in any case," Shikamaru said, stretching out across the porch. "You're not in the tournament; consider yourself lucky."

[+]

In that respect, Shikamaru is very wrong. I may not be involved in the tournament directly, but I do still need to be worrying about it because of him and Naruto and, to some extent, Sasuke. And even because of Rei.

Without this tournament, I would have been at a standstill in regards to the bond. Therefore, the tournament has deserved the privilege of my undivided attention. What else do I have to focus on? May as well concern myself with these trivial things until I have enough answers about the bond.

Which, I understand as I examine the back wall of my room, makes it sound as though I don't care about my friends here in Konoha, but that's not true. I just care about them less than I do the bond. Wait, scratch that. That still sounds too heartless. How about this: I care about the bond first and foremost, but my friends now run a very, _very_ close second.

It's hard to admit that people here in Konoha are winning me over. Mostly because that would mean old man Hokage was right about these bonds getting the better of me. So what else could he be right about?

Trying not to think about it, I push against the wall I had been examining, hoping to see if it will budge or activate a secret hatch or hole in which the blood oath will be stored. The reason I do this is this wall hasn't always been here. Like every other house in Konoha, my back wall used to feature a pair of shoji doors that led out to the traditional wraparound porch. However, once my rebellious side started to kick in, my parents thought tearing down my shoji doors and erecting a wall to close me in with be 'what's best' for me.

Shit good that did.

Since walls are essentially hollow and my parents built this after I had learned of the bond (and accidentally found the blood oath once), I figured they may have thought to hide it in a secret cubby they had built into the wall, or something along those lines. It only made sense to see if it could be true, right? At least, that's what I'm thinking.

Tearing down the wall all together, though, is out of the question. My parents didn't leave me enough money to renovate the house, and I don't want to deal with the mess that comes with demolishing an entire wall anyway. I do still have one option and it is easy and virtually painless.

I press my ear against the wall and begin to knock. The vibrations ripple across the wall, reflecting back to me when they hit studs and nails and wiring. When I sense nothing out of the ordinary in this spot, I move farther down the wall, knocking vibrations around inside the wall in order to see if there is maybe a shape that shouldn't be there.

In the end, I come out with nothing. The wall is just a wall and it had no other purpose than to keep me in my room. I may not think too highly of my family, but at least they had been smart enough to hide the bond farther away from me than they had before.

I blow my hair out of my face, frustrated at the futile attempt at finding the bond, and climb onto my desk. I push the little panoramic window open and wriggle out of it feet first. Once I've dropped myself on the porch outside, I lean against the wall and slide down, boredom overwhelming me into fatigue.

I've always figured there would be more to life than sitting and waiting.

Resting my wrist on my knee, I wiggle my fingers through the air, pulling the vibrations into a small dance. I could probably be training instead of lazing around like I've been doing. Just because I'm not in the tournament or going on any missions doesn't mean that I should let myself go. But I don't have anyone to help me improve on the Genshindou like Shikamaru has his father to help him with his Shadow Technique. What little I know about and can do with the Genshindou I learned from lessons with my father or from watching some of my older cousins mess around with it when I was younger. That's not enough for me to formulate any new jutsu on my own.

I clench my fingers into a ball, yanking some vibrations to me. They curl around my fist, shaking against my skin so that it feels like my hand is going numb. I release them with a sigh and close my eyes.

The vibrations fluctuate gently as the wind blows through. They bump against the grass and the trees and the small rodents that live around my house. Very slightly, I feel the vibrations pitch. If I hadn't known better, I would have dismissed this small disturbance as a bunny making its way between the trees. But, opening my eyes, I can feel the vibrations have been distorted. Someone is trying to trick me into thinking that there is nothing there. And I have a feeling I know who it is.

I expect her to stumble gracelessly from the trees directly opposite me, but instead Rei drops down from my roof, causing me to jump. She laughs and says, "Well, aren't you tense!" She swings from the gutter before landing stylishly, hands poise on her hips. I compose myself as she coughs once and looks down at me, one eye closed as if the sunlight is too bright for her. I notice that she has redrawn the red line vertically through her left eye.

"Woo, it's hot in the Fire Country," she says, pulling on the collar of her shirt. "I guess I should have figured, though, huh?"

I frown at her as she seats herself on the edge of my porch without being invited to sit. She gathers her hair into a dismal bun and stabs her eagle feather through it to hold it together before she continues to fan herself dramatically.

"I really should travel more," she tells me, glancing at me over her shoulder. "Maybe then I'd be more used to climate change. But, you know, our country hasn't had a shinobi village until _very_ recently!"

I purse my lips and narrow my eyes at her. "What do you want, Rei?" I ask tiredly, massaging my forehead. I know she's not going to leave until she has her say, so I might as well go along with her actions. This works in my favor too: I had been planning on talking to her anyway. "And how did you even find my house? Good grief."

"The spirits are very open with me," she says mystically, opening her arms to a breeze that twirls our way at precisely the right moment. "They tell me everything I need to know, so long as my intentions are pure."

I raise an eyebrow, in awe at how blatantly odd she portrays herself. She has no shame. "Are you trying to tell me that _ghosts_ told you where I live?"

"Not ghosts!" she says adamantly. "_Spirits_. The spirits are all around us, changing our world, making small things big, turning winter into spring, autumn into fall, changing the color of the leaves—"

"I think I get it," I say, although I'm sure that everything she's described can be explained away by science and not by 'spirits'.

"Which is not to say ghosts aren't real. But ghosts are humans who can't accept the beautiful thing they've become after death," she says. "The spirits, however, are a part of the Earth. And they know everything."

"You know, I thought you were loopy before," I say, "but now I can see that you're crazy, through and through."

Rei throws me a dubious look and says, "Just because I'm open about my beliefs on and my relationship with the spirit world does not make me any less _normal_"—she puts finger quotes around the word, much like her teammate had.—"than you, Kagiru Ren." She pulls her legs up onto the porch and crosses them daintily. She takes a deep breath and brings her hands together in a full circle, as though she's pulling the air around her into her lungs. "In fact," she says, "it only serves to make me happier than you could ever be, especially in your current situation."

"Why do you have to talk like that all the time, Rei?" I ask, taking my face in my hands. "It's not getting going to get you anywhere."

"The point isn't to get _me_ anywhere," she says with a wave. "I already know where I am and where I'm going and what I'm supposed to do. The point is to get _you_ to where you need to be."

"And I trust that you think you know how to get me to…" I motion vaguely to the trees. "Wherever it is that I need to be."

"No," Rei replies, forming a seal with her hands as she continues to meditate. Or whatever it is that she's doing. "I'll admit that I do wish I knew, but your aura is so muggy. One minute you want to help people, the next you can think of no one but yourself. I've never met anyone quite as indecisive as you! Even the spirits don't know what you want from them."

"Gee," I say, cocking my head to the side. "Sounds like I'm in a predicament."

"I know you're not taking this seriously," she sings, "but you need to be more concerned about your wellbeing. If the spirits don't know what to do with you, you're as lost as they come."

I roll my eyes, pulling at a loose thread on the sash around my waist, to which I've now fastened the metal plate of my headband. My clothes fall apart so quickly, I think, scowling. That's what I get for being tacky and wearing old clothes I find in the boxes around my house. "Right," I say, tying a small knot before yanking the thread free. "Anyway, I should mention that your friend Hiro talked to me earlier last week, back when we were still in the Forest of Death."

"Oh, I know," she sighs, sagging her shoulders only to straighten them back into her stiff position. "He told me about it after he found you. Hiro-kun has good intentions, but he gets in the way sometimes."

"I dunno, it seemed like he was doing you a big favor," I say. "I thought it was nice of him to come to me on your behalf and explain things."

Rei exhales heavily and her body droops from its previously rigid posture. She turns so that she's facing me and demands, "What's so great about having someone _explain_ things to you? What do you learn from that? People in this life—they don't see that the real learning comes from being able to figure things out for yourself, from being able to connect with your spirit and the world in which it lives in order to solve the problems of your life." She raises her hands to the heavens and says, "We need to learn to look beyond what we see! And we can't do that if someone always comes around and does it for us."

Rei drops her hands back into her lap as I stare at her quizzically. She shakes her head and scoots closer, leaning forward like she needs to get a better view of me. "We want things to be spelled out for us because we don't want to go through the trouble of being able to do things for ourselves," she laments, running her hand over her shark teeth necklace. "We're scared of what we might find out about ourselves should we dare to dig that deeply into our innermost feelings. Do you understand _now_ why I never come right out and say things? I mean, yeah, all right: Admittedly, it's fun to frazzle people by being enigmatic and _whatever_, but it's in that moment of confusion that people realize just how little they understand about the world and _that_"—She jabs her index finger into the wood of the porch and taps it to emphasize her words.—"_that_ is what gets them so frustrated. Not because they think that you're screwing with their head, but because they don't want to go through the trouble of feeling _really feeling_ to find out what in the hell you could mean."

She leans away and turns back to the trees that surround my house. She crosses her legs and holds her hands together in the same seal and says quietly, "We're a lazy race, humans. That is why the spirits become unhappy with us."

I blink at her, at a loss for what to say. First she drops onto my porch, then starts babbling about spirits, and now she's going off on a tangent about explanations and feelings and comprehension. This is not what I had asked for.

"Well," I say after a pregnant pause. "That was a nice lecture."

"Wasn't it though?" she agrees, stretching her arms over her head. "Feels good to get that off my chest finally. Do you like how I'm being so no-nonsense with you today? It takes a little getting used to, but I think it's going to pay off."

"Absolutely," I say and the easiness of our conversation confuses me. When did the situation between us become so effortless? Without thinking about it more, I ask her again, "What do you want?"

"The _real_ question here is," she says, holding up her index finger to make a point, "what do _you_ want? You and I both know that you have more questions that need answering than I do that need asking. Sorry!" she laughs when I regard her in bewilderment. "I didn't mean to word that so oddly. But you know what I mean. I am here to answer your questions that you want answered and nothing more."

"That easily?" I ask, incredulous. "After everything you've said and done, you're just going to tell me what I want to know?"

She shrugs. "I mean, why drag it on?" she says. "You're already convinced that you need my help; that's all I need to know that you're ready to receive my help. Besides, the spirits give me a good feeling about this—about this changed you that is. Anyway, I think you can handle the truth now."

"Spirits," I mutter, raking my overgrown bangs across my forehead, out of my line of sight. "I'm never going to get used to that idea."

"You don't need to get used to it," she says. "You just have to trust in it. Most of everything in this world, when it comes right to it, depends on trust. In fact! Why don't I help you figure out what your spirit guide is? Maybe that will help you trust in the spirits more, if you have a spirit guide to help you connect with the spirit world, I mean."

"Spirit guide?" I repeat. "I don't—"

"An animal representation of who you are in the spirit world," she says. "They grow to become who you are as a person. But for that to happen, first you need to live by the characteristics of your given spirit guide. Only once you understand them can you begin to understand yourself and then truly become one with them. Or we could do it another time," she adds with a laugh when she sees me scowling. "Onto what you want to know, right?"

Something about the way she says this strikes a nerve in me. Actually, this whole conversation, Rei's new attitude—it's all giving me a bad feeling. She's saying one thing and then doing another. What I mean is, she wants me to come to my own conclusion in regards to, well, everything, right? So why would she go against her beliefs and tell me about the bond? So far as I know, she is as stubborn as I am. It just doesn't make any sense! Then I realize:

"This is one of those reverse psychology things, isn't it?" I demand, slumping against the wall of my bedroom. "You're doing this so I'll _want_ to uncover all the little mysteries of the bond by myself. Don't look give me that innocent doe look!" I cry, pointing a finger at her as she pouts. "You're not really here to tell me anything about the bond!"

"I'm here to tell you everything you want to know," she continues to insist. "Just ask away, Ren dear, and I'll answer you to my fullest potential."

I have to admit: The offer sounds good. More than good. It sounds absolutely glorious. There is nothing in the world that I'd like more than to have this whole bond thing worked out. But this is a no-win situation for me. On the one hand, if I succumb to Rei's proposal, then I would be, in a way, giving into the idea she has of me that I'm some idiot born to have people always explaining things to me, ordering me around, forcing me into submission. On the other hand, if I refuse and go on trying to break the bond on my own, I will never get anywhere.

"This isn't fair," I complain, knocking my head into the wall. "The choices you gave me: Either I admit defeat or I'm left stuck with this bond forever. So you know what? Neither. I choose neither. Maybe if I keep thinking that this bond isn't here and that it doesn't affect me, maybe it'll disappear on its own. In fact, it's gone. I don't even know what I'm talking about. What bond? Certainly not mine. Nothing mine."

I plant my face in my hands, suppressing a groan. Rei giggles from her spot, but it lacks the anticipated condescension. She sounds sincerely amused by my behavior, like a child being tickled.

"That won't work," she says. "Blood oaths are tricky like that. Before you go on with your rambling, though, I want to ask: Did your parents ever tell you _anything_ about the bond? Other than the fact that you were bound to serve darling Sasuke for all eternity, I mean."

"Uh, no," I say. "What more could there be to it?"

"_What more could there be to it?_ you say." Rei scoffs, twisting her body to face me once again. "Typical Kagiru. Keeping secrets, staying ignorant. Sorry," she apologizes when she sees me flinch. "There's too much animosity between my family and yours for me to ignore it. I'm going to guess that your parents never told you about the Kannagi, either?"

I confirm.

"Of course, I could have known that without asking," she says. "I mean, if you _had_ heard about me, you wouldn't have been so surprised by me when we initially met."

I have an out of place desire to defend the Kagiru name, my honor. "My mom," I say, remembering the diary, the hospital scenario. "She did mention you, but only twice—once in this diary she kept with a log of my training, and another time after the massacre. She told me to find you in the Sound Village—even though it hadn't been settled yet—and she told me that you could help, but I couldn't let you know that I was a Kagiru."

"Ha! As if we could be fooled into thinking otherwise," she grumbles and then rubs her eyes before saying, "Listen. The key to breaking this bond is knowing how and under what circumstances it was made. Once you understand the intentions of the two lovesick train-wrecks that started it all, _then_ you can start to unravel the threads that bind you to Sasuke."

"They wanted to be together forever," I say with a wave of my hand. "They were in '_love_'. That's why they did it, the original two. They were being melodramatic."

"WRONG," Rei blares, pounding her fist into the palm of her hand. "Emotions and the human psyche are immensely more vast than you make them out to be, Kagiru Ren. You talk as though you've never felt love before! Nothing is ever melodramatic when love is concerned. At least, not in the moment."

"Even so," I say, rolling my eyes. "How am I supposed to know? Like I said: My parents didn't tell me anything other than the fact that Sasuke was to be my charge. They didn't want me to get distracted. And, in case you didn't know, they're dead. And I can't talk to the dead."

"No need," she says. "I can help you there."

I blink at her, confused. "Do you mean to say that you're going to perform some sort of séance to get my parents here and tell me everything?"

"Hardly," she says. "Those rituals are way too complicated. Besides, they're hardly reliable. You ask for one soul, and you get another pathetic, hopeless soul that wants you to tell their great-granddaughter that she shouldn't throw away their old mattress because they had their life savings sown into the fluff during the third Great Shinobi War."

"Hmm. Right," I say, wondering if I it's too late to stop talking to Rei.

She exhales heavily through her nose and says, "You mean, even after all this, all the spirit talk, all the bond talk, you still don't know what I am?"

"Besides crazy?" I ask.

"Oh, funny," she sneers. "Come on, Ren!"

"Nope," I say after a useless moment of thought. "I got nothing."

Rei appears thoroughly disappointed, but shrugs it away as though it can't be helped. Another one of my nerves are ticked. She scrambles to her feet, brushing her fanciful clothes off and drops into a sweeping bow.

"I," she says, straightening up, "am a shaman, dear Ren." She grins. "Happy to grace you with my presence."

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	34. History

**A/N:** Just so you know: 'tonakai' means 'reindeer'. Rei has a habit of calling others by endearments such as 'darling' and 'dear'; in particular, when addressing Ren, she says, 'Ren dear', which, when said sloppily enough, sounds like 'reindeer'. Thus, 'tonakai'. Even though this is a play on words that probably wouldn't happen in Japanese, seeing as how 'dear' would translate differently, I thought it was cute. So go with it.

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 34: History**

"Like a psychic medium," she explains, irritated, when I continue to stare at her blankly. "Only, so far as spirits go, I am the real thing. Also, shaman are considerably less uppity than 'psychics'. Although that's relative. Haughtiness varies from one shaman to another. So far as I know, though, I'm the only shaman for miles around. Our practice has long since been abandoned. It's not up to par with modern medicine, they say, but I beg to differ. Anyway," she says, and sits, combing her hands through her bangs even though there is not a hair out of place. "Some of this has to ring a bell to you. Shamans, Kannagi—it all relates to the bond. Maybe it was twisted a little, but it should still be part of the story."

"Uh, actually—"

The look Rei gives me tells me that I don't need to say anymore. "What _did_ your parents feed you, then?"

I relay it to her, the way I had always heard it: During the time when shinobi clans warred with each other relentlessly, before any of the shinobi nations had been established, my clan was being targeted because people were envious of our great healing capabilities. We fled from what became the Sound Country into the area where the Fire Country would be settled. There, we found the Uchiha, who were one of the most powerful and prominent shinobi clans at the time, and struck a deal with them—in exchange for our protection, we would lend them our medical skills and fix up their wounded. Both clans happily abided by these terms and lived in harmony for the years to come. Word of the treaty spread throughout the shinobi world and my clan was left alone in the arms of the Uchiha.

My clan's safety wasn't guaranteed unless we kept close to the Uchiha, but with security comes foolishness. One of my ancestors figured it wouldn't hurt for her to go on an herb run alone—the fields where the particular herb she wanted grew in abundance weren't far out of Uchiha lines. She would only be out of bounds for a few minutes, seconds if she moved quickly enough. She didn't stop to consider how heavily watched the Uchiha were because of the threat they posed to the other shinobi clans. She walked right into a trap.

Luckily, one of the Uchiha saw her leaving the estate without a guard and followed closely. He saw the enemy and took him out before my ancestor realized what could have happened to her. Embarrassed by her imprudent behavior, she thanked her savior and pledged her loyalty solely to him. She became his personal medic, a close comfort when he was hurt or had taken ill. It wasn't long before he, wooed by her unyielding care, he swore himself to her as her protector.

They fell in love, typically, and with the instability the constant warring around them caused they had the bright idea to bind themselves together by means of a blood oath, so that they would never be without each other. My clan were so pleased by this and the standards to which we had to adhere when under the influence of the bond that they began gracing titles of honor to those families who bore a child affected by the blood contract and specially trained the child for their duties as, essentially, an Uchiha caretaker. Which leads to now.

"But I don't understand how all that added up to the bond being passed down," I say, flicking a leaf that had fallen onto my porch. "Also, why do _we_ have to be the subordinate ones? That guy—the Uchiha—he had just as willingly and knowingly entered into the contract."

Rei's eyes are closed and her brow is furrowed like someone has squeezed her face together too hard and held it there, freezing it in place. She hums in thought before her features thaw out a little and she says, "It might make more sense if you get the full details of the story, Ren dear."

She blinks at me, a murky brown-green, like the bottom of trashcan bins, and cocks her head to the side. Then she starts to break down the lies my family had fed me. Not that I couldn't have guessed that, on top of all they had done, they would choose to sugarcoat our clan's history as well.

Rei starts by telling me small details my clan left out, like how they had come upon their talent for healing, how they were before. The Kagiru were a dwindling number because they were weak warriors with no conditioning for war, but instead of trying to beef up their offense, they went on the defense. They sent out five of their brightest clan members to a shaman group—"_My_ family, in fact," Rei says with a grin.—to learn how to heal. "And that is the Kagiru-Kannagi history in a nutshell, although we'll play a much bigger part in your family history later."

Secondly, Rei takes up the subject of my clan being 'victimized'. We had, apparently, deserved to be targeted by malicious clans because of the way we'd flaunted our newfound powers. There were other clans like mine pre-Kannagi influence—weak, defenseless, getting involved and injured in conflicts that didn't concern them and just trying to survive.

"Your clan sympathized with them at first," Rei says. "But when they realized that they could get something from it, like money, lavish treasures, special weaponry, they became greedy and asked for payment that their patients couldn't afford."

That's when the kidnappings and killings started, Rei goes on. Women and children and the best doctors of my clan. Scared for our skins, we went into hiding. She makes no note of any initial fleeing, like I had in my version. But even if we had run away, it wouldn't mean anything. It was evident that my family were a bunch of people who only knew how to take cover and run away from their fears, take the easy way out. There was no pride in coming from a clan of cowards.

"Helloooo?" Rei chimes, snapping her fingers in front of my face to get my attention. "Ren dear, you holding up okay?" She pats my cheek brusquely, but not so hard that it's like she's slapping me. I brush her hand away and rub my cheek, frowning. "The truth hurting you too much, dearie?"

"That's not it," I say.

"What's it then?" asks Rei.

"Nothing." I shouldn't be so bothered by the fact that my family had never, from the start, been honorable people. Or very brilliant people for that matter. Especially if they had thought that this bond was a good idea.

"If you insist," Rei says with a shrug. "I'm going to continue, then."

She picks up with the news that one of my clansmen became tired of hiding and sneaked through the night to find a shinobi clan that could protect us. He stumbled into the Fire Country, heard of the Uchiha, found them, and struck up a deal with them. _Then_, once we had protection, we fled to where we are now.

"Nevertheless, an agreement was definitely made," she says, getting to her feet and stretching. "The Uchiha would protect, the Kagiru would serve. The whole Kagiru-Uchiha meeting out herb collecting and the events leading up to the creation of the bond is also true. Now here's a piece of trivia for you: Did you know that the bond was made in secret?"

I hadn't. But I don't tell her because I'm too distracted by the fact that she's starting to do lunges down the length of my porch, like she'd only come to my house to train with me. Rei doesn't seem to think it's odd, however, because she continues to talk as she exercises.

"They never told anyone about it even after they had been lovingly bonded for a few weeks," she's saying, halfway down the side of my house. "They were afraid, I guess, because Uchiha-Kagiru marriages weren't looked highly upon. It was a time of inter-breeding—but not too closely, for obvious reasons—but close enough to keep the Uchiha blood alive and the Kagiru's magnificent chakra control in the family. Wouldn't want our buddies surpassing us after all, would we?"

It turns out it was worse for them to keep the bond a secret. Had they shared to their respective families what they had done, they might not have been separated and married off to more suitable mates. That separation, ultimately, led to the carving of this bond into their bones and blood.

"I should have asked you," Rei chimes as she reaches the end of my porch. She straightens out, turns at the waist to stretch out her back. "What did your family tell you about the events that happened after the bond was made?"

I rack my brain for an answer and say, "Hmm, the Uchiha half of the pact was sent into war and was killed in action. And then my ancestor—"

"Have a name for you ancestor?" Rei interrupts. "Or did your family leave that part out too?"

Scowling, I say, "They told me. I just never took the effort to remember. This wasn't something I ever planned on telling to anyone."

Rei hums disapprovingly, turning to face the shoji doors that open to my parents' room. She leans back and forth, like she's trying to see through the paper doors, but then shrugs her shoulders and strides toward me again. "Mei," she says. "Your ancestor's name was Mei. And I would tell you the Uchiha's name, but honestly I don't care enough to think about it right now and also we're talking about you. But just so you know: It was Kagiru Mei who thought to bind herself to the Uchiha."

Irritated, I tell her, after Mei found out her paramour was dead, she went into a depression. It was unlike anything my family had ever seen because Mei would eat and sleep, but she would lose a lot of weight and always be tired. The clan elders thought she was sick, but someone presented the idea that these were side-effects of the blood oath, which is how my family figured that it wasn't going to break even when the Uchiha was dead.

When I'm finished speaking, Rei is quick to correct me on the points I've gotten wrong. The depression part was right, and so was the fact that the clan elders simply thought that Mei was sick. But, firstly, since they hadn't been informed of the bond to begin with, they couldn't have and didn't know that it was the bond that was causing Mei to be sick. Secondly, the person who presented the idea that the constant fatigue and dramatic weight loss were side-effects of the bond had actually been the one to rat out that there was a blood oath in place causing the symptoms.

"That would be my grandmother," says Rei, sitting opposite me, legs crossed. "Great-great-great-great-something or other grandmother, but I'm just going to call her my grandmother to save breath. But like I was saying: My grandmother knew what Mei had done. She had, apparently, felt a disturbance in the spiritual balance of the world. That's probably just a line my family fed me to make us sound cool, though."

"But," I start, "wasn't your family stationed in the Sound Country? How could your grandmother have—"

"She tagged along," Rei says. "Felt that we had a moral responsibility to watch over your clan after giving you guys such a great power. The presence of a Kannagi Shaman in your family became a regular thing, and we were like the elder of the Kagiru elders. In other words, we were the _best_ of friends. Obviously that's not true anymore," she laughs, shaking her head. "My family were defected from the Kagiru a little while after the bond was inherited by one of Mei's grandchildren. But now we're skipping ahead. Let's get back on track."

Rei's grandmother told my clan that Mei was suffering because the terms of the bond hadn't been fulfilled. She offered to break the bond for us, while it was still fresh. Brilliantly, my clan elders declined because they figured: the Uchiha was already dead, and with the death of Mei, the bond was sure to be broken and gone. Which would have been true if Mei and the Uchiha hadn't had kids with their respective spouses before the Uchiha's death.

"Blood oaths will only expire when fully realized or when all parties involved are completely dead," Rei says. "And Mei and her lovey-dove weren't completely dead because they lived on through their kids. They didn't know they were passing down tainted genes, genes that would forever be attracted to each other."

"It still doesn't make any sense," I protest, running my hands through my hair. "Why would—how could that happen? They signed papers—it's not like they ate part of each other's souls."

Rei laughs. "I'm a little thirsty," she says in lieu of answering my question. "All this talking can wear you out, especially with the tangents I go on, not to mention this unbearable heat! What do you say we take this inside. That way, you can better do you duty as hostess and offer me an ice cold drink."

Sighing, I comply, figuring that she has more than deserved for me to treat her kindly. "Come around this way," I say, pushing to my feet. "The front door should still be—"

"Why don't we just go in through here?" she calls and I turn around to find she's down by the shoji doors of my parents' room. "These doors aren't locked are they? It'd be so much quicker."

I inhale sharply, trying to come up with an excuse. "Those doors are blocked by boxes," I say, although I can't remember if they truly are. Hopefully they are. "I had some people come by to clean and, all the packed up boxes I had, they stacked in that room because I told them I wouldn't be using it. It'll be bothersome to maze through there; going through the front door will be easier."

Rei pulls a face again, displeased, but she ends up saying, "Fine. Lead the way."

[+]

Rei collapses into a chair dramatically, draping her arm over the backrest and kicking her feet up on the table. I push her dirty boots off as I place a glass of water in front of her and sit down beside her.

"Thanks, tonakai," she chimes, taking up the glass with a wink.

I grimace. "Please don't call me that."

"But it's cute," she pouts, draining her water. "Besides, I think it fits. Anyway, before we get sidetracked," she says just as I'm about to ask her how exactly the nickname 'tonakai' suits me. "Back to the story telling. I know how you're dying to know more about all this bond stuff. Where were we? Oh, that's right."

Rei laughs again as she recalls what I had said about my ancestor eating the Uchiha's soul and vice versa. "What you're not understand, Ren, is that the blood-binding process is more complicated than signing a piece of parchment with your blood. There's an official swearing, mixing, and drinking of it too. Like, here."

Rei straightens up in her seat and scrapes her chair closer to me. She grabs my hand before I'm wiser and pins it to the table. "Firstly," she says, "after writing up a contract and pouring the customary cup of wine, they would cut into the palm of whichever hand isn't their dominant hand, right across here." Rei demonstrates the incision by tracing a diagonal line from under my forefinger to the heel of my hand. "Of course, they could also have done the thing where they grabbed onto a knife and _yanked_ it from their grip, essentially slicing their hand into three parts, but that's usually only the really crazy people who do that."

"I think you'd have to be crazy to think about and then go through with doing something like this," I say, pulling free of Rei's grip with ease.

"But _I_ am going to give Mei the benefit of the doubt and say she was only passionate. So, after they and their partner made this cut, they would allow their blood to drip from their palms and into the cup of wine, which they would then swirl around so as to mix it up. Once that was done, they would shake or entwine their bloodied hands—that's the mixing part—depending on the manner of their business, and read the contract aloud in unison or proclaim their unyielding love for each other, stating their respective responsibilities, whatever—that's the swearing part. Then they would take the cup of wine and take turns draining it, which is the drinking part of the oath-ing."

Rei laughs, undoubtedly because of the horror that must be portrayed on my face at the moment. She leans back in her seat as I cover my face with my hands.

"That's disgusting," I groan. "She was a medic for god's sake—didn't she think about getting an infection or, like, some kind of sickness from drinking someone else's blood?"

"It's not like the drink was one part wine, two parts blood, Ren," Rei chuckles. "They each probably only allowed two or three drops of their blood into the wine. No biggy. The knife and the meshing of wounds, I will admit, is a little gruesome, but I don't think too much could have gone wrong. Besides, like you said, Mei _was_ a medic. If their cuts had gotten infected, she could have healed them right quick, right? So they didn't have that to worry about."

"Sure," I say, cringing again at the thought. "Moving on."

"Moving on!" agrees Rei. "After the cutting and the dripping and the mixing and the swearing and the drinking, there was, finally, the signing. And that's just wiping the thumb of your dominant hand in your newly mixed blood and signing the contract with that stained finger. Now you see how it's not just signing something. Why the bond can't be easily broken? Because you and Sasuke, essentially, are two parts of a whole. You have each others' blood bound right into your very bones."

"Hold on," I say. "If the blood oath is passed down by genes—does that mean Mei is my grandmother?"

"Great-great-great-great-something grandmother, yes," Rei confirms. "And that other Uchiha guy is Sasuke's great-great-great-great-something grandfather. Weird, isn't it?"

"That still doesn't explain how the bond chose my clan to be the submissive one," I say.

"That part actually wasn't up to the bond. Your clan made it that way. Like, the contract that was written up only said that Mei and her darling had to be loyal to each other, but when your clan decided that they would serve the Uchiha because—get this—they could never be able to completely repay the Uchiha for all the things they had done for them, the bond started to twist to fit that form of loyalty they had established."

I clench my fists and think _stupid stupid stupid family, stupid stupid stupid bond_. They had had just as much power as the Uchiha, just as much talent, and they threw it away to become a subservient clan. We had played a part in our own survival, we had been cunning enough to master the art of healing, which isn't an easy thing to do in the first place, and to think we chose, we _chose_, this fate, this goddamn curse!

I don't understand why my ancestors didn't fight and separate from the Uchiha. At some point in time, we had to have learned how to fight, otherwise _I_ wouldn't be a shinobi. It's not like we turned out to be totally inept warriors either; I have done all right for myself so far. Maybe there's no comparison between me and my predecessors. I was nothing like the compliant people my parents were when they were alive. Still, there's only so much I can avoid when facing my indelible roots. But I will never be a Kagiru through and through as my father had been.

"Of all the other kids that could have been chosen," I groan, massing my temples. "Of all the other Kagiru that could have had the luck of inheriting this bond—why me? Surely Mei's kids had kids, and their kids had kids—there must have been a little bit of Mei's blood in all of us by the time I was born! What bad timing, I have."

"Your parents, more like," Rei corrects. "Don't you know that Kagiru births are planned around an Uchiha's? I bet that, once your parents caught wind that Sasuke's mom was pregnant, they jumped on the bandwagon so they might have the honor of birthing a child graced with the bond."

And I did, in fact, know this. It was one of the many strikes my parents had against them when I think of all the ways they had consciously worked to ruin any chances I'd have of living my own life.

"To think your ancestors hadn't even believed my grandmother when she said the bond would be inherited by Mei's descendents," Rei says with a shake of her head. "And then they get all gung-ho about it and go so far as to plan for children around Uchiha pregnancies. My grandmother warned your family that the blood oath would be the death of them. Your clan elders sneered and turned their noses up at her, shunning her from your clan and then driving her out of the country. In turn, while the Uchiha and Kagiru inherited the bond, we Kannagi inherited my grandmother's resentment for you guys." Rei smiles tightly. "I can't say either one of us is better off than the other. At least, not on my part."

"Likewise," I say. I lean my head onto my palm, like all this new information has made my brain heavy and my neck is straining to keep it aloft. "So what do we do now?"

"In regards to what?"

"This bond," I say, wanting to throw my hands up. But for some reason, I'm tired beyond belief. I feel that, to strain myself by lifting my arms higher than they are, would merit more effort than I have at the moment and it would only result in me falling over. "Granted, this was a fine history lesson you've given me, but it's only reinforced the idea that this bond can't be broken. You said so yourself."

"There are always ways of breaking, Ren dear. The only thing is, you have to be open to receiving help."

"But I _am_ all for receiving help," I say. "I would love to get help with this thing. But nobody knows about it, there's no substantial evidence on it in the libraries across the Fire and Sand Countries because all the documentation has been destroyed or whatever you said, and I don't think that anyone will know where my parents hid the original blood oath. So what am I supposed to do? Unless you can magically conjure it up with that feather of yours, I think I'm on my own with this one."

"What about Sasuke?"

"What about him?" I retort.

She shrugs as though she hadn't been the one to bring him up and doesn't understand why I'm being so touchy about it. "What does he know in regards to be bond?"

"Less than I do, that's for sure. Trust me, I've already asked him about it on multiple occasions. And if he does know anything, he's not telling." I lean my head down on my arms, letting out a heavy breath. "I don't think he wants this bond broken. He's lost too much to want to let go."

Rei scoffs, propping a hand on her hip and pointing at me with the other. "Haven't you lost just as much, if not more?" she responds. "He's not the only one who lost his family in the massacre, you know. He's being selfish."

To that I have no response, because if Sasuke is being selfish, then aren't I being so too? After all, I only want this bond broken for my own personal gain, for my freedom. Ever since I made it my priority to break the bond, I haven't taken Sasuke's needs into consideration at all.

Sasuke and I will never be able to compromise when it comes to the bond. I don't see how we could when neither of us can satisfy what we want from the other.

"It's not that simple," I tell Rei, who has gotten up to refill her glass. "Anyway, what's it matter? Even if I fail, Sasuke and I are the last of our clans—this bond will end up dying out one way or another."

"Doesn't Sasuke have plans of reviving his darling clan though?" asks Rei. "How will that work when you both have families?"

"I'll die first," I say.

Rei stops mid-drink and lowers her cup to scrutinize my face for signs of jest. "You're really serious about this, aren't you?" she says softly. "Breaking this bond, I mean."

My laugh is sharp, resentful. "Only a little, Rei. Anyway, why wouldn't I be serious about this? It's not natural," I say, rubbing my forehead, growing irritated merely thinking about how much the bond has royally screwed up my life. "It's not something that I would condemn anyone to. Losing your willpower, having to put everything on hold for someone you might not even like—what kind of life is that? Mei was lucky—at least she got to pick who she was bound to. In that case, I might not mind it so much, but for it to be forced upon me like it was? It's a burden that I have absolutely no desire to carry with me or to pass on to my children."

I'm having one of those moments wherein I'm completely conscious of how much the bond has been weighing me down this whole time, and the frustration of it clogs my throat. I want to explode into a million little pieces and have someone put me back together minus the parts tainted by the blood oath. If only it were that easy!

"I can't do this on my own," I admit, taking deep breaths to contain this maelstrom rumbling inside my head. "But I don't see how anyone can help."

Rei sets her cup down by my sink and says, "Then what have I been doing this entire time? I said I was going to help you and I'm going to help you."

I glare at her. "And how do you expect to do that when your family has destroyed information on the bond?"

"They had to learn it from somewhere, you know," she says with a wink. "And I happen to know exactly how to access that somewhere." Rei twirls back to the kitchen table, falling into the seat beside me easily. "Like I said before: The spirits are very open with me, so long as my intentions are pure. I definitely think that helping a damsel in distress counts as a good intention."

"I'm not a damsel in distress."

"But you are a damsel, and you are in distress over this bond issue," she says. "I'll help you, Ren, but first you gotta trust me. For some reason, it doesn't feel like you do."

I'm about to protest that I wouldn't have let her onto my property, let alone allow her into my house if I didn't trust her. I wouldn't have sat here and listened to her yammer on for so long or believed her story about my ancestors. I'm not that easy to fool. But I know, partially, that she's right. When it comes right down to it, I only extended my hospitality to her because I wanted answers to help me break the bond. I listened to her because she must have known helpful information if she had any kind of inkling about the bond at all, seeing as not many people will even accept that something like this can exist.

Trusting a person, though, is hard work. I think we can all attest to that. And while it might be impossible to do everything on your own, it's even harder to rely on someone to help you.

"You've gotta stop thinking like that," Rei says.

"You can't possibly know what I'm thinking," I retort.

"Sure I do," she answers with a wave of her hand. "I can read your face like a book! You want to trust me because all the things I've shared with you sounds enough like the truth, but you keep going back to your mentality that, once you start trusting someone, they're only going to supply you with disappointment after disappointment. But, I mean, people are weak. We are full of inherent flaws. We fail each other. But that's not all we're capable of, and it's not like we go out of our way to purposely let each other down. We always have good intentions, however misguided they may be sometimes. Trusting people to help you is one of those risks you have to take if you hope to break this bond."

"I know," I snap.

"I don't doubt it," she says, "but I'm not done. You probably do realize that you need to trust people in this life, and you honestly don't have a problem with that, except for one thing: You don't want to be one of those people who make a bad call and end up believing in the wrong person. You want to be in the right, always always always, because you don't want to do anymore to mess up your life or your children's lives. You know how it feels to have no power over the decisions you make. So you want to hold onto everything you have, control everything you possibly can, and by never letting anyone in on your problems, you're achieving your goal splendidly."

"Are you done?" I demand, glaring at her. I can only take so much of her preaching before I lose my wits, and my patience is starting to run low.

Rei sits back in her seat and smoothes back her hair. "Just about," she says. "It's no secret that I hate your family. Now you know why. It's not because you didn't believe my grandmother or because you guys foolhardily gave everything you had to the Uchiha because they protected your once upon a time. It's because of what they've done to you. You didn't—none of us need to be the way we are, but we're conditioned into our current states of mind by our families. And your family really tore you up, inside and out, with the way they handled this bond, the way they handled your upbringing in regards to the bond. You and Sasuke both could be living perfectly happy with this bond in place, you know. But now there's too much loss connected with the bond for either of you to be able to be satisfied with it, no matter how you end up dealing with it."

Rei lowers her head and rubs her eyes. "Done," she says.

_At last_, I think and stand from my seat. Except once I'm on my feet, I don't know what to do. So I sit back down and muss my hair.

"I trust you," I say quietly. "At least, I'm trying."

Rei sighs, and then it's her turn to stand. But she knows where she's going and she takes the glass I'd given her and goes to refill it in the sink again. "I know," she says. "And _that_ is why I'm helping you. Forget my family and their petty grudges. To tell you the truth, the spirits aren't too fond of them anymore for hanging onto that negative energy for such a long time. You'd think, being a family of shaman, my relatives would have figured sensed the spirits' displeasure, unless they have and are just not making any moves to fix their ways. Whatever."

"One more thing," I say as she downs her third glass of water. "Before we make this alliance official, I want to ask you: You and your team aren't affiliated with Orochimaru, are you?"

The question seems out of place, but talking about the bond makes me think about Sasuke and thinking about Sasuke leads me into thinking about Naruto and Sakura and how worried about Sasuke they always are. I needed to ask Rei about this anyway, in case she knows something that will help me ease Sakura's nerves.

Rei's body tenses and her face contorts with irritation. "No way," she says, turning up her nose. "Granted, without that bastard establishing that shinobi village, I would have never been able to come here for the exams, let alone enter the Fire Country, but I would never otherwise associate myself with him. He's no good."

"I'm relieved," I say, "but I was hoping you might be able to tell me more about him?"

Rei eyes me with suspicion. "Why?"

I blink at her, at a loss for how to answer. Not that I don't know what to say, but she'd been so quick to talk before and now she's shutting down, becoming defensive. Also, I'm not sure if I should tell her about the curse mark that Orochimaru sunk into Sasuke's neck. While she does seem to be an expert on curses, I don't feel like this is something I should be bringing up whenever I get the chance.

"We had an, uh, encounter with him," I say. "In the Forest of Death. He and his cohorts—that is, the other Sound Nin—they made these threats against us. They've established themselves as our enemies, and I want to know more about them in the case that I'll need to, um, see him again."

Rei stares at me, scrutinizing my face. "Is that so?" she says, but the note of curiosity in her voice is flat. "All I can tell you is, don't get mixed up with them. They're bad people. The one time that I met with Orochimaru, by pure coincidence I'll have you know, the spirits gave me a bad vibes on him. His aura is off."

I could have told her that much. "It's only that he's heard of my clan," I say. "He knows I'm a Kagiru, and that I'm tied to Sasuke. When we were in the forest, he said that he's fought against the Shindou before. Except I haven't heard anyone call my kekkei genkai the Shindou since my father first taught me how to control the vibrations, and even then my father never elaborated on it."

Rei presses her lips together in a tight line and then says, tiredly, "I don't know how he knows, Ren. People are drawn to Orochimaru's power. Maybe he met someone who heard of your clan and told him about it. He does go around recruiting clans, sometimes, so he can have them under his wing. Maybe he wants you to join his ranks."

"I look forward to seeing _you_ in the future," he had said. But the context in which he'd said it had me assuming that he'd be waiting for me to come with Sasuke at my side. Either way, I wouldn't have him holding his breath for me to go to him. Or maybe I would because then he'd drop dead and there would be one less problem for me to deal with.

"Look, I don't know how you managed to get mixed up with him, Ren, but you need to forget about it and leave it all behind," Rei says, shrugging her shoulders. "Cut ties with him before you go in way over your head."

I shake my head. "That's easier said than done."

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	35. Monster

**Bound  
Chapter 35: Monster**

After warning me about Orochimaru one more time and chiding me for letting my house fall apart when she noticed the loose floorboard in my kitchen, Rei left in a hurry. "We're officially a team now, right?" she confirmed as she stood on my front porch. "Don't you worry your pretty little head, then, tonakai. I'll tap into my infinite resources and see if I can find new information for you. See ya!"

And she was gone.

It doesn't make much sense how much I believe her stories over what I had learned from my parents, and it probably isn't reasonable to trust her so wholeheartedly. But I do. And while that might prove I am a fool in some respect, I'm not a complete idiot. I know Rei wasn't telling me everything she knew about my family's relationship to Orochimaru. Maybe if I had just confessed to her what the man had done to Sasuke, she would have been more inclined to help me deal with Orochimaru. Unless odd behavior at the mention of Orochimaru is natural among the people of the Sound Country. Hiro had acted in the same manner when I confronted him, after all, and in the Forest of the Death the other Sound Nin tensed when Sakura brazenly demanded information on him. So maybe I shouldn't have expected any different from Rei.

But with her indifferent to my queries about Orochimaru, the only other person I know who I would be able to ask in regards to the subject is Kakashi. I'll have to wait for him to come back from whatever godforsaken location he's taken Sasuke to train, since it's not a place I care to visit.

Anyway, I know enough about my family history and my kekkei genkai to piece things together. When I first started training with my bloodline, my father told me that, in the beginning, the Genshindou was just the Shindou. The Shindou was a much more dangerous form of my bloodline and fed off the will of its user until it either sliced them to ribbons or drove them mad. My father told me it had mutated when our blood mixed with the Uchiha's, and became what it was now: An easier, more controlled kekkei genkai dependent on precise chakra levels.

Rei is right in one respect: Orochimaru probably had heard of my bloodline from someone and was interested in it enough to find one of my family to see what the Genshindou was really about. However, being that he referred to my limit as the Shindou, he must not have met with a Kagiru directly, but some distant relative of mine who stayed behind in the Sound Country instead of migrating with the rest, despite the hostilities they were facing. There, isolated in the Sound, the untainted strain of the Genshindou would have been passed down and available to Orochimaru.

I can only hope that my family's association with Orochimaru ended with a simple show of what the Shindou is capable of because I would hate to be connected to him, even distantly. But if his run in with my family had been that brief, Rei wouldn't have had to act so suspiciously. I know there's more that I'm missing.

I realize that if I don't find something to do for the next few weeks, I'll keep obsessing over the things Rei had told me and end up going crazy. Eventually, I come up with the idea to meet up with Shikamaru every few days and train with him until the tournament. I need to keep in shape, after all, and his father has a busy schedule to adhere to, so when Shikaku is away on official shinobi business, I'm in charge of Shikamaru's training.

Whenever I'm over, Shikamaru gripes and says that I don't need to train with him—if I'm just looking for something to do, there was always Naruto to consider, but it turns out that he, like Sasuke, has gone missing too, under the training of some old geezer, or so I hear from the old man at the ramen shop Naruto frequents.

But training with Shikamaru isn't bad. He's my best friend, after all, and it's nice being with him. But he's always complaining and looking for excuses to take a break, whereas _I_ am always critical and looking for improvement, which sometimes equates to training harder, and unless Shikaku is with us, Shikamaru hardly ever agrees to my regime.

Shikaku insists that Shikamaru works harder when I'm around because then he has someone he needs to impress, but I don't think so. Shikamaru isn't big on the desire to impress people. On the contrary, he would probably rather people not be impressed with him at all, so he won't have to keep trying to live up to their standards. That would be much too troublesome.

The day before the finals, we mutually agree that it should be a rest day, and I'm fixing up my house when there is a knock at my door. I abandon my floorboard project to answer the call and am half-expecting Rei to come bounding in when I answer the door, but in the back of my mind I know she wouldn't have been so patient as to wait for me to let her in. However, I'm equally pleased, albeit surprised, to find Shikamaru on my porch, hands stuffed in his pockets and looking, as usual, as though someone has just woken up him.

"You know," I say, propping a hand on my hip, "what's funny is that I'm actually hoping you're going to ask me to help you cram for the finals tomorrow. I must be sick or something to even think you'd consider that."

"Must be," he repeats with a nod. "And you say it like it's going to be a written test; I can't cram for these finals. That was the first exam, and if I'd known I'd have to go to the trouble of participating a tournament, I would have erased all of Ino's answers off my paper and flunked out."

I scowl at him. "What do you want, Shika? I have stuff to do."

"I was wondering if you wanted to go visit Chouji with me," he says, scratching his head. "The guy is in the hospital, and he's not one to get female visitors, so I thought I'd bring you along to cheer him up."

"In the _hospital_," I repeat, alarmed. "What for?"

Shikamaru purses his lips, like he's embarrassed to say. Then he sighs, shakes his head, and says, "Indigestion."

I blink at him, trying to understand.

He explains, "Remember when Asuma-sensei bribed him with an all-you-can-eat barbeque if he would just participate in the prelims? Well, as soon as Chouji recovered from his match, we took him out, he overindulged, and he got sick."

"Yikes," I say, laughing. "Poor guy; first he loses his match, and then he gets sick from celebrating his loss. It's like he can't catch a break."

Ultimately, I decide to go with Shikamaru because, really, what else am I going to do? That floorboard can wait until later.

[+]

"I told you so," I say, punching Shikamaru's shoulder after a doctor comes into Chouji's hospital room and, upon seeing the fruit basket we'd gotten for him on the way over, tells us Chouji is forbidden from eating unregulated food—that is, anything that isn't hospital food. Which is what I told Shikamaru when he'd bought the basket.

Shikamaru rubs his shoulder, scowling up a storm. "If I'd known you were going to be this troublesome," he grumbles, "I wouldn't have brought you along, Ren."

I punch him again.

"Thanks for coming by to see me anyway, guys," Chouji says, looking at the fruit basket miserably. "Hopefully I'll be discharged soon. The junk they feed me here is really gross. But I'm so _hungry_ because they never give me enough."

"Don't sweat it, Chouji," I say, ruffling his hair. "If they keep you here longer than necessary, we'll just have to start sneaking you food."

"Any idea when you might be released?" Shikamaru asks as Chouji beams at me. "You're not going to have to miss the tournament tomorrow, are you?"

"I don't think so," Chouji says. "These guys have been doing a pretty good job. I feel a lot better already. Oh, but hey. Did you guys know that Naruto's here? I heard some nurses talking about him earlier when they were checking up on me. They said, a few days ago, something happened outside that caused the whole hospital to shake, and when people looked out the windows, all they saw was Naruto laying spread-eagle next to this giant crater of a footprint."

"Huh," I say. "That's odd. Shikamaru and I didn't see a giant crater out there. Maybe those nurses were telling kids' tales they heard in the pediatric ward."

Chouji shakes his head. "Nope," he says. "I heard them say his name, Ren."

"It's possible that they filled the crater in pretty quickly," Shikamaru proposes. "That's a pretty dangerous detour to have in front of a hospital, after all."

"If Naruto's here," I say, standing, "I want to go visit him! Not to bail on you, Chouji."

"No problem," he says, leaning back in the hospital bed. "I'd rather you get that fruit out of my face anyway."

We say our goodbyes and leave to wander the hallways until we find where Naruto's staying. A nurse stops us for being suspicious as I'm peeking through the window of someone's room, and Shikamaru has to quickly explain our situation before the nurse kicks us out of the hospital. Luckily, the nurse knows where we can find Naruto and directs us to his room, continuing to glance over her shoulder at me every few paces to make sure I'm not going to sneak off or steal from the supply carts that pass us.

"He's been unconscious for almost three days now," the nurse says, opening the door for us when we reach his room. "Maybe you'll be fortunate enough to have him wake up on your watch; he's bound to come to, soon, I think."

"Unconscious for three days, huh?" Shikamaru repeats as we step inside and go to Naruto's bed, where he lies with the covers pulled up to his chin. "If that's the case, I don't think the chances are high that he'll wake up while we're here. We should just leave the fruit and go."

"I don't think so," I say, taking the basket from him. "We're going to wait for him to wake up. And if he doesn't do it in a timely manner, we'll just have to force him awake, won't we? Three days is more than enough time to recuperate, anyway, and he has to get up for the tournament tomorrow!"

Shikamaru sighs and takes a seat on the stool by Naruto's bed, relenting because he knows he can't win. I make my way over to the window and open the curtains, a deluge of light spilling over the floor and making the room considerably warmer. I stare down at the people passing by the hospital, and my mind wanders until I'm thinking about Rei. She hasn't made another appearance, and there's no sign that she's still in the village, although it's not like I'm going out looking for her. I figure, when she had something to tell me, she would come find me, and I'd welcome her. All things considered, she has a lot on her plate anyway, what with searching for information on the bond and training for the tournament.

Thinking about Rei understandably leads me back to Shikamaru because they _are_ going to be going head to head tomorrow. I hope that I'm preparing him adequately for his match, but even without my help, I'm sure Shikamaru will be able to beat Rei. He always manages to come up with something that will save his ass.

In the window, I can see Shikamaru's reflection. He's pulled out a book and started reading, and it's an odd sight, seeing him do something else when he could be daydreaming. Even during training, he found chances to stare up at the clouds and sigh tragically.

And I start to wonder: Is the bond something I should tell Shikamaru? He is, after all, my best friend, and he already knows about the massacre. It would be easier, I think, to have him of all people know. A weight off my shoulders so that I'm not always on edge. A way to explain myself so I don't have to sneak around or pretend everything is okay.

"Shikamaru," I say, fidgeting with the curtain. I see his reflection shift to my attention. "Do you—"

Naruto groans softly and stirs in his bed. His eyes flutter open as I turn around, leaning against the window. Something heavy presses on my chest, but I find that the deeper the breaths I take, the easier it is to ignore it.

"Hey," Shikamaru says, turning to Naruto. "You're finally awake."

Naruto blinks at Shikamaru groggily and asks, "Where am I?"

"The hospital," replies Shikamaru. "I heard you've been out for three days."

"Which is, I think, a new record for you, Naruto," I say, stepping closer to his bed. His head spins to look at me, eyes wide with surprise. "When will you learn to take it easy?"

"But," he says, his eyebrows pulling together in confusion. "Why am I here with _you_?" Shikamaru scowls, like he knew coming to visit Naruto was a bad idea. "You're a medic, Ren, and we're on the same team, so I get that, but where's the pervy sage?"

_Pervy sage?_ What kind of company does Naruto keep, exactly? "Uh," I say. "I'm not sure how to answer that."

"We're here because we went by to visit Chouji," Shikamaru says, clapping his book shut. "And even though it was troublesome, when Ren heard you were here, she wanted to drop by."

"What? Chouji was hurt that badly?" Naruto asks, fully awake now.

"Hardly," I say, walking around the bed to Shikamaru.

"After his match," he says, "he ate too much barbeque and got a severe case of indigestion. The two of you aren't the type to get girls to come by, so I brought Ren along."

"I feel like I should be offended somehow," I say, frowning as I lift the fruit basket onto Naruto's bed. "Because, simply put, I'm being used, aren't I?"

"Then don't look at it that way," Shikamaru says as Naruto sits up. "In any case, we went to the trouble to buy this fruit basket for Chouji, but it turns out he's not allowed to have it, so let's eat it ourselves."

"All right!" Naruto cheers. "You know, you're a pretty good guy."

"Shut up," Shikamaru grumbles, like being a good guy is a bad thing. "It would just be a shame to let it go to waste."

Naruto makes a grab for an apple, but then stops. He puts his hand in front of his mouth and begins to snicker. He looks like a downright fool when Shikamaru demands, "What?"

"Just for fun," he chortles, "why don't we eat it in front of Chouji?"

Before either Shikamaru and I can say otherwise, Naruto hops out of his bed, grabbing the fruit basket, and heads toward the door. I sigh, my shoulders sagging as we have no choice but to follow after him, if only to stop him from being so spiteful.

"Naruto, you don't even know where you're going," I call as he takes off down the hallway in the wrong direction. "You'd think," I say to Shikamaru, "after waking up from a three day coma, he'd be a little more out of his wits."

"I don't think Naruto ever runs out of energy," Shikamaru says. "It's what makes him so troublesome."

I frown. "You know, that's probably it," I agree.

"Hey, Ren. What was it that you were going to say before Naruto woke up?" Shikamaru asks as we watch Naruto teeter on his toes to look into a room that definitely does not belong to Chouji.

"Hmm? Oh, I don't remember now," I say, clipping my hair behind my ear. "I guess it wasn't important."

Shikamaru, I can tell, sees right through my lie. I avoid meeting his gaze, which probably only adds to his suspicion, but it doesn't matter because I know he won't prod me about it. That's just how he is.

The vibrations hitch up, sending a wave of chills down my spine. I freeze mid-stride and glance over my shoulder to where I feel the disturbance coming from. When he notices I've stopped, Shikamaru follows suit and asks, "What's up?"

"Hey, hey, guys," Naruto says, bounding up to us. "I think I found Chouji's room! It's—huh? What's wrong?" he asks when he notices my frown.

I would explain, but I think they're starting sense it too: Chakra is emanating from a nearby room, at a level that a patient in the hospital wouldn't be able to achieve. Without having to say a word, they know to follow me, and together we walk to the room where the energy is most prominent, keeping quiet. Once we reach the room, we peer into the open door. I gasp.

Inside, Gaara is looming over the bed of a patient, who sleeps soundly. Sand is floating from Gaara's gourd into the air, swirling around and sliding into the patient's bed.

"That's Lee," I realize, my palms growing sweaty.

"What's that Sand kid up to?" Shikamaru whispers as Gaara extends his hand over the Lee's body, his fingers gripped like a cage.

"I'd rather not find out," I say, pulling away from the door. "It'd probably be best for everyone if we got Gaara out of there."

Naruto agrees grimly, looking to Shikamaru and handing the fruit basket off to me haphazardly so I end up cradling it in my arms. "Do you think you could stop him with your Shadow Technique?"

Shikamaru sighs as I stare blankly at the basket in my hands. "I suppose I could," he says as I come to the conclusion that Naruto expects me to sit this one out, "but I don't know if that's going to stop his sand."

"We only have to divert his attention," I say, glaring at Naruto. "Then we can take care of getting him out of there."

Naruto nods, oblivious to my annoyance. He chances another peek into the room and says, "Man, that guy is really out of it to not have sensed us yet. Shikamaru." He turns around to face the other boy. "You go in first and stop him."

"What?" Shikamaru says, aghast. "Why me?"

"Your shadow technique," I remind him, taking him by the shoulder and shoving him closer to the door. "_Go_. Before Gaara follows through with whatever he's planning!"

Shikamaru sighs again but does as he's told. He tiptoes in, presses his hands together in a seal, and I watch as his shadow slowly extends the length of the floor and attaches itself to Gaara's. The other boy tenses and wavers and his eyes slink over to Shikamaru in a deathly stare when Naruto rushes in and punches Gaara in the face.

I watch as both Shikamaru and Gaara stumble before steadying. It's a little humorous, like Shikamaru is being attacked by some invisible force, but it's offset by the idiocy of Naruto to go barreling in like that and crying, "Hey, what do you think you're doing!"

"Naruto," Shikamaru says slowly, in the way one would speak to a very, very stupid person. "Whatever you do to him while I got this shadow possession thing going on, I feel it too."

Naruto apologizes meekly as the sand begins to retreat back to Gaara's gourd, swimming through the air like mist. "But what are you trying to pull, anyway?" Naruto demands.

Gaara takes the time to meet our eyes individually. Then, without a trace of emotion, he says, "I wanted to kill him."

My fingers dig into the basket, causing the wicker to crinkle in the stunned silence that follows. I'd always pictured, when this kind of statement was announced, the speaker would have some maniacal grin on his face, or at least be absolutely disgusted with his prey. But Gaara shows no sign of why he would want to do as he says, and I'm not the only one who picks up on his apathy.

"And why would you want to do that?" Shikamaru asks. "You won your match against him. Do you have some other personal vendetta against him?"

"No," Gaara says, unblinking. "Nothing like that. I wanted to kill him…just because I wanted to kill him."

"Do you know what the _hell_ you're saying?" cries Naruto, jabbing an accusatory finger at Gaara, who stares back, unfazed. "_Do_ you?"

"You must not have been raised right," agrees Shikamaru. "How self-centered can you be?"

"If you try to interfere," Gaara says plainly, and the deadpan of his voice gives me goosebumps, "I'll kill you too."

"I dare you to try!" Naruto says, fisting his hands and Shikamaru protests for him to stop being so bigheaded.

The vibrations begin to shift, swaying like waves, which I suppose would be comforting if I knew why they're moving that way. Unsettled by their curious swing, I move closer to Shikamaru and tug on his hand. "Hey, I don't know about this anymore," I whisper to him. "This guy is crazy, and to top it off, he's beastly strong. Which is probably the worst two combinations in a killer ever. We gotta get out of this somehow."

Shikamaru grits his teeth and nods. "I know," he answers. More loudly, he says, "I've seen you fight, I know you're strong. But you see, me and Naruto are pretty capable fighters too. We both have moves in reserve that nobody's seen yet. Not to mention you don't even know what our friend Ren here has in store for you, should you decide to attack us."

"Shikamaru," I say, because bluffing isn't going to help us go home free. "I don't think—"

"Plus," he adds, ignoring me, "it's three against one, so you'll be at a disadvantage. If you swear to leave Lee alone, we'll let you go; no harm done!"

Gaara is eying me now, his lip twitching into the faintest sneer. He must recognize me from when I'd leaped into the arena to heal Lee. I try to hold his gaze, like he doesn't shake me up, but his eyes are so unnerving. The black lines that encircle his eyes are deeply dark, like the most sleepless nights I've ever seen. Contrasted with the whites of his eyes and the turquoise of his iris, they make the color stand out and his skin blanch.

He breaks contact with me, but it's more out of disinterest than anything else, I know. "I'll say this once more: If you keep interfering, I'll kill you."

"YOU CAN'T KILL ME," Naruto retorts, lurching forward like he's going to attack, but Shikamaru swings out his arm to stop the other boy.

"I told you to quit it!" he hisses. "Remember that this guy has monster-like strength, Naruto."

Naruto smirks and says, "But I've got a real monster inside of me, and I won't lose to someone like him!"

I shake my head, prodding Naruto in the gut with my elbow. "Careful what you say," I mumble, but he shakes me off.

"What do you think you're doing, egging him on like that, you idiot?" Shikamaru adds under his breath.

"A monster, huh?" Gaara says, pulling us backing into our conversation with him. "Actually, I've got one of those too." He narrows his eyes at us and says, "Like you said: I wasn't raised right. In the process of my birth, I stole the life of the woman I was supposed to call 'mother', all so my father could create the world's strongest shinobi. By using a ninjutsu, he implanted the reincarnation of sand, known as Shukaku, in my body. I was born a monster."

I am stunned by Gaara's sudden openness with us, stunned that he would even give us the time of day. But mostly, I am stunned to hear what Gaara is saying. Could it possibly be that he, too, is one of the nine people possessed by demon spirits, like Naruto? I look to Naruto, whose mouth has dropped open in horror and sympathy. He can't believe that there is someone here who is, like him, playing host to a demon spirit.

"A type of possession art that causes a fetus to be forcibly possessed?" Shikamaru reiterates, a grin of revulsion and disbelief tugging at the corner of his lips. "To go so far. That's crazy."

And I flinch because, the way Shikamaru says it, I can see the smallest likeness of the bond in Gaara's possession. Granted, I'm nowhere near as dark and brooding as Gaara is, nor does the bond allow me monstrous strength like him and Naruto. But it's in the way that our curses have affected us that they are similar.

I am by no means saying I have it as bad as Naruto or Gaara. Contrary, I've suffered much less than they have, considering no one believes in the bond because there's no way to prove it like one can prove that they are a human container of a demon spirit. But to lose themselves to the power of their respective possessions, to be isolated and used like they both undoubtedly were, without choice, without a single say in the matter, but simply because it happened that they were available. I know this sadness, this isolation.

Unlike them, however, I've forced it on myself because there were and always have been people to whom I can talk and share my feelings. I wasn't resented by the people who mattered most to me and I didn't have to run away and miss growing up, going to school, making friends. I didn't have to push Sasuke away or keep the bond a secret. But Naruto—everyone regarded him with disdain, not because he made them see him that way, but because that was what they chose to see: a monster that had destroyed families and disrupted the peace, when he was only a child, oblivious to what his other self had done.

And I wonder: Why would I choose this?

I reach out and clasp my hand onto Shikamaru's, entwining my fingers around his as a reminder that I've already decided I will not do this anymore. I won't be trying to get through this life alone. Here, before me, is someone who has been forced into darkness, and is so far gone that he will kill because he feels like it. So why would I choose it when I could do so much better?

I see Gaara's hand twitch, still under the influence of Shikamaru's shadow. It opens and spreads apart, like he's hoping to feel the warmth of another person too, and he blinks down at my and Shikamaru's hands, a hint of confusion sparking in his face. And then when Shikamaru gives my hand a reassuring squeeze, it looks more like Gaara is trying to clench his fingers into a fist than like he's grasping onto something. He winces.

"What kind of parent does that?" Shikamaru is saying. "What twisted love."

"Love?" repeats Gaara, glaring at us once again. "Don't judge me by your standards. Let me tell you what the word 'family' means to me—mere hulls of flesh, connected by hatred and murderous intent."

I feel Shikamaru go rigid, and I cling to his hand more tightly, as though he might slip away from me. I want to pull him out of here, before he is further spoiled by Gaara's words, because he and his family are so perfect and there is nothing about this that Shikamaru could even begin to understand. But I see no way out and so I brace myself for Gaara's story.

"My mother was sacrificed," he says, "so that I could be brought to life as my village's greatest masterpiece. My father taught me secret shinobi skills, one after another. I was raised in isolation, spoiled and overprotected. At first I thought _that_ was love. Until the incident."

Gaara leaves us hanging, and it extends for so long that Naruto prompts, "What are you talking about? What the hell happened?"

Gaara's mouth breaks into a twisted smile, his eyes bulging in their sockets like it brings him the greatest joy to tell us. "For the past five years," he says slowly, "my father has been trying to assassinate me. I've lost track of how many attempts he's made."

"B-but you just said he spoiled you," Shikamaru stutters. "So what do you mean?"

Gaara's foot shifts ever so slightly, but I don't think Shikamaru has moved. His shadow technique isn't meant to last forever. Before long, Gaara will be able to move freely enough where he can attack us. He seems to be enjoying standing on his soapbox for now—or maybe he figures he may as well give us the last details of his story before he kills us—and continues.

"A presence that is too powerful becomes a presence that is feared," he explains, the muscles of his face relaxing into a more controlled expression, his voice at once deadpan again. "Having been born through jutsu, my mind is unstable. It seems the fools of the village finally realized I had emotional issues. To my father, in his role as Kazekage, I was the village's most powerful possession, but at the same time I was a fearsome and dangerous object. So when I turned six, it was determined I was too great a liability. Prior to that, I had merely been handled with care, like any other hazardous instrument."

He practically spits out the statement, barely able to contain his bitterness, although I don't think he's trying too hard anymore. And indeed, I agree: He is unstable, but it's not because he's been made this way. This is the course he's let his emotions run, and that's why he's so bent out of shape.

"To them," he goes on, his brow crinkling in anger, "I am now a relic of the past that they wish to erase and forget. So for what purpose do I exist?"

The bond purrs to life, sweeping my thoughts into its arms. _To serve the Uchiha,_ it hisses.

"Why am I alive?"

_For Sasuke._

"At first, I had no answer," Gaara says as the fruit basket becomes like dead weight on my arm and the bond begins to think _Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke_, until I suffocate the thoughts by focusing on the vibrations. "But while I continue to live, I need a reason. Otherwise I might as well be dead."

The vibrations swirl more violently now, as though in direct correlation with Gaara's emotions. They're on the verge of breaking into a maelstrom, and I wonder what Gaara has in plan for us if he has the vibrations this hyped up.

"This," he says, his brow smoothing out once more and the vibrations falling still, "is what I came up with: I exist to kill all humans other than myself." He says this like it's regrettable, but it must be done, and I suppose to him it must be done, otherwise what does he have? "Living in constant fear, knowing I might be assassinated at any moment, I finally found inner peace. I was able to discern a reason for living and justify my own existence. I would fight for myself and love only myself. If all other people exist to magnify that love, then there is no more splendid world than this one. They allow me to experience the joy of living, for as long as there are people out there for me to kill, then _I will not cease to exist_."

Gaara's eyes become glazed over, the disturbed smile on his face returning and unnerving us even further. Shikamaru tugs my hand slightly, light enough for it to seem like an accident, but I feel he really does want to escape because being in the presence of Gaara is so unsettling that our primordial sense of self-preservation can only think _run, run, run_.

I find myself thinking I am not afraid of Gaara so much as I am afraid of how many similarities I find between him and me and Sasuke. Living only for ourselves, depending only on ourselves to find comfort, believing we are the only ones who could possibly understand what it's like being us—it's a terrible burden that we don't need to carry, and, oh god, why couldn't we have realized sooner before we were dragged in so far and twisted and broken and isolated?

Naruto trembles and his foot skids back, and the small but immensely significant movement shatters my train of thought. Shikamaru and I turn to him, alarmed, and I wonder if he's going to make a run for it and leave Shikamaru and me here to suffer Gaara's growing impatience and wrath. But I won't allow that.

"Now," Gaara says. "Help me feel alive!"

And as Gaara's sand rushes from the gourd, sweeping up into the air and looming over us in menacing pillars on the verge of crushing us, I slide my left foot forward, turn it to the side, and drag it back, pulling strands of vibrations straight across his sand and slicing the pillars in half.

The sand scatters, sprinkling to the ground in a mist, but quickly regain their shape, much more quickly than I could have anticipated. In a smooth motion, I slip the basket around my arm, reaching out to grab more vibrations and push the sand away, but then a voice shouts, "Enough!" and my concentration breaks.

Behind us, Gai looms disapprovingly over our shoulders, upset that we have turned his pupil's hospital room into a small battle arena. "The finals start tomorrow," he says. "Don't be in such a hurry, unless you're hoping to become an inpatient today? And Ren, if you want, you can find other chances to train—_outside_ of the hospital."

I drop my hold on the vibrations immediately, just as Shikamaru's shadow breaks from Gaara, whose eyes widen at the sight of the Jounin. Gaara lurches forward, grabbing his head and letting out a small moan of pain. His sand retracts into his gourd as he takes halting steps around us, to the door, where he pauses.

Still holding onto his head, he braces himself against the doorframe and says, glaring, "I'll kill you all eventually. Just you wait."

I watch with disdain as Gaara leaves. Naruto blinks in astonishment, unable to believe how easily Gaara had left and how we had narrowly escaped his crushing sand. He shakes his head and slinks out of the room glumly.

"Ren," Shikamaru says, bumping me with his elbow. "Are you all right?"

"Hmm? Oh, I—" I release Shikamaru's hand, which I realize I'd been holding onto much too tightly. Sure enough, once he's free, Shikamaru shakes the blood back into his fingers and waits expectantly for me to answer. "Yeah," I say, scratching my cheek. "Sorry about that."

A large hand drops on my shoulder, and I look up to find Gai, his eyes full of understanding for the feelings I'm trying to cover up. He says, "The two of you should go home and rest up. You have a big day ahead of you."

We nod and Shikamaru takes the lead out of the hospital room. I close the door behind me before following him down the hall, careful to keep my eyes on the ground because I don't want him to see my fear and mistake it for fear of Gaara's power or what will happen to him in the tournament tomorrow or what could have happened to us in the hospital room just now. I don't want him to think that I am some selfless girl who worries herself sick thinking about her friends, when the truth is I'm just scared for me.

While I want to break this bond and sever ties with the Uchiha and my own family, I don't want to fall as far as Gaara into that self-induced loneliness. And I realize that what the Hokage had said to me a month ago is true.

Bonds are necessary to survive, no matter how small or insignificant they are. They are necessary not only to retain a stable mentality, but to help you pull through and mature.

And maybe even to break the bonds you have outgrown.

"Hey," prods Shikamaru, nudging me. I look up at him, no longer afraid. No longer stuck. "You haven't been over in a while. Why don't you come to dinner tonight? As troublesome as it'll be to have an unannounced guest, I'm sure my mom won't mind because it's you. What do you say?"

Bullshit, I say, but not out loud. The little sneak wants to keep an eye on me to make sure I'm really okay as I said I am.

I glower at him, pursing my lips, but he doesn't catch my irritation. Or he chooses to ignore it. I sigh and roll my eyes, saying, "Fine. Maybe we'll be able to eat this fruit after all."

[+]

There isn't much I can say about dinner with the Nara. It's all pretty typical family stuff: News from work, gossip from the market, how their days went, how their days will be tomorrow. It's a great relief from the events of today, and by the time we finish off the last of our meal, everything is forgotten. For the moment.

Being with the Nara, being in their house, I always feel so at home, more so than I did at my own house, which makes sense because this was the place I was happiest. This was the place I was welcomed simply because I was liked by the people inside, not because I had some higher duty. Dinner with them was how things should be. How families should be and how mine never was. But the past is the past, and it is gone. There are brighter mornings.

After dinner, Shikamaru and I lie outside his room on the wraparound porch and watch the stars. I prefer it to cloud-gazing, honestly, but there's hardly a time when I enjoy lazing around by myself. It's more fun with Shikamaru, and we aren't normally together at night, which makes watching the stars a rare activity for me.

While I revel in the lights above, my hands behind my head, the boy in question lies beside me, eyes closed, breathing deep. He's not asleep, I can tell, but he hasn't said a word since we took our places. In the background, I can hear dishes clattering and the faintest murmurs of his parents talking in the kitchen. I am at once full up with warmth and nostalgia and the unadulterated joy of being in the presence of such kind people that my heart dips in my chest and I have to take a deep breath to contain my happiness.

I think I could have this one day if I tried hard enough, if I ever break the bond—and I am determined to break the bond.

"You know, you could hang out with Ino and Sakura some more."

I blink quizzically at the sky and then turn to Shikamaru. "What?" I ask, so off guard by the suddenness of his statement that I only made sense of half the words he said.

He opens one eye to look at me and says, "This whole time, you've been sitting in that house all by yourself, haven't you?"

"No," I say. "I went out. I came here to train with you." And Rei was with me for a few hours a couple days after the preliminaries. But Shikamaru doesn't have to know I was fraternizing with her.

Shikamaru sighs, pushing himself up to his elbows. "Besides leaving to get groceries," he says, "eating at restaurants when you were too lazy to cook, and training, how many times did you leave your house, just for the sake of getting out?"

"I hardly think _you_ should be the one slamming me for not having an active social life," I protest, sitting up too. "Come on, Shikamaru. You know I would go out more often, but you and Naruto are busy with the upcoming tournament!"

Shikamaru gives me the look that tells me he's not going to take my shit excuses and he says, "I don't know what makes you think you can't meet with Ino and Sakura, too. I'll bet, in the last month, their schedules were open for you to join them. You don't hate them half as much as you used to, right? You may as well make the most of it. Look," he says when I open my mouth to say that I absolutely _will not_ hang out with Ino and Sakura on my own. "As troublesome as it is to listen to them talk sometimes, they have their moments when they're not so bad. You can't spend every moment without me or Naruto alone, Ren. People are going to start thinking you're crazy and it'll be even more annoying being with you in public."

I punch him square in the shoulder. He flinches and rubs what is undoubtedly a budding bruise. "If that's how you feel, then I'll get to replacing you right away," I say, sitting back. "If you wanted to get rid of me, you just had to say it."

He only shakes his head and mutters, "Women."

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	36. Something Rotten

**Bound  
Chapter 36: Something Rotten**

Even before our run-in with Gaara, I had been thinking about Sasuke. He actually hadn't lingered in my mind significantly enough to say I thought about him, but he had made fleeting appearances in my day-to-day thoughts. Once or twice during the weeks following up to the tournament, there were small prickles in the back of my head that reminded me of Sasuke. Once or twice, I was actually bored enough to check up on him, but when I did he was only training.

Now, as I make my way to the arena to watch my friends duke it out over a silly title and an ego boost that will undoubtedly make them more unbearable than normal, I wonder if Sasuke will be all right. He'll have to exert so much energy for this match, especially if he plans to keep up with Gaara, and with all that chakra loose, will he be able to control the curse mark? He can't be flinching in the middle of his match. One screw up in the ring with Gaara and Sasuke will most definitely be dead.

I suppose he hasn't been training for nothing, though. Kakashi will have made sure that he can control himself. He wouldn't send Sasuke out unless he's absolutely sure his pupil is ready.

As the arena comes into view through the trees, the villagers who walk alongside me talk about the pairings they're most excited to see: Neji versus Naruto—so the Hyuuga can 'put that fox boy in his place', someone has the audacity to say—and of course they're gushing over how well the last of the prodigious Uchiha clan will perform.

Funny, I think. In a matter of hours, none of us will mean anything to these people anymore. Once we've played our parts, everyone will move on and we'll be just another footnote. Fame is a fickle friend indeed.

The pathway opens up and children run ahead of their parents as the arena comes into full view. It's a towering hunk, higher than any building in the village, and ugly in it's simple grey-speckled wall exterior. No wonder the village opted to have it built on the outskirts of town, away from the eyes of tourists and grand leaders. Such a stoic looking building would have been out of place inside our pretty village, which overflows with colors and laughter and peace.

I, like the people who are skittering across the clearing now, am abhorrently late for the tournament, especially for someone whose best friends are taking part in the matches. At the rate I'm going, I'll miss the first five minutes of Naruto's match, and that's assuming I can find a seat without a hitch. I had made plans with Ino and Sakura (after grudgingly taking Shikamaru's advice and calling them up the night before) for the three of us to sit together, but that was assuming I would be going into the stadium with them. For obvious reasons, that much is impossible now, and I don't think they'd have waited this long for me. I wouldn't have. Hopefully, though, they'll have thought to save me a seat.

Despite the fact that I am going to lose major friend points for this, I don't hurry my pace. Mostly because I don't feel like it, but also because something catches my eye at the edge of the clearing—a girl, with wildly curly hair that sticks out at odd ends and a feather sticking out of her headband. She is standing on her toes, whispering into the ear of a boy, who nods when she finishes speaking and promptly hops away.

Like she can sense me staring at her, she turns to meet my gaze. Rei grins and wiggles her fingers at me, apparently oblivious to the fact that she should be inside, that she should have already _been_ inside with the other contestants, preparing for her match.

She blows me a kiss, and I brace myself for the sound of her voice, too close in my ear as usual. "See you soon," it flutters, before drifting away with the breeze. Rei is quick to disappear into thin air as her words leave me, and I wonder why she wasn't already in the stadium with the rest of the contestants. Shikamaru had told me that they were supposed to show up earlier than everyone else to go over standard procedures do whatever official things that might be required of them. If Rei is only arriving, she's cutting it really close.

Although maybe I shouldn't be the one to talk.

I brush my thoughts of Rei aside and focus on getting into the stadium before I miss Naruto's match completely. The entrance is crowded and the mass of people pressing through the doors inch forward. There are a pair of shinobi standing on either side of the doors, checking tickets, and I'm pushed and shoved and forcibly, and uncomfortably, squeezed between two adults before I'm close enough to flash my ticket and get through.

Inside, there is more space, and the crowd begins to spread down the corridor. I follow them up a flight of stairs, and then another and another, and when everyone's thighs begin to burn from the uphill climb, I'm lucky to be well conditioned to endure much more than this and am able to break from the crowd to find my own way to the spectators' box.

There are three spectators' boxes in all, and they're big, holding rows and rows of people. It won't be an easy job, scouting for Ino and Sakura in the sea of villagers. How troublesome. I curse myself for not coming earlier. I shouldn't have started digging through those boxes in my parents' room without considering how distracted I would become. I'd only meant to kill time until the tournament, but now I'm wasting time dawdling about as the tournament starts.

In the first box I reach, I descend the stairs quickly, scanning for a head of bright pink hair and listening for voices raised to obnoxious volumes. As my luck would have it, everyone's voices are raised, and it seems that the normal shades of hair overwhelm and hide anything that could stick out. I'm sure I look like a complete idiot, craning my neck for my friends, and start on my way back up the staircase to go to the next box when someone calls my name. It's Sakura, only a few rows away, standing and waving to me. Beside her, Ino is frowning.

"Hey! Where have you been?"

"I got held up by some family stuff," I say, stepping up to their row. "Have I missed anything?"

Sakura shakes her head. "There's been some sort of delay," she says, her eyes shifting to the center of the arena, where the contestants stand on show for us. "I think a few of them are late."

I follow Sakura's gaze and count the number of figures I see. There are seven in total. I wonder if Rei is among the number, but before I can get a better look, I feel a light tap on my shoulder.

Behind me stands a boy with a mop of brown hair that has been habitually pushed to the side with a rough hand. I recognize him immediately. Hiro doesn't give me a chance to talk, instead leaning down into my ear and saying, "You'll have a few more minutes until the tournament starts. She's waiting for you in the woods, just outside the stadium."

"Waiting?" I repeat, pulling away from him and making no effort to keep my voice down like he had. "She should be down there!"

Hiro says, with a shrug, "You can go or you can stay. It's up to you." Then he nods to me in goodbye and starts up the stairs.

"Hey, hold up," I protest. "Where—how—"

"Ren!" Ino says, leaning back in her seat to get a better view of me. "Wasn't that one of the Sound Nin? He's the teammate of the girl Shikamaru's fighting! What are you doing talking to the enemy?"

"Nothing," I say sourly, already following after him as I'm sure he's expecting me to. "I'm going to be right back."

"Wha—but where are you going?" Sakura calls after me. "Ren, Naruto's match is about to start!"

"I won't miss it," I say. "Save my seat for me!"

"Ren!" Sakura cries, but I'm already to the corridor leading out of the stadium.

[+]

Hiro moves quickly. He ducks around the next corner just as I've rounded the last one, and I'm glad there's only one way out of the stadium so I don't have to keep track of him too closely.

Until we get outside.

As I stand in the entrance of the stadium, Hiro is nowhere in sight. I can feel a trail of disrupted vibrations, though, leading to the edge of the forest surrounding the stadium, and am about to follow it when I'm stopped by the two shinobi on duty.

"What're you doing out here?" one of them asks.

I struggle to come up with an explanation that won't make me sound suspicious. "That is, my brother and I just got into this huge argument," I say. "He stormed out of here a little before me and I—I have to find him before he does something stupid. He has a terrible temper and becomes absolutely irrational when he's angry."

The shinobi exchange looks and the other says, "There was a kid who came out before you. He darted into the woods that way." He points in the direction the vibrations had been leading me. "Now that I think about it, he did say something about being upset when we asked him."

"That was probably him," I agree, appalled at the coincidence of our stories matching up.

"Do you want us to help you find him?" says the shinobi who had spoken first. "The foliage becomes pretty dense in there."

I shake my head, already down the steps. "I should do this on my own," I say, frowning. The vibrations are becoming steadier. If I don't follow them now, I'll lose his track. "Thanks for the offer."

My strides become longer, faster as I close in on the vibrations, noticing now that they're calming more quickly than normal. I can't afford to lose Hiro now, especially with all the flack I'm going to get from Sakura and Ino for running out in the first place.

"This had better be worth it," I mutter, ducking under the first few branches. Hiro had said she was waiting for me—and by she, I'm assuming he means Rei. And why else would she be waiting for me unless she had new information on the bond?

My breath catches in my throat and I come to a stop. I am all at once hit by the reality of how close I will be to breaking the bond, when only a month ago I had been at an impasse. And then I realize that I can't feel the vibrations moving anymore and I can't remember where they had been leading.

I clench my fists. So close.

He couldn't have gotten very far. The woods here on the outskirts of the village are considerably thicker. However fast Hiro was going, there's no way he could have been able to cut through the foliage at an effective pace. He can't possibly know the terrain of the village well enough to.

I take a deep breath and close my eyes, concentrating hard on the vibrations. Without much ado, something nudges me, poking at my diaphragm. Then, my skin begins to prickle all over my body, like the vibrations are moving all at once. And I realize: The vibrations had, in fact, been slowing down, but there was also another energy source feeding them so they would slow. There is a significant pull from the vibrations toward the right. Surprised I had been able to sense anything at all, I go with the feeling and look.

A tree, thick and mossy, stretches out its branches. A breeze flits by and sends the tree into a shiver.

Cautiously, I take a step forward. A branch breaks beneath my feet, and I flinch. So much for staying quiet. "Hey," I call. "I know you're there!"

My only response is silence, until she swings out from behind the tree, feet apart, an arrow aimed at me, pulled back and ready to fire from Rei's bow. She has one eye closed to measure her precision and says, "You found me. Clever girl. How'd you manage to do that?"

As she adjusts her grip on the arrow's tail, I stare at her, unexpectedly calm despite the fact that there is an arrow in my face. "Where's Hiro?" I counter. Her posture doesn't give one bit; she only takes a deep breath, like she's preparing for an enormous sigh. "And how did he—or you—get the vibrations to stop? This is what you pulled in the park, isn't it? I recognize it."

"Hiro-kun has other things to do at the present. Also, you know how ridiculous that sounds?" she asks. "Sensing still vibrations. It's like me saying I can see you because you're standing there."

I narrow my eyes at her. If she thinks she's going to throw me off by switching fronts again, I'm not going to bite. "That's not exactly what I mean," I say coolly. "The vibrations are buzzing, which means they're not being still by nature. It feels like there's something keeping them in place. In other words, while they might not be shifting, they're still being manipulated, and I can feel it."

As I say it, I know it's true: This was how the vibrations had felt the day I ran into Rei at the park. They were oddly calm; I don't know why I didn't sense it then. Maybe I had been too shaken up by Rei's statements to really take notice of how the vibrations were acting.

Rei leans her head to the side so that it's no longer split in two by her bow. She hums in thought and, at long last, lowers her weapon. "You might not realize," she says, pulling her hair over her should and smoothing it down where the curls seem especially unruly, "but this is a major step forward for you so far as your relationship with the spirits go. You'll understand when you're older, young tonakai," she says when I regard her quizzically. "I'll have you know, though, that vibrations aren't really my thing. I focus on the spirits all around, and they do the work for me by pushing the vibrations back into place and generally cloaking my chakra from enemies or whoever is after me at the moment, i.e. you, and normally my aura just drops off my pursuer's radar. That's how it works. Well, that's how it works when someone can't feel the vibrations like you can."

"It's a gift," I say and I can't help but feel a little pride at this. At the same time, I'm surprised someone without my kekkei genkai can control the vibrations to such a degree. I mean, a shinobi can always conceal their chakra from an enemy, but stifling vibrations to hide one's aura is another thing. "In any case, shouldn't you be in the stadium with the others?"

Rei cocks her head at me, and the look she has in her eyes says, "I could ask you the same." Out loud, she says, "Last minute practice." She twirls the arrow in her hand before dropping it into a quiver at her feet. "My aim's been off lately. Probably 'cause of all the channeling I've been trying. Always messes with my head. Channeling," she adds, heaving her quiver over her shoulder, "by which I mean contacting the spirits."

"I figured," I mumble, scowling at the tone she's taking with me. "Have you been able to find anything new?"

A smile breaks across her face, and just like that she's flipped back to being the cheery girl who had helped me back at my house. "As a matter of fact," she says, "I have."

"Well, did you plan on telling me?"

"I was getting to it," she says, dismissing my irritation with a wave. "Patience, young tonakai! Patience. I'll have you know channeling the spirits puts me in a bad mood. Makes me want to sleep for a week. They're always so pressing. Not to mention it takes so much energy just to reach the simplest spirits."

Rei plants one end of her bow into the ground and presses it down so the string goes slack, then proceeds to unstring it. "Anyway," she says, stuffing the string into her sleeve. "I actually have a lot to tell you. I don't even know where to start. What would you like to hear first?"

The question turns out to be rhetorical because, when I open my mouth to answer, she barrels on with, "I know. Your hair is getting pretty long. That is, pretty _and_ long. You look a lot better without that dreadful headband of yours covering your entire head. It made you reminiscent of a thug, to say the least. But around your neck, it gives you more an air of rebellion than anything else."

I stare at her, dumbfounded. "Firstly," I say, shaking my head. "What does that have to do with anything? Secondly, I don't care because, thirdly, I'm a shinobi. That stuff doesn't matter to me."

"I just thought it was a nice start to the conversation," she says, shrugging. "_Normal_ people always seem to like being complimented."

I roll my eyes. "Moving on."

"If you insist," she says, swinging her bow under her arm. Unstrung, the bow is sinuous, curving only slightly in the center and curling at the ends. By the light that sweeps through the leaves, the bow shines gold, almost glowing. I'm impressed Rei has such a beautiful weapon, if slightly put off by the amount of trouble she must have to go to in order to use it in the heat of battle, like during the preliminaries, when I'd come back after tending to Sasuke and found her ready to send an arrow flying at her teammate. Archery is only helpful if you are a sniper. That's how I saw it. It had no place in the hands of a regular shinobi. "I know you want to hear about the bond, but—and I have reason to ask—I want to know: How's lover boy?"

And, of course, I know she's talking about Sasuke. While he's part of the bond, he doesn't share in my desire to break it. I don't understand why she's bringing him up, unless it's to spite me somehow. I picture myself grabbing Rei and shaking her until she spits out what I want to hear. She must see the malice in my face because she says, "I'll explain!"

"He's fine," I say. "He's been training in preparation for the tournament, but then so has everyone else participating right? You, for example?"

"Yes, I suppose," she says. "Can you check if he's arrived or not?"

"Wha—I mean, yeah, but I don't need to. He's here," I say.

She purses her lips. "Oh really?" she says. "Kind of like how I'm there?"

"Look, it's not—" _Important_, I'm about to say, but my mind drifts off at the implication he could, in fact, not be here. After all, there had only been seven contestants in the box, and before I realize it the bond is checking in with him.

All I see is desert. The air is dry and each inhale makes me thirsty for water, but there'll be no stopping until I get this just right. It has to be _just_ right. I have enough time to perfect this. It doesn't take much more for me to figure out that he really isn't in the stadium.

"Sasuke," I say, irritated, although I'm sure he can't hear me. "What do you think you're—"

"So I take it he's not here?" Rei says, twirling her hair around her finger and sounding not even a little surprised. "Hmm. What do you know."

I stare her down. "So why do you ask?"

Her shoulders lift in a shrug. "Honestly, I wanted to make sure my little potion didn't kill him," she says. "It reacts differently to everyone. Granted, he was at the prelims, but don't think I didn't catch his little spasms. He could have easily keeled over between then and now."

I wince. The golden liquid, I remember. The one she had mysteriously been able to slip into my pouch and I had so desperately fed to Sasuke in an attempt to wake him up. The one, I am reminded, that's effects are lost to me, but that I still gave to Sasuke regardless.

"What was it, exactly?" I ask. "What was it supposed to do?"

"It unclogs your chakra pathways," she says. "It allows your chakra to more easily flow through your system without bothering with the little whatevers like the Hyuuga back in the prelims. It's a cheat, to put it simply. But it can either be vital to saving a life or totally kill you, if you take it unnecessarily and then can't handle the repercussions of loose chakra. Not that I need to explain this, right? You should know all about that, being a medic."

"Yeah," I say distractedly. Sasuke's chakra had been abnormally free-flowing that day. Which would explain how the curse marks were able to spread so far, how they were able to gain control of him. They were feeding off the excess chakra that was being released from Sasuke. And the pain, the fever—they weren't simple side effects of the curse mark. They were heightened by the fact that Sasuke's energies are all muddled.

I reach up to touch my neck, where the curse mark would be on Sasuke. I press the spot, feeling my neck muscles underneath my skin. "Do you know?" I ask Rei. "About the—curse mark, that is."

"Yes," she says. "I felt it when it happened. Not like you did," she sniffs, looking away. "Obviously not like you did. But I could feel that dark aura pulsing. It was—" She shudders, seemingly unable to finish. "When it happened, the spirits were in an upheaval," she goes on. "They informed me of it right away. And then they told me that I had to find you and give you that potion so your lovey-dove wouldn't die."

I can hardly believe my ears. "They…the spirits sent you?" I say. "And you just…went."

"It was something like divine providence," she says. "I can't ignore a direct order from the spirits. Besides, in case you've forgotten, we're supposed to be in this together. If it weren't for our family's petty grudges and disagreements, we'd have been best friends growing up, you know."

"Oh." I'm not sure what else to add. I'm having a hard time processing the things she says as it is, and to have this curveball thrown my way only serves to make the situation more complicated and confusing. Running my hands through my hair, I say, "You didn't tell your teammates about it, did you? That's why you were alone when we ran into each other."

"No," she says. "I don't normally tell Hiro-kun or Nao what the spirits have ordered of me, not unless I know I can't handle it alone. And you weren't too much of a handful."

"Right," I say with a scoff. "That's why you ended up at my knifepoint."

"Exactly," she says. "And, hey, speaking of your bond-brother, I suppose what you really want to hear is what I've found about the bond, right?"

There is a fluttering in my chest, a mixture of excitement and anxiety. "Yes," I say, barely able to contain myself. "What have you been able to find?"

"Good news," she says, "but…also not so good news. The spirits are reluctant talk about bonds, blood oaths, et cetera, except to warn me to stay away from them. That's the not so good news, but that much I expected from them. The good news is that I got them to cough up a few names of people who would be willing to talk. People who are alive and kicking."

"Names," I repeat, breathless. I am so close I can almost see it. Meeting with these people. Getting the answers I need. Breaking. "Who? Where are they?"

Rei taps her chin and shifts on her feet. Then she says, "I'm not going to tell you."

To this, I don't even know what to say. I'm so taken aback I only stare at her blankly. Finally, I find the words, awestruck at why I was having so much trouble forming such a simple question: "Why not?"

"Because," she says, "I'm not going to let you skip town again and miss out on all this." She makes a general gesture at the trees. "This is what you need. Well, more the people than 'this', but you get what I'm saying. Besides, you wouldn't last a day outside of this village now. You've been here too long. Times are different."

"It can't be that different," I protest. "I've been here less than a year. Even if the laws have twisted a little, they wouldn't have changed too dramatically."

Rei's voice becomes small, her expression darkens. "Don't risk it," she says. "I heard a number of other rumblings while talking to the spirits. After the Chuunin exams finish up, everything is going to change."

"What? What are you—never mind. Forget even waiting until _after_ the exams," I say. "I could leave right now, while everyone's distracted _by_ the exams." And in my head the plan is already forming: I could run back home, gather up essentials in a half hour, tops. Then to the bookshop to buy a map of the country, just to get out, until I can buy another one for whichever country these people will be in. No one to say goodbye to because they're all occupied. No one to try to talk me out of it. Easy severs. Just like seven years ago. Nothing is different, except that I actually have an inkling of where to go. Or I will.

"Please, Rei," I beg, clasping my hands together. "The names. Please tell me."

Rei regards me coldly, like she had seen my thought process and is disgusted with me for being such a flake. But I don't care because I am so close to gaining my freedom. The end will justify the means.

"No," she says firmly. "I won't."

"What about helping me?" I cry, my voice becoming exceedingly shrill, whiny. "You _promised_: No tricks. And so far as I'm concerned, revealing you have this information and waving it in front of me as a taunt is the worst trick you could pull."

"I'm not taunting you," she says, affronted. "I'm true to my word. I'm going to help you get this sorted out." She holds up a finger to silence my next statement. "Here's my proposal," Rei says. "_I_ will find these people for you. I will speak to them, gather the information necessary and strike out whatever is extraneous and return to you as soon as all parts of the matter are clear to me. I doubt you'd understand a thing they'd tell you anyway; most likely, they'll be throwing out some shaman jargon and you'll come running back to me asking for clarification again, or run your whole 'I-can-figure-this-thing-out-on-my-own' spiel and get yourself in a worse situation."

"What makes you a better candidate than me to go running around the countries?" I ask. "I highly doubt you're well travelled if your shinobi village has only just been created."

"I've been to plenty of places and then some. You don't need to be a shinobi to travel, silly girl," Rei says. "Only a good amount of wanderlust and a decent sense of direction. And a mind for the travelling laws, of course. And charm," she adds. "For when the travelling laws don't apply to you anymore and you need to get out of trouble."

I groan, exasperated by this girl's stream-of-conscious way of speaking. "If you're just going to ignore some of the laws anyway, then what does it matter if I don't know them? At least take me with you!" I say. "I can handle myself out there. I was on my own for _seven years_ before I came back here. You could use the help, too. With the two of us—"

"You would actually make four," Rei interrupts. "Hiro-kun and Nao are coming with me. I would never try to fly solo like you, Lone Wolf. _I'm_ not an idiot."

I glare at her. She grins. Pushing my hair out of my eyes, I say, "How long would it take you to come back?"

Rei raises an eyebrow. "Huh. I didn't think you'd consent so easily. I mean, I expected more kicking and screaming. Seems there was only a lot of screaming, though."

"I'm not consenting," I hiss, crossing my arms. "I'll need a lot more convincing before I agree to this."

Rei counts off on her fingers. "All right then. Well, I'd say it'd take…a year, year and a half. Two and half, tops. What?" Rei asks. "What's with the bug eyes, girlie? You can't expect the process to go by any faster. Like I told you before, no one really trusts the magic of the spirits anymore, not since, you know, whatever it is that you medics pull out of your asses started gaining favor. So, since our services are low demand, shaman tribes are far and few. There is, from what I've been told, only one shaman clan in each of the four great nations, and if those clans are anything like mine, they only have one main shaman that would know any of this bond stuff. So, I'd have to track down the clan, then track down their chief shaman, which will be easy for me. Shamans have a draw toward each other."

"That—that's too long," I say, shaking my head. "The things that could happen in two years—"

From behind, I hear the faint whistle of cheers. Briefly, I wonder what I could be missing, if those cheers are for Naruto or Neji. I hope they're for Naruto. With that, I feel a pang of guilt and I know I shouldn't just be hoping the cheers are for Naruto. I should _be_ cheering for Naruto, inside that stadium, with Ino and Sakura.

Something tugs on a strand of my hair, jerking my head forward. I look up to find Rei standing in front of me, her own head leaned close. Her dark green-brown eyes are bright and knowing. God knows how she's always so perceptive, or at least how she can always _seem_ like she knows every small goings-on in everyone's head. Maybe it had something to do with her goddamn spirits.

"Trust me, Ren," she says, ruffling my hair. "This is stuff you want to stick around for. You don't want to miss this."

I wave her off, shaking my head. "I don't want to be stuck here doing nothing, either," I say.

"You won't be doing nothing!" says Rei. "You have missions to take on, friends to take care of, skills to improve. You'll have plenty to distract yourself with until I get back."

She doesn't get it. It's not a matter of just doing whatever to distract myself until she returns. It's a matter of putting my own efforts into breaking the bond and becoming free. All this time, I've been working toward breaking the bond by myself, so that when the end results came to fruition, I would have the feeling of accomplishment, of finally being able to have done something on my own. Now, while I'll still be able to break the bond, it won't be _mine_.

"Hey," she says, putting a hand on my back. "Don't sweat it, Ren. Whatever happens, your freedom will be yours. Isn't that what matters? In the meantime, keep your ears and eyes wide open. There are things you don't want to glaze over and things you shouldn't dismiss as nothing."

She bites her lip then, her eyes flickering left and right before resting on me, as though demonstrating how I should act. She says, "Also. I figure I should tell you this, otherwise I'll be doing you a great disservice. And I realize I could actually be driving you away but not telling you, and then it'll all be the fault of the Kannagi again if you do something stupid."

Before I can say or do much anything to reply, she lowers her voice and says, "I've been doing some snooping around over the duration of my time here, and I have reason to believe there's something rotten in the state of affairs."

"Something rotten?" I repeat. "Like what?"

"Orochimaru, of course," she says, looking at me as though I had been the one to bring him up. "He's not here for nothing, Ren. And, you know, Sasuke wasn't—" She mimes fangs clenching onto her neck and I lose my breath. "—just because. Orochimaru has a plan up his sleeves, and while no one is certain of what he wants to do, all the higher-ups in your village are aware and on guard. I wasn't able to find out more than that wouldn't slipping in way over my head, but I thought you should know."

My body has drained of warmth. In retrospect, it's obvious Orochimaru hadn't planted that mark on Sasuke for no reason. But I hadn't been expecting for things to escalate so quickly.

_All the higher-ups are aware and on guard._ Maybe that's why Kakashi had taken Sasuke to train so far away. Maybe he'll stay away from the tournament completely because of the danger he's in, whatever danger that may be.

No, even if that is Kakashi's plan, Sasuke won't have it. He wants to fight Gaara—and Naruto—too badly to skip out on this. Even if his life is in danger—especially if his life is in danger, I figure—Sasuke will do whatever it takes to prove his strength.

"Is ther—" My voice cracks and I flinch. Clearing my throat, I try again. "Is there anything else I should know?" I ask. "So that I'm prepared?"

Rei looks me dead in the eye, her eyebrows set in determination, like she's reluctant to say more but will because she must. "Only one thing," she says. "It's nothing…vital, I guess, but it's more for you than anyone else."

Her voice trails to a stop, and I wait for her to go on without prompting her.

She takes a deep breath, gathering the courage to say what she needs to say, and finally blurts, "Don't follow Orochimaru. Whatever he promises you, whatever he says to you, he doesn't mean a single word he says."

I blink at her, appalled and annoyed that she thinks she has to warn me about Orochimaru. "You've already said this to me," I say, crossing my arms. "In fewer words, but I get the gist. I'm not stupid; I won't—"

"I only wanted to reiterate," she interrupts, "because—the Toko. That is, the branch of the Kagiru that broke off when the bond was created because they were so humiliated by Mei's actions. They went back to the Sound and settled there and they met up with Orochimaru and were deeply involved with his exploits. Despite the fact that they hated your clan and the Uchiha clan, when they found out that Orochimaru was interested in recruiting you, they told him everything they knew about you, which, trust me, was a lot. That's how he knows about you," she says quietly. "About the oath, about your bloodline. And he's powerful; he knows of things we could only ever see in our nightmares. With the information he has on you, he'll try to convince you that he's powerful enough to give you what you want, and while he may in fact be able to do so, it will be the worst way possible."

I run my hands through my hair, unnerved. "He can't know that much about me," I say. "I…things change. You said so yourself. The information on my family could have been severely out-dated, Rei. And I haven't heard of the Toko before in my life! How certain are you that they're related to me?"

"Well, for one, they're the ones who showed Orochimaru the Shindou," she says. "They were extremely close with him, Ren. They sacrificed every fiber of their being to please them, which is why they're now an extinct clan."

I want to laugh at the irony. The Toko had split from the Kagiru to avoid the lifelong servitude of the bond and then fallen under the clutches of a man to whom they'd lost their whole legacy. I shake my head. "You're afraid that I'll be suckered into following Orochimaru like them, aren't you?" I ask. "That's why you keep bringing this up."

"Admittedly, yes," she says. "Be smart about this. Instant gratification can be tempting, but it's no use if you lose your soul over it. I promise you I'll find a way for you to break this bond that doesn't cost you your life. So just wait for me, okay?"

And then I do laugh, because it sounds like a cheesy movie where two lovers are separated by war. "Wait for me," the shinobi warrior would say to his girl. "Just wait for me." And she would.

"Trust me, I don't want to lose my life over this as much as you," I say, brushing my hair from my eyes.

"So," she says. "I have your consent?"

I roll my eyes. "You have my consent."

The vibrations shudder and, from over head, Hiro drops down beside Rei. He shakes himself loose of the twigs and leaves that have fallen down with him and gives me a friendly salute. "We have to go, Rei," he says, taking the quiver and bow from her. "Nao has had everything packed since yesterday and he's on the verge of throwing a hissy fit if we don't leave now."

Rei makes a face of displeasure and says, "What a baby. But I suppose we should get going."

I watch this exchange curiously, until their words click in my head. "Wait," I say. "You're leaving now?"

"No time like the present," Rei says with a smile. She jabs a thumb in Hiro's direction and says, "Hiro-kun's already put in my word of resignation and Nao's getting impatient. You do want to see me again as soon as humanly possible, don't you?"

I tell her I do.

"Then I should get started right away," she says. "So you don't need to worry about your friend Shikamaru anymore, although I was looking forward to fighting the darling. He's a clever little thing, isn't he?" At this, she turns to Hiro for an answer. He rolls his eyes and pats Rei's head endearingly. She swats his hand away. "Tell him I'll take a rain check if he's up for it," she says, facing me.

"You know, I think he'll pass," I say.

Hiro nudges Rei and she elbows him back in return. "Nao can sit for one more second," she says, frowning. And then Rei extends her hand, the kindest smile on her face. My heart dips in my chest like it had at Shikamaru's house, and I'm left feeling like, despite what she's saying, I will never see her again.

"Friends?" she says, wiggling her fingers. "And I mean for real this time. Not because you want to get your answers, and not because I want to make up for my family's idiocy. But…you know, because."

I take a deep breath that exhales as I laugh. I take her hand and comply.

"Friends."

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	37. The Perfect Match

**Bound  
Chapter 37: The Perfect Match **

Hiro and Rei leave not long after that, and I return to the arena alone. Rei has left me with a million things to think about, but I'm much less uneasy about everything than I had been previously. I think it's because I don't have so much of the weight of the bond on my shoulders anymore. With help, I feel close to my goal than I have ever been in my life; at the same time, with the bond out of my hands, I feel as though I will never reach the end of the line.

I have to have faith, I think as I push through the last of the trees in front of the stadium and hear another wave of cheers sweep through the air. Rei has a good head on her shoulders—most of the time. And if she ever loses her place, at least I can trust Hiro will be there to help lead her through. They seem like that kind of pair, one that bounces off of each other, almost like me and Shikamaru. They're certainly close enough.

"Did you find your brother?"

I blink at the sound of the voice and look up at the two shinobi who are standing at the front doors of the stadium. They watch me expectantly, faces etched with concern that turns into suspicion when I ask, "What?"

"Your brother," the one on the right says, exchanging a glance with his partner. They don't offer me more, probably because they want to catch me in my lie, but then I remember.

"Yes," I say, putting on an air of fatigue. "He decided he didn't want to deal with me anymore and went home. How much of the match did we miss?"

My act seems convincing enough because the two shinobi let the subject drop. "I think you missed it entirely," says the one on the left and my stomach drops. Great. "From what we could hear, it was one hell of a match."

"Even better," I mutter, pushing my hair back. "Did you hear who won?"

They nod. "Naruto," one says, and grins. "Can you believe it? The fox—"

His partner jabs him and cuts him off. I pretend I have no idea what he could have been leading into, knowing that the subject of the Nine-tails is one that's supposed to be kept a secret from our generation.

"You should go ahead back up before you miss anymore," he says, giving his partner a stern look. "It's Uchiha versus one of the kids from the Sand."

I thank them and do as he proposes. As I make my way up the stairs, I use the bond to check in with Sasuke again, hoping that he made it during Naruto's match. If what the two shinobi at the door had said is true and Naruto has won, what a great accomplishment it would befor him to rub in Sasuke's face. And for Sasuke to witness Naruto's strength would be even better.

But, as it turns out, Sasuke is still in the middle of nowhere, so concentrated on perfection he fails to notice me as I prod around his brain. He doesn't seem to have any intention of coming home soon and I wonder if he'll be arriving at all.

_Orochimaru isn't here for nothing_, Rei's voice echoes in my head and I shiver.

Come to think of it, it'll be better if Sasuke doesn't show.

I remember where Sakura and Ino were sitting and find them without a hitch. I take the empty seat at the end of the aisle, surprising them, and I say, "Hey. How'd the match go?"

"Ren!" Ino says, eyes wide and then narrowed with irritation. "Where were you! What did you think you were doing, running after that Sound boy like that? You missed Naruto's match completely!"

"I didn't _run_ after him," I say, dismissing her accusations with a wave. "There's only one way out of here and there was something I had to do before the tournament that I'd forgotten about. It took me longer than I thought it would; I didn't mean to miss Naruto's match."

Sakura regards me dubiously, like she knows exactly where I had been, what I had been doing. She doesn't say anything, but that's fine because Ino is an absolute chatterbox.

"Well, you really missed out," she huffs. "It was amazing! Naruto was really impressive, especially considering he was up against that Neji guy."

"Is that right?" I ask, grinning as I take in the craters and holes that spot the arena. And I'm truly sorry that I missed Naruto's match, but I never doubted him for a second. I knew he would pull through because the kid is a goddamn machine that is incapable of being broken or deterred.

"It was odd, though," Ino says, leaning back in her seat. "At the beginning of the match, Neji kept going on and on about something—a mark on his forehead. I couldn't hear well enough to make out why it was significant, but they were talking about it for a while. Whatever." Ino waves it away, like it couldn't be less of her concern. "Here's the real drama though," Ino says, lowering her voice. "It turns out the scandal at the beginning of the tournament? The two Sound Nin dropped out. The Dosu boy who went up against Chouji had the decency to quit before the tournament, but the girl Shikamaru was supposed to be fighting sent a _messenger_ to do her dirty work for her, just a few minutes before the tournament started!"

Ino points at where the matches have been posted on the adjacent wall. I glance at it and see a big red x slashed over the last name, leaving only eight contestants of the original ten.

"Still, it doesn't matter who Shikamaru is up against," Ino says, clenching her hands into fists. "I'm sure he'll be able to beat whoever he fights and win!"

I scoff, flicking my hair from my eyes. "Yeah, definitely," I say.

Ino glowers at me and demands, "Aren't you his best friend, Ren? You should be more supportive of him!"

"I am supportive," I say. "I want him to win this match as much as you do."

"Then why did you sound so dismissive?" Ino says.

"It's one thing to win the match," I say, "but beating out Temari is another thing all together."

Ino regards me quizzically, but doesn't get the chance to ask me what I mean, because a man behind us shouts, "HEY. What's the deal? Hurry up and start the next match!"

"Yeah, what's going on!" someone else pipes in as I wipe what I know is probably spittle from the first man who had been yelling off of my cheek. "How long are you gonna keep us waiting!"

I scowl into the arena, disgusted, as Ino says, "I suppose it has been a while since Naruto's match ended. What's the matter—has Sasuke-kun still not shown up?"

Around the spectator's box, handfuls of other villagers are becoming restless as well. They shift in their seats and begin sharing grievances with each other. I can't help but notice a few of the Nin in the crowd are sitting tensely in their seats, backs stiff and gazes as alert as ever.

I lean against my armrest, wondering if they're on edge because they know the details of the situation or because they're preparing themselves for a fight in the crowd should one break out. In the corner of my eye, I see Sakura sitting forward and glancing over at me.

"You wouldn't happen to know where Sasuke-kun is," she says slowly, "would you, Ren?"

"Huh?" Ino swivels toward me. "Why would _you_ know where Sasuke-kun is?"

I arch my brow. "I wouldn't," I answer, shaking my head. "Sorry to disappoint you. But he'll show up eventually, right? I don't think he'd miss this." He really should be here now, though, before he gets himself disqualified. But god knows where Orochimaru is in this crowd, I think, scanning the faces even though, with the higher-ups looking out for him, he's probably in disguise, like he had been in the Forest of Death. Hopefully, with all his Nin out of the running for the tournament, he up and left a while ago.

But that would be all too convenient.

In the center of the arena, the proctor for the final exam stands speaking with another shinobi who has leaped from the highest box, the one containing the Hokage, Kazekage, and other important men from across the nations. They discuss something heatedly and then the other man jumps out of the arena, leaving the proctor alone.

Amidst the protesting, the proctor raises his hands to silence everyone, and once things are relatively settled he says, "One of the contestants for the next match has not arrived yet! Therefore, the match will be postponed until he is here, and we will proceed."

"Great!" Ino says, clasping her hands together. "Then Sasuke-kun won't be forced to forfeit."

"Fantastic," I breathe, slumping into my seat. It is, without question, another special circumstance for the last member of the prodigious Uchiha clan. This is the match everyone has been looking forward to; we Leaves wouldn't want to do our neighbors a disservice by keeping them from seeing Uchiha Sasuke.

"The next pairing is, then," the proctor says, "Kankuro and Aburame Shino. Please come down!"

There is a small upheaval as the other spectators being to understand that they're serious about postponing Sasuke's match, and more cries fill the air. I watch the proctor look expectantly up at the contestants' box, waiting for the boys to enter the arena. But then someone waves his hand and takes a step away from the railing, and before I know it a girl is soaring into the arena on top of a large fan.

"What's going on?" I ask, sitting upright in my seat. "I thought—"

"Kankuro of the Sand has forfeit," the proctor's voice comes over the shouts of the crowd, sounding as displeased as everyone else. "Aburame Shino wins by default. The final contestants are Temari of the Sand and Nara Shikamaru."

Temari, already poised with her fan in the arena, glares into the contestants' box, waiting for Shikamaru. I shake my head, sighing, and say, "Poor sap. He was supposed to go last and now he's being thrust into a crowd that would much rather be watching Sasuke."

Ino elbows me gruffly, and I wince, rubbing my new injury. She puts a finger to her lips and gestures to Sakura, whose wears a glum expression. I roll my eyes. "Right. Sorry," I say, despite the fact that Ino had said Sasuke's name earlier and it had been okay then. "Didn't mean to upset."

While I understand Sakura's distress over Sasuke's wellbeing—because, after all, she _loves_ him dearly—I'm thoroughly over the fact that she holds her heart so blatantly on her sleeve. She can't expect to be a full-fledge shinobi if she doesn't at least _try_ to hide the fact that she is distressed by Sasuke's absence, or anyone's absence for that matter. Does she even realize what kind of dangers we'll have to go through because of who we are and what we do?

Put off by Sakura's moping, I turn back to the arena in time to see Shikamaru falling into the ring and landing on top of some brush and bramble with an unsavory crunch. I wince, clouds of dust mushrooming around Shikamaru from the impact as Ino continues to cheer for him, apparently mistaking Shikamaru's stumble for an enthusiastic leap into the arena. The crowd jeers at him, and I am all at once defensive of Shikamaru. I mean, I wouldn't bet money on Shikamaru to win, but I know that Shikamaru winning isn't an impossibility because it isn't that he is incapable of winning, only that he is severely unmotivated to win.

I just hope he's able to shut these bastards up.

"Start the match already," someone groans.

"Yeah, hurry up and get it over with!"

I'm about to stand in my seat and give these punks a piece of my mind when I catch movement. Temari, apparently sharing the same frame of mind as these men, is making a beeline for Shikamaru, her closed fan raised high, despite the fact that Shikamaru is still on the ground. She slams it into the dirt where Shikamaru lays, and a storm of dust rises in a flurry, covering the pair from our view.

The men behind us cheer, and my brow twitches in irritation. What meatheads, I think, as the sand clears and Shikamaru is miraculously floating a foot above where he had fallen, back pressed against the wall. He'd taken two kunai and used them as braces to avoid the attack, and now stands on them, hands shoved in his pockets, an easy smile on his face.

Shikamaru and Temari exchange a few words before Temari takes her fan and flips it open, swinging it forward and sending a blast of wind flurrying around the arena as she is pushed backward by its force. She lands elegantly in the center of the arena, whereas Shikamaru is nowhere to be seen.

Ino is pumping her fists into the sky as she cheers, "You've got this, Shikamaru! Knock her out with a sixteen punch combo!"

"Despite the fact that he doesn't have a move like that," I say pulling Ino back into her seat. "Relax, Ino, the proctor hasn't even started the match yet."

Ino turns to admonish me again for my attitude, I'm sure, but then she notices something over my shoulder and says, "Oh!"

I turn to follow her gaze and find Chouji standing there, a bag of chips clasped in one hand and the other bringing a chip to his mouth. "Is there a free seat down there?" he asks.

"I think it's better if you take this seat, Chouji," I say, squeezing past Ino and Sakura. "You're lucky there's another seat, in any case. We didn't think you'd make it."

"Your stomach is better already, is it?" asks Ino as Chouji sits down. Chouji nods, but at the rate he's downing those potato chips, I don't think he'll be feeling as well by the end of the day.

"I thought Sasuke's match was next," Chouji comments, jerking his chin into the arena. "What's going on?"

Ino shushes Chouji and points to Sakura whose head hangs in misery at the mention of her beau. As Ino explains to Chouji what's happened, I say to Sakura, "I've told you this once, and I'll tell you again: You don't need to keep worrying about him like this. He's a big boy. He can take care of himself."

Sakura shakes her head and says, "That's not the point, Ren. Even if…even if there wasn't the curse mark—" She whisper-says the word so that Ino and Chouji can't hear it as they have their own side-discussion. "—for me to worry about, I would still worry about Sasuke-kun. As his friend, I can't help it. It's what friends do. You of all people should know."

I narrow my eyes at her. I say, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I meant in regards to Shikamaru," she says with a sigh. "You're worried about him now, aren't you? In his match against Temari, even though you know he'll do fine?"

"I…that is," I say, "yeah, I guess, but—"

"No buts," she says firmly. "It is the way it is, Ren."

I scowl at Sakura, hating the way she's trapped me in her argument, and although there's more for me to say on the subject, there's no reason for me to continue if she's only going to fall back on that excuse. Besides, the proctor has declared Shikamaru's match a go and, while I can't make up for missing Naruto's match, I will not miss a single moment of this.

Shikamaru is still taking cover in the shadow of the trees, and from what I can tell he is staring dreamily up at the clouds. He's seemingly resigned himself to losing the match, which I expected, but I hope he puts up a good fight so these idiots in the stands will stop talking smack like they know how to throw a punch correctly.

As I contemplate beating the ill-tempered spectators sitting behind me to a pulp, Shikamaru continues to sit in a daze by the trees, and before long Temari loses her patience. She takes her fan with both hands and swings it back and forth at the trees, trying to fish Shikamaru out. The force of the gust sweeps dust into the stands and we have to shield ourselves from the grains of sand that assault us. The winds die down quickly, but the dust takes longer to settle. Temari has succeeded in obstructing Shikamaru from her view and just barely notices when a dark mass shoots across the ground, right for her feet.

She hops back, once, twice, three times to avoid the length of what presumably is Shikamaru's shadow, and when she notices it start to retreat, she strikes the ground, marking the extent of the shadow's reach. She's clever, I think as she lines her fan up with Shikamaru, to know her opponent's limits and use them to her advantage. If she's as smart as she's making herself out to be, Shikamaru's going to have to really apply everything he has to this match if he hopes to make it out in one piece.

Shikamaru glances up again at the sky, and I can picture him frowning in my head despite the distance between us. He must realize what I have and must be griping about the how troublesome this match is. As he crouches, Shikamaru draws his hands together, and even though I can barely see him, I know what he's doing.

He is, I'm sure, pressing his fingers, tip to tip, forming a cage with his hands. His eyes are closed and he is pursing his lips as he thinks, trying to form a plan from what information he has: the tactics Temari used in her match against Ten-Ten, his opponent's general skill level, what she specializes in, the geography of the arena. He is bringing what he knows together and tying them into a master plan and god I wish I could think like him. Maybe I would have been able to get myself out of this mess by now.

"Hey, Ren," Ino says, jolting me out of my thoughts. "What's with that stupid look on your face?"

"What?" I ask, turning to her. "What do you mean?"

"For a second, you just looked like this." She relaxes her face and her eyes go soft, dreamy almost, and her lips break into an obviously lovesick smile.

"I would never be caught dead looking that _ridiculous_," I say, regarding her with disgust. "Absolutely not."

"No," Chouji says, shaking his head. "I saw it too. That was exactly how you looked, Ren."

"You're not helping, Chouji. I wasn't—"

"It's two against one," Ino says. "Your argument is invalid. That was exactly how you looked and we all saw_ who_ you were looking at."

"F—Ino, there is a _match_ going on right in front of us," I say, pressing a hand to my forehead. "A match in which our friend is fighting. Why _wouldn't_ I be looking at Shikamaru?"

"I'm not saying you shouldn't have been looking at him," she replies. "I'm just saying you shouldn't have been looking at him like you were."

"You know, Sakura," I say, leaning onto the armrest between us and keeping my tone conversational. "It's a good thing you're sitting next to me, otherwise I might have already lunged across the seats at Ino and strangled her."

"Well, what do _you_ think about all this Sakura?"

"Don't answer that."

"Ren, all I'm saying is—"

"I know what you're saying," I tell Ino, propping my head up on my fist. "Frankly, though, I think it's ludicrous and why don't we just get back to watching the match, huh? I feel like something's about to happen."

Ino laughs, reaching across Sakura to flick my arm teasingly. I swat her away. "Hmm, indeed!" she says with a wink. "And just so you know, when it does, I approve."

I can only shake my head at her idiocy as Shikamaru breaks from his pose. Seeing movement, Temari opens her fan again, preparing to create another seismic blast of air that sends the dirt and trees into a flurry. This time, no shadow emerges from the dust storm she creates. In fact, it becomes a long while before we see movement from Shikamaru again.

[+]

I don't have a watch on me so it's hard to tell for certain, but I'm sure an eternity has passed since Shikamaru has last made an appearance. Temari tirelessly assaults his hiding place with wind after wind, but nothing has been able to flush him out.

"He's never going to be able to get close to her at this rate," Ino says, clenching her knees, as Chouji finishes off his umpteenth bag of chips.

"Maybe he's dug himself a grave and fallen asleep inside," I offer with a shrug, and Ino glares at me. "He's sure had enough time to do it."

"You know, Ren, I think you're right when you say Shikamaru's already resigned himself to losing," Ino admits, crossing her arms. "But for him to give up without a fight is even too cowardly for _him_! He _has_ to have _something_ planned."

And just as Ino is saying this, a kunai breaks from the last gust Temari has sent at Shikamaru and she sees it early enough to jump aside before it hits her. Another kunai assails her in her new position, but she still manages to block it with her fan. I notice that she's careful to stay behind the line that marks the extent of Shikamaru's shadow, and rightfully so because a streak of black shoots across the ground, reaching for Temari's feet. She smirks as it comes closer, confident in her safety, but then the shadow jerks past the mark.

Quick on her toes, Temari only has to leap away once in order to avoid the shadow, which comes to a stop a mere meter over the old marker. She raises her head to glare at Shikamaru, who has emerged at last from the trees.

And it becomes clear to me why Shikamaru had been stalling earlier. As the sun dropped in the sky, shadows elongated, giving Shikamaru's technique more reach. He had been buying himself time in order to make his technique more effective. Still, it isn't enough for Shikamaru to possess Temari and let him win the match.

"So close," Ino groans, pounding her fists onto her thighs. "Come on, Shikamaru!"

As Chouji asks Ino a question about how Shikamaru's technique works, goosebumps run down my arms to my very fingertips. The bond nudges me, sending me jolts of excitement, and I figure Sasuke has made progress with whatever he's doing. My head pounds and I must wince or something because I catch Sakura's eye.

She turns to me, eyebrows knotted together, and says, "Ren, what is it? Is Sasuke-kun okay?"

"Wh-_what_?" I asks, massaging my temples. "How should I know?"

"I just…," she says, blinking at me. "I thought you were—"

"Look!" Ino cries, pointing to the sky, and we look and see a small parachute, falling from the immaculate blue of the sky. There isn't much to it—Shikamaru's vest, it appears, tied together and hooked through with his headband. A kunai weighs it down, helping it fall to the ground at a steady rate, and I wonder what makes it so significant when I realize: The parachute is creating a shadow right at the point before Temari's feet, where Shikamaru's shadow ends. It becomes an extra stepping stone for his shadow, and sure enough his shadow connects and cuts through, darting for its target.

Temari isn't so easily caught. She jumps back at calculated distances, estimating where the shadow will stop, and it isn't until she is three meters gone from where she had been standing that Shikamaru's technique reaches its second limit.

The make-shift parachute collapses to the ground as it finally loses its height, and Shikamaru's shadow fails again. It shrinks back, slinking past the holes someone had created in the previous match, defeated. Temari, realizing that she can't let this drag on any longer, opens her fan and plants it into the ground before her, pressing her hands together in a seal as she uses her fan as cover.

She pauses like that for a second, like she's coming up with a plan, but then her pause becomes a complete and sudden halt, and she is standing there like a deer in the headlights, and I think: _He's got her._

Sure enough, Shikamaru moves to separate his hands from his own seal and Temari makes the same gesture. She turns her head as he turns his to allow her to see how he had managed to capture her. His shadow had fallen into the hole that had been there at the beginning of the match, and slipped through to trap her shadow from behind, leaving her none the wiser.

Ino gives a cry of delight and says, "That's how it's done, Shikamaru!"

I turn around at the men behind me who are now watching Shikamaru's match in silent awe, anticipating his next move with wide eyes. I smirk at them, glad to see them eating their words, when I notice, standing at the top of the stands, a masked person wearing a cloak that covers them from head to foot. ANBU, I realize grimly, my haughtiness fading as the reality of the danger the village is in becomes fatally clear to me.

I twist back in my seat to watch the match, hoping to abandon the seriousness of the situation, as Ino continues to cheer for Shikamaru, who is now walking Temari forward so that they meet face-to-face in the middle of the arena. I brush my bangs from my face and wish I could be as unconcerned as Ino or Shikamaru or even Naruto, who doesn't yet know about the curse mark, but instead I am in the middle of it all, worrying like Sakura.

"This is it, Ren," Ino says to me, holding her nose high, as Shikamaru raises his hand in the arena. "Watch as Shikamaru completely blows you out of the water!"

"How?" I ask, frowning. "By forfeiting? Because from the looks of it—"

"That's it," Shikamaru announces loudly, his voice echoing into the stands in the silence. "I'm done. I give up."

Ino's mouth drops open in horror and I snort, slouching in my seat as the proctor calls the match in Temari's favor just before Shikamaru's shadow breaks, allowing Temari to move on her own. As he rubs the back of his neck, Temari regards him with disgust. Or maybe it's wonder. I can't really tell from where I'm seated, but I laugh, shake my head, and say to Ino, "What were you telling me before?"

"I…but," she stutters, and then shouts, "What a _waste_! It was his chance to become _a Chuunin_. What the hell could he have been thinking?"

Chouji shrugs, discarding his back of chips to the pile he's building on the floor by his feet. "That's just who he is," he says, and I concur.

Shameless, lazy Shikamaru.

"And it's not like he really needs to win to become a Chuunin, right?" I ask, reminding her of what the Hokage had said after the preliminaries. "In my opinion, Shikamaru has a better chance of being promoted than anyone else. He wanted to get out of there without being hurt too badly. Is that the general mentality of Nin, simplified down to Shikamaru standards?"

Ino groans. "It just feels like he gave up too soon," she complains and I don't know what else to say besides, "You know I told you so. You could have avoided all this disappointment by listening to me."

I ignore the glare I receive from her to watch as, on the other side of the stadium, Naruto climbs over the railing that keeps people from falling into the arena and leaps into the ring. He has this scowl on his face as he jumps down and when he lands, he straightens himself quickly and points an accusatory finger at Shikamaru, shouting something at him.

Ino slumps forward and finally caves. "Well," she admits, "it _was_ Shikamaru-ish to do that."

Chouji and I grin at each other. Sakura doesn't seem to notice any of the conversation going on right over her lap. Instead, she looks about the arena, panicked, and her eyes widen as they come to a realization. Her face falls and she turns to me, saying, "Ren, where's Sasuke-kun?"

"He'll show," I say, although at this point it's an empty promise. Sakura continues to stare at me, all bug-eyed and anxious, like she expects for me to tell her more. Like hell I'll tell her more.

Given, I can just check for her right now through the bond, so that my reassurance is more, well, reassuring, but there is something telling me that I shouldn't give Sakura any more reason to believe that there is anything between Sasuke and I at all. I've already slipped up one too many times in the past, starting in the Land of the Waves, then in the Forest of Death with Orochimaru first and his Sound henchmen later. Then in the preliminaries, when I had jumped in to make sure Sasuke was all right.

I think I had especially becoming suspicious in Sakura's eyes in the Forest of Death. In my defense, I hadn't even gone in there to take care of Sasuke in the first place. I had been looking to be intrinsically selfish and ended up doing Team 7 a massive favor.

"Ren," Sakura says again, and I shake her off.

"He'll be here, Sakura," I say with a shrug. "He'll come."

Naruto, still dawdling about in the arena with Shikamaru, has apparently Sasuke's absence as well and scans the place, high and low, for signs of his teammate or his master. The crowd starts to shift restlessly in their seats, Shikamaru's match forgotten and the highlight of the event—Sasuke's match—heavy on their minds once again.

With all these people so concerned about Sasuke, you wouldn't think he'd need me.

With a glance to Sakura, who has since given up on trying to get me to give her information on Sasuke, I close my eyes and relax the barriers I work so hard to keep between Sasuke and me. For a minute, I feel nothing. An untouchable blankness neither here nor there, but not quite nonexistent. And then there is a spark of light, of Sasuke, of the power he now exudes and is either vain or foolish enough to let it flow from his body in all its damning glory. He senses me faster than usual and sends me a message that is loud and clear:

_I'm coming._

"About time, rat bastard," I mumble under my breath, opening my eyes and sitting up in my seat.

"What did you say?" asks Sakura, and I realize she'd only been pretending to leave me alone so that I would fall right into her trap and check on Sasuke.

The nerve of this girl.

"I said, 'It's time for the next match'," I say, "but that much is obvious. Here's hoping Sasuke arrives soon, hmm?"

Sakura's shoulders sag and she clasps her hands together in her lap like a helpless child. If she's hoping to gain my sympathy, I'm not biting. There are more pressing matters at hand, like the issue of the ANBU strategically stationed around the stands, hovering like omniscient statues built by the ancients to keep out evil spirits.

As I'm considering all the things that could go wrong during this tournament that would necessitate such extremes, the vibrations kick up. I blink at the seemingly random flurry of activity, looking back and forth between the stands for the source of the disruption. It spikes again, and this time I'm able to pinpoint it.

_I'm coming._

From the center of the arena, near where Shikamaru and Naruto are still lingering, a flicker. And in an instant, leaves pitch up into the air in a mini tornado of sorts, whirling in a mass of dust and pebbles, and when it clears, who else but Sasuke stands there, decked out in a new get-up, Kakashi at his side.

Sakura's and Naruto's face simultaneously light up while I roll my eyes and Ino and Chouji regard Sasuke's sudden appearance with shock and awe. All I can do is shake my head, appalled by the duo's flashy entrance that would make Gai proud. IS it so horrible being normal for once and just arriving on time like they were supposed to have done?

"What a little show-off," I say with a sigh, but even in spite of it, the corners of my mouth turn up into a small smile. "Uchiha Sasuke. He never fails to make a scene."

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	38. Breakthrough

**Bound  
Chapter 38: Breakthrough**

"Is that…?" Ino begins, rubbing her eyes, the abrupt arrival of Sasuke still not registering for her.

"It's Sasuke," a new voice confirms, and we three turn to the aisle. There we find Lee, leaning on a crutch, Gai beside him. The two wear identical smiles filled with enthusiasm as there is scattered applause around the stadium for the most anticipated match of the tournament.

"Lee!" cries Sakura, absolutely jubilant now. I want to punch her to get back at her for making me put up with her doom-and-gloom attitude beforehand, but I focus instead on the small discrepancy taking place in the arena in regards to Sasuke's arrival. Kakashi is talking things out with the proctor, who is presumably explaining to them how Sasuke's match has been postponed for his sake, and I can only hope that he doesn't let them get off without reprimanding them for being so tardy.

"Come on, Sasuke-kun!" Ino is squealing when only a few minutes ago she'd been griping over Shikamaru. The other spectators have the same mindset, egging for the match to start now that Sasuke is definitely going to go, demanding to see the talents of the last Uchiha to survive the massacre. I almost feel bad for Shikamaru, but I'd feel worse if I knew he actually cared about what people thought about him. Lucky for him, though, he doesn't have that kind of burden on his self-esteem.

"You know, Sakura, your team is really amazing," Ino gushes, turning to the other girl.

Sakura furrows her brow. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Ino says, clenching her fists triumphantly. "Who would have thought Naruto would beat Neji, a Hyuuga? And of course Sasuke is an elite Uchiha! Everyone here is excited about watching his fight. Ren doesn't count," she adds as I open my mouth to ask about how _I_ manage to make the team impressive. "Sorry to say, but you're an anomaly, Ren. From what I can tell, you're not really part of the team. You weren't even allowed to participate in the exams with us. God knows how you even got into the second exam in the first place."

I mumble something incoherent under my breath, but the reality of her words hits me hard: I don't belong here.

"How were you able to get out of there anyway?" Sakura asks. "And alone, for that matter."

"Things are relatively easier when people don't know you exist," I say, slumping in my seat. "Why don't we just watch Sasuke, yeah? The incredible kid he is, we don't want to miss a single incredible thing he does."

Ino huffs and says, "You don't have to make your jealousy so obvious, Ren. It's un-ladylike."

"I hardly think _you_ can lecture me on what is or isn't _ladylike_."

"What's_ that_ supposed to mean?"

I'm silenced by the arrival of Kakashi, who materializes beside Gai. He is lax in his demeanor and easy going as always, exemplified in the way he greets us with a lazy salute and a spacey, "Oh, hello, Gai. And you too, Lee. Are you all right now?"

"Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura cries before Lee or Gai can find a fitting response.

Kakashi adjusts his headband on his forehead as though noticing his pupil for the first time and says, "Oh. Sorry, sorry! You must have been worried. Sorry for not telling you anything in advance. It's just Sasuke and I were busy…"

I scoff, leaning over the armrest. "That's a poor excuse," I say. "I think you might be losing your touch, Kakashi."

"Ren," he says with a curt nod. "Good to see you finally out of the house."

I have a feeling that his seemingly nonchalant comment toward me is double edged, but I roll my eyes as the crowd begins to roar when at last they see Shikamaru and Naruto leaving the ring, thus signaling that that next match will begin momentarily. But frankly, I'm tired of this sitting, especially now that Sasuke is back in range because the bond is making me jittery, causing my senses to go on hyper-drive in order to keep a better eye on its lovely. "What were you thinking bringing Sasuke in so late, anyway?"

"As though you should be one to talk, Ren," Ino says, "seeing as how you showed up late for Naruto's match and then ended up missing it all together!"

"It doesn't matter anymore," Sakura says, turning back around in her seat, surprising Ino and me.

"What doesn't matter anymore?" I ask.

"Any of it," she says with a shrug. "Your lateness, Sasuke-kun's lateness—what matters is that we're here, right? Naruto's made it to the next round, and Sasuke-kun, he's…well, he's…"

I gape at Sakura, completely thrown off by her attitude. She'd been so hung up over Sasuke's absence. We'd been expecting her to blow up, or give Kakashi an earful at least, but 'It doesn't matter anymore'? That's way off target.

Still, there's no point in me wondering about Sakura any further because the bond is driving me crazy and I find that I have to move. So I stand, squeezing past Sakura, Ino, and Chouji, and stumble into the aisle right in front of Lee who looks up at me, surprised. Up close, he's even more battered than I had thought. He has a graying bruise on one cheek and a bandage taped over the whole of the other. His left arm appears as though it belongs to a mummy, wrapped up the way it is, and there is a splint wrapped into the bandages on his left leg. He leans heavily on his crutch as his leg appears about to give out at any moment, and my heart hurts for him when I remember: This boy may never be healed enough to be a shinobi.

In spite of it, I give Lee a small smile as I notice his wounds on his left hand have broken open and started bleeding through his bandages. He must be holding onto that crutch more tightly than I thought. I lay my fingers over the wounds and, keeping my eyes locked with his, I say, "Why don't you take my seat, Lee? I don't feel like you should be straining yourself so much, and as a medic I would feel a lot better if you sat down."

Lee adamantly refuses, saying something like, "It wouldn't be proper. Ladies have the first privilege of open seats. It's common courtesy." and pulls away from me just as I finish healing his wounds over.

"In that case," Ino says over the back of her seat, "Ren doesn't get the first privilege as she hardly exhibits the qualities of a true lady."

"That was so two minutes ago, Ino. At least _try_ to keep pace with me, won't you?"

"Kakashi-sensei," Sakura says before Ino can go on. "On Sasuke-kun's neck…there was a mark, right? Is that…?"

I tense. Idiot Sakura. What is she thinking, bringing up such a sensitive subject in such a public setting? It isn't her place anyway. Before I left the Forest of Death, Sasuke called Sakura and I together and _told_ us that he didn't want us to say a word about it to anyone. Despite the fact that she had been careful not to reveal much about it—

I exchange glances with Kakashi, who says quietly, "It's nothing to worry about."

Sakura is no fool, however, and after being told my less than reassuring sentiments, she has to scrutinize Kakashi's expression to make absolutely sure that he isn't simply fending her off with another lie. Kakashi grins at her, and that is more than I had offered her when she had been bugging me, and currently it is all she needs to be won over by Kakashi. He's all around more dependable than I am anyway, I have to admit. I would trust him more than me too.

Sakura beams at Kakashi as she turns back to the arena. Ino, confused, looks to me for what Sakura could be talking about, but I shrug and pretend I don't know. Ino narrows her eyes at me, like she can see right through my act, but doesn't bring it up. Instead, she too goes back to watching the arena, waiting for Sasuke's match to start.

Sasuke. The bond throws a fit at the thought of his name and I can feel the smallest flux of vibrations as my affinity for them is heightened by the bond worrying about Sasuke. I feel the tapping of people's feet, the soft murmurs about the match, the rhythmic drumming of fingers on armrests. And then I feel a great blast of vibrations, bursting forward with such power and ferocity that I quiver.

And I recognize that intensity, the overwhelming strength causing the vibrations to tangle and unravel all at once.

Gaara.

I check the arena to see Sasuke still standing by himself, waiting for Gaara to enter the ring. Gaara must be going down traditionally—that is, by the stairs instead of making a grand entrance—but wherever he is, he's causing a stir. I think, just this once, it won't do harm to give Sasuke a heads-up. So I tap into the bond, becoming fatally aware of Sasuke's emotions in addition to my own, and I say, _Hey. Do I need to remind you to be careful?_

Sasuke is caught off guard by my sudden barrage into his mind and snaps back wittily with, _What?_

_About this match,_ I say, double checking to make sure Sakura is more preoccupied with Sasuke's mere presence than seeing if I can connect with Sasuke in some way. Thankfully, she _is_ watching Sasuke with dreamy, hopeful eyes. _Because I swear to god if you die and I have to deal with a blubbering Sakura, I'm going to make sure you go straight to hell._

_Are you actually looking out for someone other than yourself?_

I scowl, brushing my hair from my brow as Kakashi makes a comment about the small number of ANBU here in relation to the size of this stadium. _This is for me as much as it is for you and Sakura,_ I explain, counting off the ANBU as Kakashi had. Two squadrons of four are scattered around the stands, waiting, watching. _Just…make sure to keep that goddamn curse mark under control. Don't make her worry any more than she has been. Then I won't have to deal with her incessant panicking on your behalf._

Even after waiting a few seconds, I don't get a response from Sasuke, so I sever the connection as well as I can and refocus on the soft words being spoken by Gai.

"Considering what we don't know about the enemy," he's saying, "the ANBU probably have to be stationed elsewhere to gather information."

Gaara has made it into the arena at last and I'm left to wonder as the match starts: What will happen if—_when_—we're attacked as everyone seems to be anticipating? Considering the level of Nin who are would be running the ambush on our village, is there a place for us Genin to go in order to be safe, or would we have to adopt the duties of true shinobi and fight to protect our land?

The bond pushes those thoughts aside, turning my attention to Sasuke and Gaara, whose match has finally begun. It flurries at the threat of Gaara, at the memory of the hospital, of his attack on Lee, the monstrosity contained within him. It wants me to intervene and stop the match, but like hell I'll do that.

"_If you keep interfering, I'll kill you."_

I shiver at the haunting reminder. Yeah, I definitely won't be getting involved with _that_.

Right off the bat, Gaara's sand bursts from his gourd, weaving into the air. Forewarned of the threat the sand poses, Sasuke jumps away, putting distance between himself and Gaara. However, Gaara spasms suddenly, the sand stopping mid-air as Gaara grips his head in pain.

The vibrations shake oddly as Gaara's sand moves, just like it had during the preliminary rounds. I can't figure out why they do, and it only serves to set off my nerves. I take Gaara's momentary pause to my advantage and hone in on the sand, surrounding it with my vibrations. It doesn't help me understand it any better, though, because all the sand does is muddle the vibrations and push against them, as though they were vibrations themselves.

The sand creeps over Gaara, creating a dome over his head. It slinks slowly through the air, encroaching, but then collapses as Gaara jerks forward again in pain, his concentration broken. Gaara heaves as he regains his breath, pulling himself to his full height and crossing his arms in the condescending way he does. The two boys stare each other down in the arena as the crowd sits, quiet and waiting.

Then Sasuke's hand flits to his holster and draws out shuriken. He sends them flying at Gaara, but before they even make it halfway there, the sand erupts from the ground, creating a barrier between him and the stars.

The shuriken lodge into the sand, which begin to take the shape of a hand. An arm starts to form, then an entire body emerges from the sand that quickly becomes a blocky replica of Gaara. The sand Gaara's stomach bursts, reaching out for Sasuke.

Seeing this, Sasuke jumps into the air to evade the attack becoming vulnerable to the shuriken the sand spits back at him. Easily, Sasuke deflects both the throwing stars with a new set, and upon his descent, Sasuke swings his lower body up, ready to kick the sand replica and smash it back into grains of sand. But the replica holds firm, blocking itself with compact arms of sand.

The force Sasuke puts into his kick breaks the doppelganger's arms completely in half, sending fists flying across the arena. Sasuke skids on his hands, pushes himself upright and brings his left arm up, swinging it into the doppelganger's jugular. The sand breaks, but reforms over Sasuke's arm. This doesn't alarm Sasuke, however, and he simply reels his free arm back for a punch that breaks the doppelganger clean in two, leaving Gaara open for attack.

"Wow," I admit, and Kakashi pats my head, smiling.

"Coming from you," he says as I jerk away from him, scowling. "That is the highest compliment Sasuke can receive."

I roll my eyes as Sasuke, finally breaking through Gaara's defense, barrels straight ahead to attack the Sand boy. Gaara stands, unflinching, knowing his sand will catch up to Sasuke and stop him before damage can be done. And, yes, the sand circles Gaara's feet and comes back up in front of him, forming another wall to protect him from getting hurt, just millimeters before Sasuke's fist makes impact.

Suddenly, Sasuke does a reversal and is behind Gaara faster than his sand can react. Sasuke pulls back his arm, and Lee's form flashes before my eyes.

The crowd roars as Sasuke sends Gaara sliding across the arena.

Kakashi must have thought to train Sasuke in Lee's fighting style after he saw how well Lee did against Gaara in the preliminaries. As impressed as I am with Sasuke's ability to pick up on the style so quickly, I know that won't be enough. Case in point: The beaten Lee who stands beside me now, relying on a crutch and completely torn up on one half of his body. Not to mention the amount of defense Gaara has, which brings me to ask: "You warned him about the sand armor too, didn't you?"

"Didn't have to," Kakashi says as Sasuke makes a 'come-on' movement with his hand and says something to aggravate Gaara. "Not with you watching those matches."

And I glare at Kakashi and wish he wouldn't make me feel as though I'm such a tool. He, apparently sensing my annoyance, adds, "You know what I mean, Ren. Don't take it personally."

I do anyway.

Sand spurts from the ground like a tidal wave, garnering a gasp from a few members of the audience, and I turn my attention back to the match as the sand crashes forward, ready to consume Sasuke. But he's already behind Gaara, crouched low and ready to pounce. He weaves around the sand and gets a kick out it—literally.

His foot lands on Gaara's face and sends him flying back again, and he hits the sand that was supposed to crush Sasuke. It makes a nasty sound, but I can see the cracks on Gaara's face. He is indeed protecting himself with his sand shield, a jutsu that is obviously taking a toll on his stamina.

There's a moment's pause wherein Sasuke smirks. Then he strikes again. He moves so fast that our eyes can only keep track of the dust that streams up behind him. He's able to completely circle Gaara, duck under Gaara's sand that had been desperately trying to keep up with him, and kicks up, knocking Gaara's head back. Sasuke then grabs the straps of Gaara's gourd and pulls him forward to knee him in the gut, before pushing a safe distance away from him.

When the dust clears completely, I can see that both of them have labored breathing. They've hardly got a scratch on them, and while Gaara had sustained the most damage so far, his physical body is undoubtedly pristine beneath the sand armor.

"Dear god," I mumble, pushing my hair back from my brow. "Kakashi."

"What kind of training did you do?" Gai demands. "To come this far in just a month—"

Kakashi side glances at me. "Sasuke had copied Lee's taijutsu with the Sharingan before," he explains. "That's why during his training, I had Sasuke use Lee's taijutsu. Because he knew Lee and had seen him in action before, he was able to master his style. It was a lot of work, of course—"

"But with the Sharingan, it should've been relatively easy," I say, displeased.

Kakashi pats my head again, as though it's supposed to comfort me. "Yes," he says. "Compared to anyone else, it would be considered relatively easy."

I jerk my head away from him, glaring at him for making me feel like a child. "If this is just the beginning," I say, fixing my hair, "what else have you got up your sleeve?"

Kakashi holds his finger up to his mouth. "Just watch."

And I watch and see Gaara has built up this sphere of sand around him, a sphere which has nearly encased him completely. Before it closes, Sasuke has the sense to try to get through the last small opening that still needs to be filled, but it shrinks faster than Sasuke can run, and when his fist goes to break through it, Gaara's is already shut inside, and spikes spring from the sphere, keeping Sasuke at bay.

He hops back, considering his options. He clenches and unclenches his hand as the sand settles smoothly into the sphere. At this point, they seem to be at a stalemate, keeping everyone on the edge of their seats, waiting for what Sasuke might be planning or what Gaara might be summoning from inside his shell.

Because he must be summoning something. The vibrations are a-flutter and the bond is becoming more and more nervous as Gaara continues to simmer in his ball of sand. It's unsettling that both are so wound up right now.

I start to ask Kakashi if he knows what Gaara could possibly be doing, trapped in that little sphere, when someone else gets his attention first. It's Naruto, dusty and bruised from his match, standing at the top of the staircase. His eyes are bright and full of determination, fear. Before I can think to ask him why he's here and not back in the contestant's box with the others, I see Shikamaru, kneeling at Naruto's side, breathless.

"Shikamaru!" I say at the same time Lee says, "Naruto!"

I ascend the steps to meet with Shikamaru, but he waves me off as I try to help him up. "I just," he says between deep breaths. "I think. I'm okay. Sitting like this."

"What are you doing here?" I ask, crouching down beside him, and he sighs and says, "It's troublesome, but that Sand kid—"

"He's totally different from us," Naruto cries loudly, stabbing a finger in the direction of the arena. "He's not normal! Sensei, please, stop this match _now_."

Nobody seems convinced, from what I can tell. Even _I_ don't quite understand what Naruto expects from us. I know what he means by Gaara not being normal; I had been in the hospital room the other day too, after all, but Sasuke is in the middle of a match, a match which, might I add, is currently being watched by a score of important men from across the land. Besides, Naruto of all people should know that Sasuke isn't an infant. He can take care of himself well enough, and from what I've seen, after training with Kakashi as extensively as he has been, he's already better off than we could have hoped for.

So Ino asks, her brow creased with anxiety, "Naruto, what are you talking about?"

"He lives to kill others!" Naruto says, pull extra emphasis on _kill_. "At this rate, Sasuke will _die_."

Kakashi closes his eye, tired, and says, "Well, don't worry. We weren't late for nothing."

"I would hope not," I say, propping my hand on my waist and someone shushes me as there is movement in the arena.

Sasuke has decided to attack the shell, just to get a feel of how sturdy it is, I suppose. He rushes into it and gives it a solid kick here, a perfectly executed punch there. None of it does any good. As he preps himself for another attack, Sakura says, "Sensei. What do you mean you weren't late for nothing?"

"Hmm? You want to know?"

"Look, we don't have time for this!" Naruto cries. "We—"

"Be quiet and watch him," orders Kakashi crisply, and his sharp tone takes us aback. "You'll be surprised."

"I don't know if surprises are necessarily good," I say because the vibrations are throwing a fit now and the bond is trying to piece together the information the vibrations are gathering through the frequency of the chakra flow. The energy swirls and morphs within the container Gaara has created, and although it hasn't amassed to anything great or overwhelming, its general presence and growth is disturbing.

Sasuke takes three massive jumps backward, his last landing him halfway up the stadium wall, where he uses his chakra to stick his feet to the concrete. There, he wastes no time pressing his hands into a seal and holding out his hand, as though his technique is just in his grasps.

Brilliantly, the whole of Sasuke's hand erupts with a bright blue, chakra-charged energy. It moves statically and sounds like electronic birds chirping in the morning, soothing almost, like it wants to draw in its victim with a sweet siren song.

It shines so vehemently that green blobs dot the inside of my eyelids when I blink. Feeling this burst of chakra from Sasuke helps ease the bond into thinking Sasuke can take care of himself. It calms for the most part, but doesn't stop analyzing the oddities of the vibrations inside the sand container.

"Is that…?" Gai starts, looking over his shoulder at his friend.

Kakashi smiles innocently, proudly. "The reason I trained Sasuke," he says, "is that he's the same type as me."

"Elementally, you mean," I say, continuing to stare at the sparks of chakra streaming around Sasuke's hand.

"Yes," Kakashi says. "Exactly."

Without further ado, Sasuke is on the move, dragging his chakra immersed hand behind him, as though the responsibility of such a powerful technique weighs him down heavily. As he runs down the side of the wall, he gains incredible speed, blurring into almost nothingness. His chakra covered hand is tearing the cement apart where it touches, leaving a trail of destruction and falling debris behind it.

With only a few meters left to the wall, Sasuke leaps off and lands on the ground. The trail of rocks and dirt that he pulls up mixes with the tail his jutsu leaves behind. He is an absolute blur as he moves, and his jutsu won't stop chirping, only seeming to grow more brilliant by the second. But what's more alarming to me is the fact that Gaara still hasn't emerged from his sand shell, and the vibrations around it only seem to be growing more unstable, which hasn't gone without notice from the bond. It presses my eyes to look, _really look_, at what's going on in the arena.

"What is this technique?" Sakura asks. "And this sound—"

"A simple stab," says Gai with a sniff. "But it's the Leaf's number one technician, Copycat Ninja Kakashi's sole original technique. It's made specifically for assassination, the secret lying in the speed of the attack and the immense chakra created by super-activating one's flesh. Because the chakra is concentrated in such massive amounts, coupled with the speed of the user, your hear that chirping sound. Like the cry of a thousand birds. Accordingly, this move has been dubbed—"

Sasuke's fist impacts the sand shell, cones of sand spiking from the surface of the shell much too late. Sasuke's arm has burrowed into the shell, which begins to melt away as the crowd gasps and murmurs and cheers for more.

"Chidori," Gai says. "Otherwise known as the Lightning Edge, so nicknamed because Kakashi once cut a bolt of lightning with that technique."

If I weren't so distracted by Gaara's chakra, I would have scoffed at this ludicrousness. But after Sasuke impaled his hand into Gaara's shell, the sand boy's chakra fluxed and went completely off the charts, as though Gaara is losing control of himself. It levels out, yes, and as Sasuke struggles to pull himself free of the sand, Gaara's chakra drops to near nonexistence before flaring up again.

To say the bond freaks out is an understatement. The vibrations inside the shell reacting in a way that disproportionate to the level of chakra Gaara should be carrying in himself. It gives off the feeling of ill-will, and there is a familiarity to it that I can't quite place, but know almost immediately.

Sasuke conjures up another Chidori, breaking the sand that has cemented itself around his arm. But as Sasuke gets free, there's a monstrous brown claw clenched around his forearm, trying to reel him back in and exact its revenge. My hair stands up on end and my fists gather into clubs as I keep myself from jumping into the arena and pulling Sasuke out of there. Luckily, Sasuke is able to jerk his arm away on his own, and slowly the claw slinks back into the sand ball.

"Kakashi," I say, alarmed. "That's not—"

"I know," he says, tensing.

When the monster of a thing retreats all the way back, it leaves a perfect circle in the shell of sand. The vibrations rub against me, warning that there is something beneath that dome of sand that is absolutely out of this world, and I think to relay this to Sasuke when he says, _I see it!_

And, yes, he sees it. Within the sand sphere, an eye, brimming yellow in the darkness of the shell, glaring and penetrating all realms of sense. The bond shows me this image, panicking as it does so, trying to piece it all together before I can understand what's going on.

Then it makes sense: This damning chakra, the way it fluctuates and flares in all the wrong ways. It's like when Naruto's fox demon gets free. _Shikaku,_ I hear Gaara saying in Lee's hospital room just the day before. But he can't seriously be summoning it right now in order to defeat Sasuke, could he? Even I knew Sasuke didn't take or even really deserve that much effort to beat.

The sand ball melts, slinking into lifeless grains of dirt, and I'm afraid to see what it will reveal, but there only stands Gaara, palm pressed to a wound he'd received on his left shoulder. Blood dribbles from it, rolling down his arm in rivulets.

I wonder what this tournament is coming to that such otherworldly characters are taking place and ruining this peace we have built up in the Leaf, when feathers fall from the sky, sweeping against my cheek and making me drowsy. My vision clouds over, but the vibrations continue to press against me, cutting my fingers and arms, and I realize: _Genjutsu_.

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	39. Civic Duty

**Bound  
Chapter 39: Civic Duty**

I close my eyes and twine my fingers together in the release. When I open my eyes, a smoke bomb is going off in the Hokage's box and Shikamaru has fallen, unconscious, onto my leg. Naruto too has collapsed, unconscious, and lays drooling face down not a meter away. I regard them both with alarm, kneeling down to help Shikamaru upright at least, only to find that he is breathing normally and, in fact, not under the genjutsu.

"Shika!" I chide, but he keeps up his charade convincingly and I don't have time to lecture him anymore because the grounds shake and I'm sure I hear buildings tumble down outside the stadium. I settle with punching Shikamaru gruffly in the shoulder, and he barely manages to stifle his groan of pain.

With the villagers in the stadium caught in the sleeping genjutsu, there's no one to panic, but outside—

I descend the stairs and am at Kakashi and Gai's side, on guard, in a matter of seconds. At least around them I'll have someone to discuss the game plan with because I'm not going to sit around defenseless while my home is torn to pieces.

And, god, I've gone and said it—home. This place is my home.

"Nine traitors," Gai says, his gaze flickering around the stadium. At the very edge of the spectator's box, there is an ANBU, apparently one of our own men, surrounded by a number of Nin—Sound, by the looks of the fatigues they wear. The ANBU has his hands pressed together in a seal, unperturbed by the fact that he is currently closed in by the enemy. A traitor so close to the heart of Konoha's elite shinobi force.

Kakashi says aloud what I'm thinking: "This is bad."

"Which is a bold understatement," I say, looking past the ANBU and down into the stadium, where I can see Temari and Kankuro standing by their teammate, their Jounin leader between them and the proctor. Gaara is gripping his head, trembling terribly, and it isn't long before the Sand Genin kneel, lift Gaara up by his armpits, and with a wave from their team leader, take off.

A few moments later, Sasuke pursues them.

The bond explodes and pines after him as I hiss, "No!" I start to give chase, but Kakashi grabs me by my collar and says, "No you don't. Not alone."

"There's—_look_, Kakashi!" I try to get out of his grip to no avail, even with the bond throwing its weight against him to help me, and say, "There's no one else who isn't otherwise currently occupied who can come with me!" Although I see Sakura standing among the crowd of slumping spectators who have fallen under the genjutsu. Of all the people in this stadium, though, I don't want to drag _her_ into it. I'll only hear worry after worry if I team up with her. "Besides, it's _Sasuke_, if anything I'll be—"

"There are too large a number of traitors for you to get away without being noticed right now," he counters.

"It's not just that," Gai interjects. "There's something even worse. Look at the roof of the central watch tower."

There, a shadowy barrier with two people—the Kazekage and Hokage from the looks of their oblong hats—inside, a perfectly enclosed container, too full of dark chakra to try to break through. But I'm far less concerned about that than I am about Sasuke running after someone who carries a beast within himself.

"It's what's _within_ that should especially interest you," Gai says when I let out a frustrated huff. I do a double-take, but even without it, Kakashi makes the observation for me.

"Orochimaru!"

The bond pounds against my skull in protest. My breath catches in my throat and my knees go weak, but I go on standing. I shake my head and mutter, "No no no no no no no." as I struggle to get Kakashi to release me, the bond heaving with me. When Kakashi does let me go, I'm thrown off balance and I fall backward, stumbling up the stairs ungracefully, until I trip over Shikamaru's legs. Kakashi has, in the meantime, leapt across the seats, landing on the back of two chairs and extracted two kunai, subsequently stabbing them into the heads of two Sound Nin who had been rushing at Sakura.

I take this minor distraction to my advantage and turn over on my stomach to shake Shikamaru, whose lips turn down at the corners. "Hey, come on," I urge, patting his cheek. "Help me out, Shikamaru! We have to go after Sasuke before he does something stupid."

"No chance," he says through his teeth as I drop my head farther to avoid the notice of a Sound Nin who comes running by. "It's not my problem what that idiot does to get himself killed. Now leave me alone before you blow my cover."

"You've already blown your cover," I snap. "Anyone who's unconscious doesn't breathe so lightly!"

He doesn't answer, just continues to put up the pretense that he's caught in the genjutsu, and I suppose I could get out of here alone. The corridor down the way is wide open—at least, it is until two Nin fall into battle right in front of it, obstructing the exit.

So the corridor is a no. There is the option of jumping into the arena and then getting out the same way Sasuke and the Sand trio had, but then I risk catching the attention of the other Sound Nin currently in the stands.

As I consider testing my luck against the older Nin—and the bond is telling me to do it, that I could do it, that it'll give me the extra boost to do it and win and beat anyone who comes in my way—Sakura creeps up beside me, waving for me to follow her lead. She presses her hands together in the genjutsu release and taps her fingers on Naruto's shoulders, waking him. He blinks groggily, rubbing his eyes as he pushes sits up.

"Sakura-chan?" he says. "Ren? What happened?"

"We'll tell you later," she says, pushing him back down. "Just _stay low_."

Sakura looks to Shikamaru and gestures for me to release the genjutsu on him. I frown and shake my head, saying, "That's not going to be necessary."

"Not going to be necessary? But why—" She scoots closer to us and I notice, at her side, a small brown pug with a squashed face. He has, oddly enough, a mini headband and cape, and looks like he understands more than an average dog should. I stare at the dog as it crawls up to Shikamaru and sniffs his leg. After examining Shikamaru, Sakura says, "You, from the very beginning—"

The dog clamps down on Shikamaru's ankle, which effectively 'wakes' him. Immediately, Shikamaru lets out a cry of pain and jolts upright, shaking his leg to try to get the dog to let him go.

"You were able to deflect to genjutsu!" Sakura says, pointing an accusatory finger at him and I sigh, propping my chin on my fist. "Why play possum?"

Shikamaru grabs the pug by its cape and yanks it free. He glares at it, pinching its cheek as he says, "I didn't want to be attacked, of course. I'll pass. I don't care about Sasuke."

The dog growls and bites down on Shikamaru's hand. He grimaces again and tugs on the dog, glaring at it. I take the dog from him, scratching it behind its ears until it lets him go and mumble, "What are _you_ doing here, pup?"

It opens its mouth and I hold it away from me, afraid it's going to try to bite me too, but then it stops, sniffing the air furiously. It turns, apparently sensing something, and I follow its gaze. Over Naruto's head, I can see a Sound Nin coming right for him, kunai poised, ready to kill. I drop the dog, scrambling to reach Naruto before the Sound Nin does, but I know I won't be quick enough.

There's no need for me to worry, though, because Gai appears from nowhere and slams the Sound Nin into the opposite wall so hard a crater forms and chunks of concrete break off. Gai delivers a final blow to the Sound Nin's stomach that causes him to break through the wall and fly across the way, disappearing as he falls into the trees behind.

Kakashi swoops in before us then, his front stained with blotches of enemy blood. "Now," he says, "I'll restate your mission. Once you've heard it, escape through that hole."

"_Mission_?" I repeat, aghast, and the bond buzzes with me. "Kakashi—"

"Hush, Ren," he says. "You can't do this by yourself."

"Do what?" Naruto demands. "What's going on?"

"Listen up," Kakashi says. "Chase after Sasuke, join up with him, and _stop_ him. Then get somewhere safe and wait there until you receive new orders. Understand?"

"What happened to Sasuke?" asks Naruto, but Sakura takes him by the waist and says, "I'll explain as we go. Come on!"

She leaps out through the wall, the pug going along with them, and before long Shikamaru follows, albeit reluctantly. Once they're out of earshot, I turn to Kakashi and say, "I could have taken care of this."

"I think this is going to be more than you're expecting," he says. "You can't do this alone, so I'm having Sakura, Naruto, and Shikamaru help you. I even summoned Pakkun to track Sasuke so you can keep Sakura's suspicions off of you; that's what you're afraid of, right? Sakura finding out about the bond?"

But I'm gone.

[+]

I catch up to them easily with the bond powering me along, and I have to rein it in to keep from passing over my friends. Sakura has just finished explaining to Naruto and Shikamaru the details of Sasuke's disappearance when I arrive. The dog—Pakkun—is first to notice me as I fall into step beside Shikamaru, who says, "So why am _I_ being assigned out like this? It's a chore."

"It can't be helped," Sakura says. "It was Kakashi-sensei's orders. But I don't see why—Ren! Where have you been?"

"I tripped," I say. "Coming out of the stadium."

No one seems to believe me, but it becomes a matter of lesser importance when the pug speaks up in a burly voice unfitting for such a small body. "This way," he says and makes sharp right turn.

"So what do you suppose we do once we find Sasuke?" Shikamaru asks. "Kakashi says we need to get somewhere safe, but I doubt he'll come away with us easily, knowing how he is."

"It's not a matter of _will_ he," I say, and am again bothered by how much the bond is in agreement with me at the moment. It won't get off my mind and it doesn't even have to fight to be there, and for some reason I don't find it necessary to push it away. "It's a matter of can he stop us. If we knock him out, he should be easy enough to carry to a hideout."

"We can't just knock him unconscious, Ren," Sakura says, her voice tinged with alarm.

"I don't see why not," I say, meeting her gaze. "It'll be what's best for him, Sakura. Orochimaru is in that goddamn barricade over there. Or didn't you hear?"

Sakura's face fills with fear at the reminder and Naruto looks between us, confused. He had been there for the fight, been attacked by Orochimaru himself, but for the latter half of the battle, the half that really mattered and really explained things, he had been unconscious. He doesn't know Orochimaru's name, or what he really looks like. Somehow, Naruto always ends up missing out on the important things.

"Hey, you guys," Pakkun says suddenly, urgently. "Pick up the pace. From behind. There are two squads—eight, no—_nine_ men chasing us."

Alarmed, I check with the vibrations to confirm, but can't feel anything. "They're not close enough that I can sense them with the vibrations," I say. "We still have time to get ahead." Even as I say it, though, I know it's a feeble reassurance.

"So they can't be too close, right?" Sakura says.

"Don't look as if they've got a fix on our true position yet," Pakkun says, nodding, "but they're closing in on us quickly while looking out for any surprise attacks."

"_Shit,"_ curses Shikamaru. "They're probably all beyond the Chuunin level. If they catch up with us, we'll be annihilated."

"But if that's the case," Naruto says, and I wish I could punch Shikamaru for being such a downer. "Shouldn't we ambush them?"

"We'd certainly have a great advantage if we were to ambush them," Sakura says. "Even if they're twice our number, we can surprise them and—"

"We shouldn't bother," I say as Pakkun takes us through another sharp turn away from the village center. I know we can cut all these turns if I take the lead and track Sasuke with the bond. But Kakashi has done me a great favor by diverting Sakura's attention from my relationship with Sasuke, and to put that in jeopardy now would be incredibly stupid of me. We'll just have to take the long way around; it's not as though we're losing his trail anyway. So long as we can avoid these Nins coming after us, that is.

"Why not?" Sakura demands. "You know how important it is that we catch up to Sasuke."

"They're subordinates of Orochimaru," Pakkun points out as I glare at her for the tone she had taken up with me. "Who is a former Konoha shinobi, you know."

Shikamaru grits his teeth and says, "In that case, we're really not going to be able to pull it off."

"But what does that have to do with it?"

"You guys just don't get it," Shikamaru says and begins to explain the technicalities of it, how, at a glance, yes, it won't be hard for us to ambush them, but considering the fact that the shinobi who are after us are under the command of an ex-Leaf, we have nothing on them. They have been taught the terrain, taught our secrets, our routes of escape.

I wouldn't put it past Orochimaru to have these Nin trained specifically for this hunt. After all, he's already successfully infiltrated Konoha and our Ops, already has our Hokage locked into battle with him while the village sleeps or is otherwise left exposed. Not to mention Sasuke is too precious a piece for him to lose if his plan falls through, which means extra caution on his part to make sure he can get his hands on Sasuke.

"The ambush would still be advantageous to us," Shikamaru says, "but there are too many undecided factors involved. To begin with, the enemy is a ninja squad that has been organized for this plan, with the two cells of four and the ninth being a lookout, whereas _we_ have an _idiot_"—Naruto scowls.—"a kunoichi with _no_ special ability"—Sakura mirrors Naruto's sour expression.—"a hardheaded girl who only cares about herself, a pug, and the best guy at running away—_me_."

"It shouldn't be too hard for you to come up with a plan then, right, Shikamaru?" I ask, hardly offended by his talk and mostly daring him this way to force him to make up for his pessimism earlier. "Unless that fight with Temari has your brain all tuckered out."

He smirks at me, and says, "There's only one thing we can do."

"_One_ thing?" echoes Sakura, distressed over her lack of options.

"We need to create a diversion that looks as if _we're_ going to ambush _them_," Shikamaru says. "One of us will have to remain behind and delay them by faking an ambush."

"In other words," I say when Naruto regards us blankly.

"A decoy," Sakura finishes quietly, and Naruto's eyes dart back and forth between the three of us to make sure we're serious.

"That's right," answers Shikamaru. "If they're stalled, they won't be able to locate the rest of us in time. We'll lose the trackers, but the one who stays behind will probably—die."

"Don't be dramatic," I say, as we slow to a stop, Shikamaru ending on a branch a good three trees away from the rest of us. "If worse comes to pass—someone will come to us. They wouldn't have sent us out alone without sending someone after us. We're _kids_."

"But with the situation back in the village," Sakura argues, "they'll probably have trouble coming up with extra hands for that kind of task. Kakashi-sensei's trusted us to do this alone, and for the purposes of now, we have to assume that we _are_ on our own. We have to grow up sometime."

It's funny that she's telling me this when she's the one who has been harboring the most childish crush on Sasuke for as long as I can remember. But I don't bother dignifying her retort with an answer because I can't explain that I've had five years 'on my own' to attest to my claim without bringing up questions that don't matter at a time like this, although it should be a well-known fact that Konoha doesn't so readily abandon its future.

"In any case," Shikamaru says, "we can't wait for them to come after us and run into the Nin themselves. By then it'll be too late. So who's gonna do it? The dog is necessary to chase after Sasuke, in which case, it's going to be one of us."

One of us, but definitely not me. I can feel the bond urging me to hurry us on. If we keep stalling around like this, not saying a word and hoping someone will volunteer themselves before we have to volunteer ourselves, the Nin following us will be attack us before we know it. The more time we waste, the more ground we lose on Sasuke.

I look around at Shikamaru, Naruto, Sakura. Each of them return my look in response, before glancing around at each other. God, we're getting nowhere fast, and I'm quick to point to one of them and demand that they stay behind when, finally, Naruto takes a deep breath and says, "Okay. If this has to happen, I understand. I'll—"

"I guess I'm the only one," Shikamaru says over him, and my teammate's mouths drop open.

"Why _you_?" Naruto asks, and while I had been thinking the same, it all clicks in my head.

"Why not?" I counter. I'm not very happy about Shikamaru volunteering either, but we're making leeway now and I can see where he's coming from. If anyone is going to keep us safe, I'd rather it be Shikamaru than anyone else. "Listen, the three of us know Sasuke best. We know what makes him tick and what will pull him off his high horse, right? So what really matters is that _we_ get to him, not Shika."

"Besides, it's better than being killed off, isn't it?" Shikamaru says with a grin. "If you think about who's best fit to successfully fulfill the job of decoy and be the most likely to survive, then I'm the only one in this bunch who can do it. Because the Shadow technique was originally used as a delaying tactic, you know."

The bond begins to stir, riling beneath my skin and making me itchy. "Sorry to leave you like this, Shikamaru, but we gotta go," I say, turning Sakura and Naruto in the right direction and nodding for Pakkun to lead the way.

"Shikamaru," Naruto says before leaping off. "we're counting on you!"

Shikamaru dismisses the comment with a wave, and Naruto, Sakura, and Pakkun are off. I linger behind, despite the fact that _I_ had been the one to instigate the rush. Because, beneath all this panic and urgency, Shikamaru is my best friend, and the bond can't make me abandon him so quickly. At least, not without a farewell.

But the only one I can come up with is lame and undeserving of how much I am stalling to tell him, simply, "Be careful, Shikamaru."

"Shouldn't you be somewhere?" he says, snapping off branches and bundling them together. "Go, before you _trip_ again. I'll see you, Ren."

I go.

It doesn't take me long to catch up to Sakura, Naruto, and Pakkun. None of them ask me what had delayed me, and I'm not sure they had even noticed that I was gone in the first place. They're too caught up in Shikamaru doing such a noble act, whether or not a lazy ass like him will make it through alive. But there are more pressing concerns on my part because I know Shikamaru will follow through.

Sasuke has almost caught up with Gaara—three to one, Sasuke won't last the way he is, especially against a monster like that. _Especially_, the bond presses, _because his chakra has been drained after using Chidori._

And then there's that.

I try to pry around in Sasuke's brain to see what has possessed him to go after Gaara in the first place. Back in the arena, he could feel as well as I could that there was something not right about the way Gaara had been hiding in that shell. He had felt it better than I had, in fact. And yet he still wanted to prove that he could do this, beat Gaara in order to show everyone just how powerful he is. I suppose this past month of going AWOL to train in the middle of nowhere would be put to waste if he wasn't able to have an epic showdown with Gaara, but this is not the way to do it. Besides, considering the condition Gaara had been in before he escaped with his teammates—images of his shivering body, his pale face, the way he couldn't seem to contain whatever was going on inside that head of his flash through my mind—it would be like attacking someone who has already been critically injured, which is wholly unfair to Gaara on Sasuke's part. He couldn't simply attack someone who is already down and out for the count, unless he is so determined to win that he will resort to cowardly tactics in order to do so.

Then again—this is Gaara we're talking about. Gaara, who had crushed Lee's bones to the point of no return. Gaara, who had himself gone to finish Lee off when Lee was still in his hospital bed.

So maybe this is all karma catching up Gaara at last.

I'm half-listening to the conversation going over my head when I hear the mention of Shikamaru's name. I don't care to try to assimilate myself into the discussion because being reminded of Shikamaru only has me worrying about him now. He couldn't have recovered much stamina after his battle with Temari, after all. He'd been so wasted by the end of the fight that he couldn't even hold his shadow technique for more than three minutes, and his rest duration had been almost nothing, especially if Naruto had dragged him in a hurry to the spectator stands as he had appeared to have done.

If we expect him to use his Shadow technique to keep our assailants at bay, he would need more chakra than he had at the current.

Oh, but what am I doing, worrying about Shikamaru of all people? He isn't a genius for nothing. But that is hardly any consolation, and I am, in the end, struck with worry in spite of it all.

"Ren," Sakura says, her voice raised to a level that indicates she had been calling me for a while.

"Yeah?" I answer, still partly occupied by Shikamaru and Sasuke and why in god's name I'm being so compliant to the bond's will.

She hesitates, sensing my lack of commitment to our conversation, but then goes on and says, without looking at me, "Why are you here?"

Her question pulls me completely away from what I had been thinking about and I narrow my eyes at her, frowning. "What do you mean?"

"It's just," she says, "you've always hated Sasuke. You've made it your point to let everyone know as much since the beginning. So why do you keep coming to his rescue? Why do you keep trying to help him even though you hate him so much?"

I inhale sharply, letting my breath out in a rush that exhausts my lungs. "This hardly seems like an appropriate time to talk about something like this," I say. "Who cares, Sakura? I'm here, I'm helping you, Naruto, and Sasuke out. Shouldn't your question be something more along the lines of 'What will our plans be when we reach Sasuke in the case that we can't knock him out and have to fight those Sand Nin?' Because that's what I'm wondering."

"You don't have to get so touchy about it," she says. "You act as though you're hiding something."

I keep my gaze focused on the next branch on which I'm going to land. "And you act as though there's something to find out. Just—people change, okay?" Although, in this case, that isn't so much the point. Ultimately, I am only here because of the bond.

"If you don't mind me interrupting," the pug says as Naruto looks between me and Sakura, confused as to why we're snapping at each other at a time like this. "Sasuke has stopped. There's still a ways to go before we reach him, but—"

"We should be able to catch up easily while he's stalled," I say, figuring the distance between us through the bond. He really is much closer than I thought. And at the rate we're going, we should have no trouble getting to him before something disastrous happens.

Hopefully.

Pakkun's ear perks up, his nose sticking high in the air. He lets out a little whine as he says, "There's someone else besides us chasing Sasuke!"

Pakkun's announcement has us all on edge. Again, whoever is following us is no one I can feel with the vibrations, but there's no reason for me to doubt Pakkun's sense of smell. He has, so far, been leading us to Sasuke well-enough, and however universal my vibrations are, I can only really feel them when the enemy is within four meters of me. I can't be expecting to sense much with them at this point.

"Is it an enemy or an ally?" Sakura inquires, and Pakkun shakes his head.

"I don't know," he says, "only, it's not human."

I think the worst. Perhaps Gaara has completely transformed into his demon spirit, and that's what Pakkun is smelling. If that's the case, however, Sasuke would probably be running away, just like he had in the Forest of Death, when he'd faced Orochimaru for the first time. I'd like to think that, over the past month of his training, he's changed and become a better man, but fear is innate, and that inherent fear strikes a chord with our primitive senses, forcing us to flee for our own sake.

"Pakkun, can you direct us around them?" I ask. "As long as we don't run into whatever else is following Sasuke, we should still be able to reach him first, right?"

Pakkun considers this, and then takes a leap to the left, hardly giving us any warning. "It doesn't seem like it should be too hard," he says. "Whatever it was that was following him has stopped. Sasuke is moving again."

_Sasuke,_ I think, cursing him. He needs help more than he cares to admit it, and no amount of prodding I can do gives me an idea of what could be going on inside that head of his. Bu the bond is telling me it's not just for the thrill of the fight that he's doing this. He wants to help us, the village as a whole. But I have as hard a time believing that as much as I have a hard time believing that I'm actually going after him of my own free will, and the urgency with which I'm approaching the matter.

He needs to come back. He has to come back. He has to understand that he is vital to the dynamics of our way of life now and he can't just abandon us like this.

I clench my fists, but my body won't move any faster. At this rate, we'll reach him anyway, so the bond won't bother pushing me over the edge to get to him. Besides, I could use the extra helping hands of Naruto and Sakura. To go forward alone wouldn't help Sasuke in the least, unless I could force him out of there, which I can't. Otherwise, he would have given me a free pass into his brain by now and let me convince him to come back without any of this trouble, without me having to leave Shikamaru behind.

I flex my fingers as my adrenaline begins to rush through my veins. My breathing grows shallow and I can feel now that I'm not flexing my fingers so much as they're twitching. Because for some reason, Sasuke is shaking, and I can feel him freezing, terrified, recognizing the face of a monster, the one he had seen and sensed down in the arena. And though I can't see it clearly through a darkness that shrouds my vision for a second, I know it's there: gleaming eyes full of murderous intent.

Despite the deluge of emotions running through Sasuke and the threat Gaara poses to him, the bond won't give me the push I need to catch up to Sasuke just a moment sooner. He doesn't want or need my help himself, and for some reason the bond won't override his wishes this time to get me to his side. The goddamn inconsistency of this bond, I swear. Just like the person it burdens, it can't keep a straight mind about whether or not Sasuke needs it as much as it'd like to hope.

Sasuke. I go dizzy as a flare of anger sparks the last reserves of his chakra and plumes into another Chidori, igniting within Sasuke the will to fight alone. And god, the attack drains me, because he doesn't have enough chakra on his own to conjure such an attack and thusly must tap into my chakra in order to gather enough energy to make the attack the least bit potent. And he attacks and is successful in landing his attack, but Gaara is still going, cursed with the seemingly infinite chakra of his demon spirit, to my dismay. Sasuke won't give up until he wins, but at this point, any move that strains him too much will kill him and, in effect, me.

How much farther do we have to go until we reach him?

_Not much farther,_ the bond soothes. _He's there. He's right there._

And there he is indeed. I can feel him through the bond, the way his muscles shake and contract, barely able to hold him upright. He's so weak now, on the very verge of collapsing. There is a sharp stake that drives through the left of my neck, and it's not too hard for me to recognize this pain: The curse mark has come to life, giving him power while taking away his vitality.

"We're close," I announce, no longer concerned with Sakura suspecting the bond. "So close. And this energy."

"What is it?" Sakura asks, a tremble to her voice.

"Gaara," I say darkly, trying to come up with a way to get to Sasuke and get him out without upsetting the creature Gaara has become. I can see him now, through the bond, as Sasuke has lost the will to keep up the barricades adequately enough to keep me out. Gaara is transmuted on one half of his body, and teeming with bloodlust. "There's...there's something in him that's—"

"Not right," Naruto grumbles.

My heart pumps harder, my nerves hitching up. The bond sends a wave of power through my system as sounds reach our ears in the familiar song of the Chidori. But it fades, unexpectedly, and there's another jolt of energy that bites through my body.

"Once we get to him," I say quickly, trying to come up with a plan. "Once we get to him, Sakura, you go to Sasuke right away, do you understand? Naruto—we're going to launch a surprise attack. Give me your arm."

I reach out to him, and he stares at me, not quite understanding. I make a noise of aggravation and say, "We're close to where Sasuke's fighting Gaara. When we come out, we'll have speed and the element of surprise on our side. You take my arm, I launch you at Gaara, distract him, and Sakura and I grab Sasuke."

He takes a moment to go over this plan in his head. Then he grins, grabbing onto my upper arm and nodding. I grip his in return, turning to Sakura and saying, "All right. Sakura, remember: To Sasuke. On the count of three."

The trees drop out of view in groups, rushing at us from all sides until finally they clear, and we see them. Sasuke lies on a thick branch, paralyzed, and Gaara soars toward him.

"Three!" I shout, coming to a halt on a branch, planting my feet to the tree with my chakra in order to keep from flying after Naruto. I push all my escaping inertia into heaving him forward, and without waiting to see what happens, I follow Sakura and Pakkun over to Sasuke.

I hear a wicked crack and Gaara lets out a cry, which is a disturbing cross between a child screeching and heavy machinery grinding to a stop, but I don't look back, instead moving onto more pressing matters.

"Ren," Sakura says as I reach her and Sasuke. She has a hand on his back and is about ready to roll him onto his back when he makes a move to sit up. I scowl as I notice the curse marks inking his face and arm, and am again forced to bear a fraction of the pain he is enduring.

"The mark," she says. "But Kakashi-sensei said it was taken care of!"

"It was," I say, leaning down to Sasuke. "At least, it was supposed to be. It's all on you, Sasuke. Fight it fight it fight it."

"Sa-Sakura-chan," Naruto stutters from where he has landed, distracting us. He turns to us, a dumb expression on his face as he points at the monster. "Ren. Who—_what_ the hell is that?"

The bond doesn't do Gaara justice. In all his present glory, Gaara is certainly a sight to see. He's mutilated—the left half of his body is a monster, complete with a thick tail living up to the tailed demons' name. His skin is sandy gold with protruding blue veins that reach across his body, and the golden skin swirls around his neck, mutating the right side of his face. The love tattoo makes a point of shining brightly with his sweat.

Pakkun sniffs at the air, lowering his head as though expressing he will submit to Gaara and do his bidding should he be asked of as much. "Although he doesn't look like it," Pakkun answers, "he's the one named Gaara. Mind you," he adds, turning to us, "I'm not the battle-type!"

"Don't think we haven't noticed," Sakura retorts, as I give my attention back to Sasuke, who isn't bearing the pain of the curse mark any better than before.

There isn't much I can do in regards to this suffering. It's not a physical wound I can heal with a simple surge of chakra or anything I can alter by adjusting the chemicals in his body. In fact, there is little else I can think of to help him than to whisper, like a prayer that won't be answered, "Fight this, Sasuke, come on, you're above it you're better than it you don't need it as much as it needs you. Come on. Come on come on."

"We have to get him out of here," Sakura says, putting a hand on my shoulder, and I admonish myself for not thinking to do that as soon as I got to Sasuke.

"Right," I agree. I pull Sasuke up and sling his arm over my shoulder. "Grab his other side, Sakura," I order, and she does as I tell her. "I think—"

"You guys!" Naruto shouts suddenly, whirling to face us. I look up, panicked by the tone of his voice, but more alarmed by the fact that he has chosen to turn his back on the enemy to tell us, "Get away!"

I see Gaara coming toward him, the claw on his left side reaching out for Naruto, ready to slash at him, and I think to jump at Naruto to push him out of the way, but Gaara's reach is off. He's too far right. And that's when I realize, he's not going for Naruto.

He's coming for Sasuke.

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	40. Pressure

**Bound  
Chapter 40: Pressure**

Without much consideration, I pull Sasuke away from Sakura as she grasps a kunai from her holster and stands, taking defense. Gaara pushes forward, the monstrous claw reaching out as I yank Sasuke out of his reach. Admittedly, this leaves Sakura to fend for herself, but god I can only take care of so many people at a time, and the person who shares in my bond gets priority.

Sasuke is heavy on my shoulders as I abandon Sakura to take him to a neighboring branch a safe distance away. As I land, I hear the sharp crack of wood breaking and a shrill cry of pain from Sakura, and when I turn I find that Gaara has pinned Sakura to an adjacent tree, his monstrous hand encasing her body and keeping her bound to the tree.

_Now is not the time to be worrying about other people,_ the bond hisses and I give my attention to Sasuke, who is stiff with pain. I can see the curse marks weaving their way across his face, farther than they had gone in the Forest of Death, farther than they have ever reached. I push his hair aside to feel the sweat beading on his forehead. He's building up a fever again, the curse mark burning its way through his body, but this time I don't know what to do because knocking him out will only cause him to become a burden, especially with Sakura in Gaara's clutches.

The bond doesn't take kindly that idea anyway, and Sakura shouldn't even break my list of priorities at the moment. _Sasuke_, I think, and that's all I can think. He needs to be helped before the curse mark consumes him. The only problem is, I don't know how.

In the Forest, I had had Rei's stupid special potion. I don't know what it consisted of or how it had worked, and I had used it all without glancing at it! All of it—gone, when maybe I could have only used half and Sasuke would have been fine, and I would have had extra to use now to help him, save him.

Pain jolts through my core, constricting my lungs and causing my vision to go fuzzy. I press the heel of my hand to my forehead, to gather my wits. It doesn't work. Without many other options, I barrel on, the bond running as fast as it can, trying to come up with a way to save its darling dear as I turn Sasuke over, concerned with at least making him as comfortable as possible as I try to come up with a solution. I run my hands over the curse marks along his arms, feeling the heat that radiates from his body, when I remember: Hinata and the tenketsu.

The bond jumps, jubilates, and brings back the memory of the blood spattered Hinata, her arms bruised in spots along her keirakukei, blocking her energy. I flinch at the images the bond presses into my head, and quickly get on with trying to figure out the ratio of Hinata's body to Sasuke's so I can see if I can find Sasuke's tenketsu myself and disrupt the flow of the curse mark's energy.

"Here's hoping," I say under my breath, skimming my fingertips along his arm, where the vibrations sink into his skin and give me a rough idea of where his keirakukei might lay. I release sparks of my chakra periodically, pushing the keirakukei pathways wider to ease the burden of the curse mark's energy.

I watch the spots at which I've released my chakra, hoping to see small bruises like Hinata had, but there's nothing, absolutely no trace that I've done anything. As though to reaffirm this, Sasuke groans, twisting on his side, almost falling off the tree branch. I grab him in time to pull him back, repositioning him so that he's less precariously perched on the branch.

What to do now! If only Rei were here, if only she had left me with some way of contacting her. She's a shaman, for crying out loud. She has to have some mystical telephone line that connects to her brain. Isn't that how her power works?

Though I suppose—she's a shaman, not a genie. She can't appear at my will, grant my stupid wishes when I should be figuring out how to solve my problems myself.

If only.

"_Fuck_," I curse through my teeth, and Sasuke lets out a low moan, sinking his nails into the flesh of my forearm. I wince and shake him off, unable to come up with another viable solution to help him. If Sakura were awake, she would have a better time comforting him, and I would have more time to figure out how to get this curse mark to stop spreading.

Naruto comes crashing into the branch next to me, causing me to jump. He wipes his mouth as he scrambles to his feet, forming a hand seal. "Brace yourself, Ren," he says with a grin. "This new move I learned is going to knock your socks off!"

For all the panache, though, I am severely disappointed by Naruto's show. Because, when the smoke clears from the spot where he's pressed the heel of his hands, a small frog stands in the way, and I'm not sure how this great show of mediocrity is supposed to impress me.

"I'm going to guess that that's not what you _meant_ to happen," I say, narrowing my eyes at him, and sure enough he starts to stutter, confused as to why his jutsu has messed up.

"If you wanna ask a favor," the frog says, his voice lacking the croak I imagine for him to speak with, "you're gonna have to give me snacks. Otherwise, I won't play with you!"

Naruto yells at him at the same time Sasuke grabs onto my hand, squeezing my fingers too tightly in his warm, sweaty grip. I try to pull away, but the pain the bond relays to me doesn't compare to the look on his face. I never thought there'd be a day when I wish Sakura were with me.

"I haven't got time to play with you wart-face," Naruto says to the frog, turning away from him to check on Sakura. She's still bound against the tree by the blanket of sand Gaara has cast over her. A small whimper escapes from her as the sand writhes, tightening around her.

Gaara laughs, his voice gravelly, twisted by the monster. He's transformed further, with the only human parts to him now being his legs. "She won't be released unless you beat me," he says with a hiss. "Not only that, but it'll only get tighter and tighter as time passes—and kill her, eventually."

Sakura, Naruto, Sasuke—I don't know who to be more concerned with. Sasuke is gripping the curse mark harder, Sakura is slowly suffocating, and Naruto could potentially die at Gaara's hand. Suffering isn't something that can be measured by comparison. That's not how it works.

My eyes catch movement, and I look up in time to see Gaara sending a ball of condensed sand at Naruto, ignoring me all together. I watch helplessly as Naruto grabs onto his frog summon and holds it close to his chest, bracing for the assault. When the ball hits him, he's thrown against a tree, and luckily is caught on a branch beneath him.

I breathe a sigh of relief before turning to Sasuke and leaning down close to his ear. "Sasuke," I say, deciding that I can't sit back any longer. Something must be done. I have to help, somehow. "Sasuke, I'm going to leave you for a second."

He crushes my fingers in his grip, panicked.

"I'll be back," I say, grimacing. "I'll be back, I swear. I have to help Sakura, first. You'll be fine, you're gonna be okay. I'm right here. I'm always right here!"

With that I tug out of his hold, leaping over the branches to where Sakura's caught in the sand. Pulling a kunai from my holster, I slide over to the sand cocoon, gluing my feet to the tree with my chakra, and digging my fingers into what small space there is between Sakura's arm and the sand blanket. I surround my kunai with chakra, using the new chakra-infused weapon to try to chip away the sand, but only small little scuffs appear, nothing significant enough to break through the sand before it completely crushes her.

The sand constricts, suddenly, pinching my fingers, and Sakura gives a cry that causes me to lose my nerve. My fingers, already sweaty from Sasuke's hands, slip from what little hold I have and my arms go pinwheeling at my sides as I try to catch myself. My concentration on my chakra begins to fade too, and before long I'm breaking fast through the air, falling toward the ground where I will undoubtedly splatter into a puddle of blood and guts and bone fragments.

And people think my fear of heights is irrational.

If there was ever a moment when I was grateful for the bond, it would have been eclipsed by this one, when it screeches in my brain, taking over where I am frozen in shock and swinging my kunai-wielding arm forward, digging the knife into the trunk of the tree and dragging me to a stop. I clasp onto the kunai for dear life, breathing hard through my mouth as I try to calm my heart which is on the edge of bursting with fright. I rest my head against the cool, rough bark of the tree, the vibrations of the forest running up through the roots and down through the leaves and branches.

Even from down here, Gaara's voice reaches me, spitting angry and bitter. "Love for yourself! Fight for only your sake! _Those_ are the definitions of the strongest. So come on! Fight me!"

Me, only me, always ever just me. Hell, does that sound familiar.

But I'd vowed to change, especially if Gaara is any indication to how I would be if I didn't.

I raise my head to look above me as Gaara sends a rain of sand down on a number of Naruto's clones, which poof into nothingness when hit. I see the clump that is Sakura, still stuck to the tree, forgotten by Gaara for the moment, and resolve myself to getting her out of that trap. I swing my feet up on the tree trunk, pressing my soles to the bark and attaching myself with my chakra once again. Steadily, without looking down at the fall below, I start on my ascent, careful to move slowly to avoid detection. To draw attention to myself now would have a disastrous outcome, especially if I have a repeat of the fall I had earlier.

I shudder as I think of how I had free fallen so far, and shake my head to banish the thought before I lose my nerve and start falling again. Sakura. My goal is to help Sakura.

_No—Sasuke,_ the bond whines, directing my line of sight to the branches where I had abandoned him. I push against the bond because there's nothing I can think to do for Sasuke, nothing that would help anyway. Yes, sit by him, hold his hand, wince when the bond eases his pain by sending waves of it to me. I'm sure that will all be very helpful to our situation. At least I could try to cut Sakura out.

_Hardly,_ the bond hisses, and pushes me to Sasuke. It's urgent this time, demanding and unyielding, and it would do me even less to try to fight it now.

I make a beeline for Sasuke immediately, ducking as an apparent wave of sand drops from the battle above, nearly taking me with it. I reach Sasuke faster with the bond urging me along, and from what I can tell he doesn't appear any better than when I had left him.

_One last idea,_ the bond says and, moving with a weird primeval instinct that must be because of the bond, I lift my hands to Sasuke's curse mark, where his skin is burning hot and uncomfortably damp, and lend him my chakra.

It's different from when I had sent a jolt of chakra through his system to knock him out in the Forest of Death. This time, my chakra moves smoothly from my body to his, sinking into his pores and straight into his keirakukei. You might think this would throw off his chakra more; after all, my chakra is alien to his body. The most it would do is disrupt his chakra flow and, potentially, cause him to become more feverish.

The thing about our bond, though, is that it has mutated our blood and, thus, our chakra. The Uchiha and Kagiru blood have mingled for so long from the routines of the oath that the make-up of our blood and chakra waves are similar enough to be perfect for this kind of thing. Not to mention, if one of the Uchiha loses a limb or needs an organ, they have perfect matches right by their side.

Still, I don't see how this will make Sasuke feel better, but the bond keeps insisting—_it'll help, it'll help_—so I go along with it, watching all the while for the curse marks to recede or disappear completely.

Nothing.

Sasuke lets out a low moan at the same time I start to go dizzy. The fuzz of chakra around my hands, while still healthily bright, begins to dim as my vision starts to blur too, and I wonder how much chakra this curse mark is absorbing that I'm already so wasted. I teeter forward, but catch myself in time to keep from falling over Sasuke, my eyes widening as I force myself to stay alert.

That's when I see it, the marks dancing on his skin, slowly crawling back from whence it came.

The bond cheers, congratulates itself on a plan well thought out. Too bad I had been the one to execute it. And where is my praise? Lost to the fact that Sasuke's pain is fading, his body relaxing as the curse mark loses its hold over him. God, I wish we had come up with this plan sooner, so that Naruto—

_Naruto!_

I whirl around quickly to make sure he's okay, but the movement seems more than my head can handle. My vision goes to static and, with so much of my chakra depleted, my equilibrium is whacked up. I lose my balance, swaying too far to the right, then too far to the left as I try to compensate for my poor steadiness, but neither of those movements end up helping very much. In fact, it causes me to teeter off the branch completely, and I'm sent nose-diving toward the ground.

This time, I'm too tired to really panic, but luckily, there's no need, because someone catches me around my waist and pulls me up, sitting me against the trunk.

It's Sasuke, the curse marks still staining the left side of his body, from his cheekbone to his elbow, but considerably less than before. He's breathing hard and there's a slight tremble to his hands. With the curse mark suppressed, though, he doesn't appear to be hurting as much as before.

"Stay," he orders and turns away from me, jumping to the next branch as the vibrations flurry with an explosion. Not even a thank you for what I did. I scoff and strain to get to my feet. Sasuke—if I do as he says and stay, he's going to get himself killed trying to get involved with Gaara. He needs to get Sakura first, but being that he always has to fight—

I lean against the tree trunk, on my feet at last, and am breathing so goddamn hard I may as well have been the one with the curse mark on my shoulders. The bond keeps up with Sasuke as best as it can while I struggle to remain standing. If it gave me half the energy it used to follow Sasuke, I would be able to help him rather than idling by, gasping for breath.

But Sasuke is hell-bent on keeping me in place. He's draining my chakra on purpose. _Never again,_ he's saying, and I can faintly hear him through the muted vibrations, drumming soft as a lullaby in my ear. _I've already lost everything once before. I don't intend to watch those dear to me die before my eyes again._

I give up, sinking to my knees. There'll be no arguing with Sasuke now. If I do the bond will whirl knots in my stomach and make living unbearable. I settle against the tree trunk, taking deep breaths and pressing my fingers to my temples to ease the headache pounding against my ears.

The bond makes it hard for me to want to care for Sasuke, especially when all it does is take take take. But in vowing that I would stop being so selfish, I've forced this fate upon myself. Until I've found a way to break the bond, these downfalls can't be helped.

Still, the vibrations are on my side. They hone in on the action going on with Gaara and Naruto, spiking when Naruto's chakra flares, becomes beastly, reaching a senseless level for someone who has already exerted so much earlier that day. Sasuke is apparently caught off guard by Naruto's renewal of energy as well. I can feel him, through the bond, breathless, in awe of his teammate as Naruto's chakra flies off the charts.

What I wouldn't give to see Sasuke now, stunned by Naruto's great show of force. What I wouldn't give to rub it in his face. This is the guy Sasuke had talked down to, the guy he had time and time again deemed inferior to him, and now Sasuke is being totally one-upped, and there's absolutely nothing he can do to help it.

The bond shakes my head, causing my brain to hurt as though it's on the verge of exploding. It doesn't like how I'm thinking about Sasuke; moreover, it doesn't like how the chakra charged energy feels. The combined power of the Nine-Tails's and Shukaku's chakra throws off the balance of the vibrations and makes them uneasy. In turn, the bond starts to panic as the vibrations don't settle and only seem to be veering off for the worse. It allows me a bolt of energy to make it over to where Sasuke is crouched, eyes wide and mouth gaping. Of course it would only give me enough stamina to make sure its darling dearest is okay. I frown as I land beside Sasuke, my head beating in time with my heart.

Sighing, I kneel beside Sasuke, pushing his mouth closed, and say, "Be more classy, won't you? I know we're in the middle of a battle, but come on. Get your act together." I turn to look at where Sakura is trapped, slowly so as to keep the head-rush from making me ill again, and examine the sand pressing her to the tree. It doesn't seem to have shifted any from the last time it had tightened. Gaara must be too distracted by Naruto to keep to his word that the sand would keep crushing her until the fight is won. Which is good news for us.

"We should try to get Sakura free," I say, thinking of ways to get her out that would be more effective than my last method. "We might have to break through the tree, but whatever. It'll grow back. If we—"

"Where," Sasuke starts, staring after Naruto, who has pursued a nearly wholly transformed Gaara down to the roots of the forest. "Where is all his power coming from?"

Confused by Sasuke's separate train of thought, I follow his line of sight blankly, where I find a cluster of Narutos nose-diving for Gaara, although much more destination-oriented than I had been. I want to tell Sasuke his question can be answered later, after we get ourselves out of this mess, but then a cry rips through the air, the twisted cry of man and monster, together at last. It's Gaara, stark raving mad by the sounds of his screeches echoing through the forest, and in the next blink of an eye, Naruto and his clones are thrown back by a powerful blast of chakra that consumes the forest.

I throw my arms over my face to shield my eyes from the light that emits from Gaara, feeling as the vibrations buzz so quickly through the air that they numb my senses, muting the sounds that reach my ears and blurring my vision. The energy is so overwhelming to me because of the vibrations, which press down on me from all sides, causing me to fall forward on my hands and knees and gasp for breath because dear god it hurts to breathe.

Sasuke fares better than me, to no one's surprise. This goddamn bond, draining all my energy, take take taking always.

I blink quickly, trying to straighten out what vibrations I can as I look up, finding Gaara is not where he had been. No. He's everywhere now, towering so far above us that I can't see him past the tree tops what hover overhead.

"What the hell?" Sasuke says, taking in the wall that is, presumably, one of Gaara's legs. _Shukaku,_ I think, biting down on my lip to force the terror rising up from my stomach. How can we hope to defeat him now? This is a fully transformed demon spirit, broken free from its case. If one had taken the life of one of our Hokages, what could a couple of Genin do to stop it?

"Fuck this," I say, reaching out and tugging on Sasuke's arm. "We gotta get out of here, Sasuke! Come on!"

"Naruto!" he shouts, and pulls away from me, leaning over toward where Naruto is standing. The blonde boy appears as stunned as we are, his shoulders heaving as he takes deep breaths from using so much chakra. But then I notice—sand, swirling around him in rivulets, the tendrils weaving together to encase him in a crude container.

My mind goes to Lee, how the sand had attempted to crush him in its grip, how it _had_ crushed him where it was able to and how it had done irreparable damage to his bones and muscles.

The idea of Naruto bent up in such a way—or worse—is enough to freeze me where I stand, until Sasuke attempts to lunge forward to get to Naruto. But Sasuke's body locks up, the curse marks having not quite faded enough for him to have recovered a decent amount of chakra to do anything. He reaches out and grabs onto my arm, groaning and nearly tugging me down with him.

"Sasuke!" I cry, clutching his forearm to prevent him from falling to his death, all the while watching helplessly as the sand grows around Naruto, swirling in preparation to crush his bones to smithereens.

Until there is a great plume of smoke that erupts from the sand coffin, causing sand to fly through the air in an explosion of sorts. I feel the sand brush my cheeks, but the smoke and wind that comes with it whips my hair back and cuts sharp against my skin. I cover Sasuke as he is unable to help himself, pressing my face in his hair to keep the debris that comes with the wind from hurting my eyes.

He smells of sweat and dirt and, underneath it all, the inexplicable scent of apples.

The tree on which Sasuke and I are stationed and the ones around us shake, the leaves crashing together like thousands of whispers flooding into our ears at once. We're tossed against the tree trunk, luckily, but the force of the fall knocks the breath out of me. The wind continues to flurry around us, and comes to an abrupt halt at the same time the earth stops shaking. I open one eye to examine what's become of Naruto, what he's done to have created such a powerful cyclone, and find a black cloak, fluttering lightly over the trees.

In it, an enormous frog paralleling the size of Shukaku. The shadow of both beasties loom over us, spanning nearly half the forest if I had to guess.

"Good lord," I mutter, running my hand through my hair as my eyes scan over what parts I can see of the giant frog in front of me. "What in the name of all that is holy is _this_?"

Sasuke is equally as stunned, his mouth falling open once again, but this time I don't do anything about it. This time, his shock is justified. This time, I know exactly how he feels. Except, I also know exactly where all of Naruto's strength comes from—the Demon Fox sealed inside of him.

Still, that he's been able to access it and use it to such great lengths is incredible.

There is a string of protests that escape the frog—which, I'm sure, can be heard for kilometers across the forest. Naruto is probably replying to the frog's statements, but Naruto is a considerably smaller person—er, being—than the frog, and his answers are lost to our ears. If I truly cared enough, I could have used the vibrations to listen in on what he's saying, but I'm more focused on how the hell we get out of there.

Undoubtedly, a fight is going to break out between the two. Giant beasts aren't summoned just to play and sing together, after all. They are summoned to crush and destroy and fight to the end. And while I'm hoping, in the end, our side comes out the winner, if we're squished under the feet of these beasties in the meantime, it won't be much of a win. At least, not in my opinion.

"We have to free Sakura and get out of here," I urge Sasuke, yanking him up. He braces against me for a minute, but manages to break free with a sharp tug, stumbling on his feet. "What are you doing?" I demand. "Trust me, we don't want to be around for when this fight starts! It'll be the end of us, I swear to you."

"I want to see," he says, his voice low, his gaze focused solely on the monsters before him. "I want to see where all his strength comes from! This is _Naruto_ we're talking about; how is capable of such a thing?"

"You can ask him about it later," I say, grasping onto his forearm. "When we're all safe."

He shakes me off, the bond loosening my grip to let Sasuke do as he pleases. _But it's not safe,_ I find myself protesting to the bond. _I need to protect him, and this is the only way._

For some reason or another, though, the bond believes he is fully able to take care of himself—at least, after it starts to transfer what's remaining of my chakra to him. My knees buckle under me and I fall, bracing my landing with my hands. I dig my nails into the bark, fighting the bond, trying to retain my chakra, but it ends up making me more tired than before.

There is a swift _clink_, the unquestionable sound of a sword being unsheathed, and when I look up, I see the glint of a sword, swinging through the trees and sweeping over our heads, missing us by mere meters.

A small yelp escapes my lips as the sword catches the light, and the frog cries, "It's payback time, you hoodlum!"

Which is, to me, a sure sign that all hell is about to break loose.

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**Thank you for reading. Please review!**


	41. Fall from Grace

**Disclaimer:** Same as in previous chapters. Please enjoy, comment, and review. Thank you!

**A/N:** We're getting so close to the time skip! I'm so excited. Thank you for staying around and reading!

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 41: Fall from Grace**

A miracle. That's what it'll take for us come out of this battle unscathed. Unless Naruto is somehow able to direct the frog and the Shukaku away from us, we're going to be crushed under their toes. When I see the frog lift its foot, I really start to panic because the repercussions from that footfall aren't going to be pretty.

_Sasuke,_ I think, whirling toward him as he's about to make his move off of the tree. I grab him by the waist, holding him in place as the frog leaps across the forest, sending the earth spinning and quaking underneath. Sasuke and I are slammed into the tree trunk once more, and I find myself harboring a deep resentment for trees.

"We have to get out of here," I tell Sasuke again, rubbing the back of my head as he shoves off of me, determined to follow after Naruto. "Can you see _now_ why this is dangerous? There's no way he can keep track of where we're standing at all times, and if you follow after him that'll only make it worse!"

"You can go if you want," he says. "But I'm staying."

I gape at him, appalled by his idiocy. Despite my reluctance to keep him safe, he makes it hard for me to do my job anyway, so far as the bond is concerned. I stagger to my feet, shaking my head and dismissing Sasuke. I turn my attention to where Sakura is trapped instead, wondering if I would be able to make it over to her without collapsing. I don't get a chance to make the attempt in any case, because then another ferocious gust of wind cuts through the area, breaking branches and sweeping dirt into the air, blocking out our vision all together.

The wind nearly tosses me off, but I manage to anchor myself by wrapping my arms around the trunk of the tree. When the wind dies down, there is dirt burrowed deep in my pores and twigs caught in my hair. Sasuke, standing nearby, doesn't appear in any better a state.

"Still think it's a good idea to be loitering around?" I ask, wiping my cheek against my shoulder. The grime on my skin is unbearable, layer upon layer of dirt melded into my skin with sweat.

Sasuke doesn't answer, entranced by the power of the chakra being exerted before him. I scoff, wishing I had enough energy to abandon them and get somewhere safe. Yeah, it might have something to do with the fact that I'm inherently selfish, but from what I can see, Naruto has everything under wraps. Leave it to him to be the hero. I want to save my own hide.

There is an explosion, the sound of cannons being fired, and I flinch under the pressure of the vibrations simmering close to my ear. I groan, closing my eyes because I don't care to watch the amount of destruction that's about to take place. So when water hits my face, I jump, looking up only to have a raindrop land into my eye, stinging as its mixed with dirt. The water continues to fall, like a sudden storm has descended over us despite the lack of grey clouds. I blink furiously, in an attempt to coax the dirt from my eyes as the rain stops as suddenly as it had started.

There is a moment of calm wherein I'm able to wipe the muddy water from my face and wonder why Naruto and Gaara have paused. Surely that's not all they have planned for this fight. Not that I want them to continue, just that the bloodthirsty ways of demon spirits never fail to disappoint. And I'm sure Naruto has more up his sleeve than a giant sword-wielding frog.

Sure enough, there is another plume of smoke that surrounds Naruto's summons completely, and for a second I'm afraid the summons has worn off because Naruto has run out of chakra at last. But, no, instead there is a flare of red, fluttering chakra that sways delicately over the trees. And when the smoke clears completely, I see it: The Nine-Tails standing in the place of the frog and baring its teeth at Shukaku.

I falter, nearly dropping out of the tree as I take in the whole of the Nine-Tails, horror rushing through my veins. How had this happened? The only times the Nine-Tails has been released was when Naruto was emotionally compromised by a death, or near death, whether it be his own or of someone he loved. He couldn't possibly think that any of us had been killed. The fight was taking place far enough for us to be safe, so now it shouldn't be a concern of his.

The Nine-Tails bites and claws at the Shukaku, a terrible roar thundering from its mouth before it head-butts the other demon spirit. Another puff of smoke—the Nine-Tails loses its form and turns into the frog from before, and I'm more puzzled as to the Nine-Tails's appearance as I had ever been. The frog holds tight to Shukaku, but I can tell from how the frog shakes, he won't be able to hold onto the Shukaku much longer.

And if that frog fails, we're done for.

I open my mouth to warn Sasuke again, to try to convince him that we need to escape as soon as possible before some other explosion catches up to us and wipes us out. Before I'm able to utter a single thing, however, the body of the Shukaku begins to crack, chunks of sand falling like slices of a broken mirror. The beast dissolves, leaving Naruto's summons free to disappear as well, and then the air is clear. The vibrations settle, previously disrupted by the Shukaku's presence, and my senses return to normal, unobstructed by vibrations that rub against my eardrums and eyes.

To say the least, I'm relieved. The battle had ended relatively quickly, and if the fact that the Shukaku had fallen first was any indication to who had won, Naruto is safe. Sasuke is still beside me, blinking at the now empty skies in awe still, and Sakura—

Sakura!

I whirl to where she had been pinned against the tree to find her slipping from her trap as the sand melts. Taking a leap of faith, I jump over to the nearest branch, reaching out and grabbing onto her arm before she falls to her death. But I don't have enough stamina to tighten my grip around her, and she continues to slip through my fingertips.

I curse, wasting no breath trying to keep my voice low. As my luck would have it, Sasuke hears, sees the peril I'm in, and finally breaks from his trance, jumping to my aid, and takes Sakura's arm, lifting her onto the branch to safety.

"About time you came to your senses," I mutter, wiping my brow where dirt has crusted from before. "Now, how about you stay and watch her while I go grab Naruto? That way you won't be distracted by his power and freeze up again."

Sasuke glares at me, and turns up his nose, saying, "Yeah? And what are you going to do when you get to him? Collapse? In case you didn't realize, you hardly have enough energy to save Sakura from falling out of a tree. _I'll_ go get him."

I start into my retort, but am interrupted by a small harrumph. Sasuke and I redirect our anger at the little pug that is shaking his way free of a bushel of leaves at the end of the branch. He appears unbothered by our glares, and says, "I think you're forgetting about someone here."

"Right," I grumble. "Lot of help you've been. Watch Sakura until we get back then, hey? By which I mean, we'll _both_ go to Naruto."

Without looking at Sasuke, I jump off in the direction of where Naruto has presumably fallen. Not a moment later, Sasuke follows suit.

To say I'm annoyed by Sasuke's behavior is an understatement, but I can't find a better way to put it. He put himself in so much danger back there, by running after Gaara in the first place and then refusing to help those who could be helped to watch a battle in which he couldn't even participate.

He's falling into the mentality that he can't be outshined or else he'll mean absolutely nothing in this world. It makes him unbearable to be around, much less be bonded to.

No good can come from Sasuke being like this. He needs to be distracted.

When we sense him nearby, Sasuke and I stop in our respective trees, peering down into the small clearing where we can see both Naruto and Gaara, battered and bruised, laying on the ground. Naruto is on his stomach, while Gaara rests on his back, his head tilted to watch as Naruto tries to worm closer to him.

"That Naruto," I groan, ready to leap down and help him, only to be stopped by a wave of Sasuke's hand. He motions for me to be quiet, a command which I'm about to defy, when Naruto speaks.

"The pain of being alone," he says softly, his voice shaking through the dirt that soils his face, but gaining momentum as he continues, "isn't easy to bear. Your feelings—I can understand your pain. But…but I have people who are important to me now. And I won't let you hurt them! Even if you try to kill them, _I will stop you_."

Naruto's promise is eerily reminiscent of something I've already heard. I look over to Sasuke, wondering if he remembers the words he had spoken earlier. _Never again. I don't intend to watch those dear to me die before my eyes again._ So similar to what Naruto has said, and yet…

I don't quite believe Sasuke.

"Why?" Gaara asks and I turn to the scene to avoid drawing Sasuke's attention to me. "Why do you go so far for other peoples' sake?"

Naruto chuckles, and I grimace because the sound is like listening to someone's rib cages shatter. "They saved me from the hell of being alone," he answers, his voice muffled as he speaks into the earth. "They acknowledged my existence. That's why. They're all important to me."

I sigh at the end of Naruto's spiel, dropping down from the branch to land next to him at the same time Sasuke does. I kneel to wipe his cheek with the back of my hand, saying, "Hey, Naruto. That's enough out of you."

"Sakura is fine now," Sasuke adds. "This guy is most likely out of chakra. The sand holding her completely collapsed."

"I see," Naruto says, grinning, and then drifts off into an easy and well-deserved sleep.

I smooth down his hair, smiling, but then remember Gaara. I glance over at him to catch him watching me as I soothe Naruto. I can't help but to feel sympathy for him too. I mean, granted, he's the enemy. He's almost killed us and went to such lengths as to call out his demon spirit in order to do it, but…seeing him lying there, eyes wide and sad, he doesn't seem like such a threat. No; rather he seems like he could be one of us.

"Ren, what are you doing?" Sasuke demands as I move toward Gaara slowly.

"I just want to make sure he's all right," I say, stepping carefully closer to him. His eyes have widen to their limits, turquoise saucers on a pale face. This triggers an even more primordial instinct in me to protect. "Like you said, he's probably at his limit, so I'll be…okay. I think."

The sand sways beneath me and I freeze. Sasuke lurches forward, grabbing onto my arm and yanking me back. Gaara's teammates land in front of him, glaring daggers and ready for a fight. Temari has her hand poised on her fan and Kankuro, though he's looking worse for wear, keeps his fists clenched at his side, guard up.

"Not another step," Temari snarls.

"I wasn't—"

"That's enough," says Gaara, his words barely audible under my protests. At the sound of his voice, Temari and Kankuro turn to look at him, undoubtedly surprised by the softness of his tone. "It's over."

They exchange glances and lean down to brace him. They don't acknowledge us as they leap away, Gaara leaning on their shoulders for support.

_See?_ I think as Sasuke releases me. _Just like one of us._

"I don't know what you were thinking," Sasuke says, turning to Naruto, "but we're done here. Let's get Naruto and Sakura back to the village before anyone else shows up and attacks us."

I hum in agreement, staring after the Sand Nin before following Sasuke home.

It's no better in the village, though. Buildings are crushed, half-smoldering, and bodies of respectable Nin are strewn in streets and bleeding over the walls. There are people being rushed to the hospital, others being picked up where they are or else covered with white sheets.

If people cry, they do it quietly.

There is a unanimous hush across the village as word spreads that our Hokage has died at the hands of Orochimaru, how the Sand had teamed up with Orochimaru to plan this whole thing, hoping to extinguish the flame that burns within the Fire Country over an old grudge. But the will of Fire is not so easily quenched, and the people of the Leaf village not so easily blown away.

On the day of the funeral, it rains. Hard enough that it's bothersome, but light enough that we can still separate tears from raindrops. The shinobi of the village have a separate funeral for the Hokage, up above near the monument of the previous Hokages, where the Third looks down on us, an indelible crack slitting diagonally across his face.

I hold my hand out for the rain, catching it on my fingertips as Konohomaru's sobs permeate the air. The water is cool on my cheeks, but the dampness is heavy on my lungs. Or maybe it's that, no matter how much I'd like to think otherwise, the Hokage has gotten to me too.

If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be here in the first place. I wouldn't have stayed or come to realize that this village, these people, aren't as bad as I thought it was. But the old man has left me wondering.

What was it that he had kept from me all those months ago when I had confronted him about leaving? _"That is a matter to discuss when you're older. There are things you can't understand at the moment, Ren."_ Now that he's gone, who would explain to me what he meant?

I look to Kakashi, who stands not far behind me. He, like many of the other shinobi, has lifted his face up to regard the monument. Later, I promise myself. I'll ask him about it later.

"Iruka-sensei," Naruto says, gaining my attention. He stands only two people from me, beside the crying Konohamaru who Iruka has knelt down to comfort. "Why do people sacrifice their lives for others?"

This seemingly naïve question sparks something inside of me that burns its way into my lungs, collecting thickly in my throat. Naruto doesn't appear to realize he had answered this question himself days ago, in the face of Gaara.

_They're all important to me._

Iruka goes on to explain: The cost of putting everything on the line—one's legacy, one's future, one's dreams and goals, family, friends, loves—it's hard in the first place. But those are the very things that make us give up our lives for one another. Those bonds, that sense of having something to hold onto should you come out the winner—that is what makes these sacrifices worthwhile. And if those things can continue to prosper without you, can continue to grow and become something better, bloom in the shadow of your being, then why not? Why not give everything you have to allow the things you love to cultivate into something greater, something grander, something that will carry on your legacy in spite of you being gone?

"We trust each other to help each other," Iruka says. "We come in contact with these bonds from the day we're born. As we grow, these bonds also grow and become stronger. This isn't hard to understand. Anyone with these bonds would be like this—like the Third—because they cherish it."

Emotional compromises, anchors that weigh you down and keep you from thinking of everyone but yourself. Bonds, bonds, bonds—troublesome, burdensome bonds that make giving up everything you ever had worth it. That's how I've always thought of it, how I understand it still, but I'm coming to terms with it. Slowly. That these things…just happen.

"I think I understand what you're trying to say," Naruto says, lowering his head, "but death really is a painful thing."

"Sandaime didn't die for nothing," Kakashi adds. "Someday, you'll understand what his sacrifice really meant to our village."

I laugh, which I'm sure is an inappropriate thing to do at a funeral. But I can't help it. _There are things you can't understand at the moment, Ren._ Like hell there are.

I catch Naruto's attention with my laugh, and he grins at me, like he sees the hilarity of it too, although when he speaks he's addressing Kakashi. "I know," he says. "Even though I don't really understand, I feel the same way."

The ceremony breaks up in groups, Genin teams gathering with their Jounin leaders for a small talk before splitting into their shinobi families. Kakashi, Sasuke, and Sakura collect at one end of the courtyard as Naruto says goodbye to Iruka and Konohamaru. I linger by the monument, staring up at the memorial dedicated to our leaders, who have risked their lives to protect this village and these bonds they hold so dear to their hearts. I think, while their faces may wear in the rain and crumble with time, their likenesses will be forever preserved in the legacy they have left behind in the hearts of Fire.

I scoff at the cheesiness of my sentiment, turning my back on the monument and ambling in the direction of my house before my name is called. Naruto waves me over to Team 7, urging me to hurry up before I miss out.

"We've still got training to do!" Naruto says, pumping his fist into the air. "You don't think that we're going to stop just because the exams are over, do you?"

Sakura sighs, seems on the verge of saying something, but thinks better of it. She merely gives me a tired smile like we've always shared humor in how Naruto indefatigably persists.

"But," Sasuke says, his hands tucked into his pockets as usual. "Being that the exams are over, I suppose we should welcome you back to the team. You _are_ still on the team, aren't you?"

I scowl at him, at the bluntness of his statement. He's toying with me by putting this subject out into the open, where I can't ignore it because now Naruto and Sakura are interested in hearing my answer.

"Was there ever a question that I wouldn't be back on the team?" I ask, punching him. He frowns, rubbing his shoulder and turning his back to me with a scoff. He goes on ahead as Naruto slams his hand into my back, cheering and hollering something about how our training is going to be ruthless from this point forward and did he have a new move to show me. I shove Naruto off, meeting Kakashi's eye in the process. He nods at me, smiling beneath the fabric of his mask.

"Welcome back, Ren," he says cheerily.

I roll my eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Nice to be back."

And I mean it.

Even though it was hardly like I had been off the team in the first place, what with my intervention in the Forest of Death for two days and my being with them throughout the preliminaries and the finals. Still, something about being formally included again makes my heart flutter in my chest, like, despite the fact that they _could_ do without me, they choose not to, and I am, indeed, needed.

Wanted.

I think this is what the Hokage had meant. These bonds, these bonds. Sometimes…they just happen.

[+]

Although sometimes I wish they wouldn't run so deep.

Sasuke's mind has been restless, going over and over the events of the past week to the point where he's mapped out several different outcomes for each thing that could have happened. Whenever I take the time to relax and let my guard down, these plans of his assault my mind, and I tense. This is no way to spend the week after being so close to danger nearly every day. Additionally, Sasuke trains as tirelessly as he stresses over the events of the past week. It makes me tired and irritable every morning, and I crash before dinner every night. I wish he would think to take a break, but nothing could motivate him to do as much, not his own hunger or fatigue.

I can't simply tell him to stop because whenever we're together, Naruto and Sakura are with us, and I can't risk letting any notion of the bond slip out of my mouth. It doesn't escape my notice that Sakura is always glancing between me and Sasuke now, looking for signs of the bond. And, yeah, she might not know the extent of the bond, how deeply it runs, what it really consists of, but she knows it's there, knows what to look for.

So I bear with it because there's no sense in telling Sasuke what to think. He won't listen anyway.

There's no way for me to fight the bond as it drains my energy for Sasuke's sake, except to give into it. I find quiet clearings in the park to sleep between missions, or on rooftops, against the sides of shops while waiting for my team to show up at our agreed rendezvous point. I eat as much as I can in one sitting and try to get my errands done before noon, falling asleep in fields if I don't make it home in time and stumbling home at near midnight when I wake up. If anyone has noticed my erratic behavior as of late, they're too kind to bring it up, but I don't care to talk about it.

Though I like having this time to myself to eat and sleep and generally while the day away, I don't like the fact that I have to work around a schedule in order to do it. But I do with what I have and take pleasure in my loneliness because when I'm with Team 7, all we do is perform menial tasks around the village before we disband and I'm back to crashing in the shade of a tree.

Goddamn Sasuke.

Why has the bond made such a one eighty these past days? Sasuke hasn't been in danger and he hasn't been suffering really. He hasn't needed my help or required anything of me, and yet the bond keeps calling on me, draining my chakra, ruining my day.

With the bond becoming an ever-growing presence on my life—which is not to say it wasn't before. It's just being more bothersome this time—I think about Rei, how she took it upon herself to fix this problem for me. I pray she's made some leeway with it, progress I was never able to make when I was searching for a way to break the bond. She's a shaman, and my faith rests in that fact alone. She seemed to know more simply because she's a shaman than I could have ever known in a lifetime, probably because she has the entire spirit world on her side or whatever she had been spewing before she left.

In any case, she has to have made some kind of discovery. It's only a matter of time before she contacts me with news that she has the cure, how to break the bond.

I can only hope.

Until then, I'm left crippled by the demands of the bond, even when, today, Kakashi gives us the day off and I've subsequently found myself meandering around the village, my fingers jittering and my senses on high alert. I think it's a side effect of Sasuke's training—or, today, his lack thereof—that the bond needs to take out on me otherwise poor Sasuke will be suffering or whatever shit.

I need to find something to do, but as I finished my errands earlier today with the thought that I would have crashed by now, I'm left wandering the village, looking like an addict going through withdrawals.

I run my hand through my hair, wondering why I decided to walk through the market. Of all the places in town. I don't like being around so many people who bump and jostle me, and I don't like that I'm under the scrutiny of everyone's eyes, although that last part is probably all in my head. I just want peace and quiet and to sleep like I had been sleeping for the past few days.

Maybe there's something wrong. That's why the bond is making me restless. Or maybe it's just me, at a loss for what to do because the bond isn't forcing me to do something. I'd hate for it to be either way.

"Hey, Ren."

I come to a stop in front of a sweet shop, turning to find Kakashi leaned up against the side of the building. He's at ease, hands shoved in his pockets as usual, his head drooping forward as though he can't bother to keep it upright.

"Funny that we run into each other on our day off," he says.

"Yeah. Ha. Hilarious." No longer moving, I'm even more on edge, twining my hands together and apart, together and apart, and my eyes flicker through the crowds, searching for something that can't be found. The bond takes hold of the vibrations, swirling them through the air to pick up the slightest movements, effectively throwing off my senses. I push the vibrations away, hoping to separate them from the bond, because having them flurry while my head is already spinning doesn't make me feel any better. In fact, it serves to make me queasy and, subsequently, hate my life even more.

What I wouldn't give to have a place to lie down. Anywhere, anyplace—the field, a rooftop, an alley, hell, I'd rest on the streets here if Kakashi weren't next to me, watching me carefully.

"Are you okay?" he asks slowly, leaning down to meet my gaze. "You seem a bit…jumpy."

"I…I dunno," I say, shrugging, although it comes out more like a nervous twitch. "Uh, pent up energy from not training, I'm sure. I'm not used to milling around during the day."

"Well, if it's training you want, wait here with me for a bit," he says, leaning against the building. "I'm meeting with Sasuke who should be showing up any second now."

I flinch at the sound of Sasuke's name while the bond flutters in my stomach. _Close by, he's close by,_ it purrs as I rub my eye as though that will make it sink away. My heart pulses faster as the bond hums, _When Sasuke comes, we'll all be together again._

I groan internally, wondering why the bond is being like this. It's never been so creepy before. God, if the bond were another person, I would deem them totally fucking crazy.

Then again, if the bond were another person, _I_ would be the one who's crazy.

Kakashi, thankfully, is distracted by two others approaching him from the other end of the street. It's Asuma and Kurenai, walking together, and though they're a respective distance apart, it doesn't prevent Kakashi from saying, "Hey, you two look good together! Are you dating, by chance?"

A blush creeps over Kurenai's cheeks, her red eyes flashing with annoyance as she counters, avoiding Kakashi's question, "What are you doing here? I thought you didn't like sweets."

"Unless you really _are_ picking up sweets," Asuma says, then, noticing me, adds, "Hey there, Ren. Shikamaru's been looking for you, you know. He's not one to worry, but for some reason, I think you've got him anxious."

"Hmm, don't know what it could be," I say offhandedly, trying to find a way I can break from Kakashi and continue on my walk to burn off these jitters. "Thanks for the memo. I'll be sure to check up with him before I go home today."

"Hey, you okay?" Kurenai asks when I start bouncing from foot to foot. "You look nervous."

"I, uh, that is," I stutter.

"Ren's trying to burn off the energy she's pent up from not being able to train today," Kakashi says, saving me an explanation I don't have. "She's waiting with me. I'm here to pick up a few other things, but I'm also meeting someone. Sasuke, to be exact. So we can go train with Ren from here."

Again, Sasuke's name rings a bell to the bond, which quickly perks up again at the mention and begins to hum with delight. _Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke,_ it sings. _Together at last._

As though I hadn't spent that past two weeks with him, caring for him in the Forest of Death, holding him while he suffered through the curse mark, easing his pain as he let the curse mark get the better of him. Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke, absolutely Sasuke.

I clench and unclench my fist, peering around Kakashi to see if he's holding any of the packages he'd said he had come to get. But the area around him and his hands are bare out of the pockets, and there is only the shade and tables of the shop behind him, where people sit and sip their goddamn tea, enjoying themselves because they don't have any precious bonds.

_Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke,_ the bond chimes again.

Fuck.

My head is starting to pound with extra vigor, hurting more than it ever has in the past few months. It feels like it's strong enough to break through my skull when, at last, Sasuke arrives in all his Uchiha glory.

"It's very different of you to arrive first, Kakashi," Sasuke says by way of greeting, to which Kakashi agrees, "This only happens occasionally."

When Sasuke notices me, my heart gives out once more and I feel the heat rising to my face, making my body too warm in the activity of the village. I feel faint, but manage to fight it by crossing my arms and taking deep breaths.

His gaze doesn't linger on my for long, and when he looks up and notices the sign of the shop, he makes a face of displeasure and says, "I hate sweets."

"Do you?" ask Kakashi, giving Asuma and Kurenai a sidelong glance. They acknowledge it with a small nod and jump off, probably to purse some distant danger I failed to recognize while standing here, fighting off the bond. "Well, since that's the case, why don't you take Ren out for something else then? My treat."

Even in my stupor, I'm not foolish enough to believe Kakashi means this. I scoff and say, "But in order for you to treat someone, you need money."

Kakashi laughs, patting my head and making it hurt worse. I wince each time his hand comes down on my skull, wishing I could gather my wits enough to kill him on the spot.

"You got me there, Ren," he says, pushing off the side of the building. "However, I need to go meet up with Kurenai and Asuma. As you can probably tell, something urgent has come up. You kids run along and go on a date or something. I'll meet you later."

He's gone as fast as Asuma and Kurenai had left, abandoning me to Sasuke who I don't particularly want to be around at this very moment. Feeling the same way, Sasuke scoffs and turns on his heels, heading back to god knows where he was before he had come here.

"Hey," I think to call after him before he gets too far. He stops midstride and tilts his head back to listen to me. "Take it easy, won't you? Whatever training you're doing, it's not going to be very helpful if you don't let your body rest for a bit. It needs to recover before you can use it to its full potential."

Sasuke squints at me and then rolls his eyes. "You do enough resting for the both of us," he says, and then continues on his way.

I don't bother with a retort because it's all I can do to keep from falling over. The fatigue that has overwhelmed me for the past few days is finally catching up to me again. I stagger forward, hoping my knees won't give out at this very moment because that would be so very bad, especially if no one notices and I'm trampled to my death.

Oh, but dear god, I'm so tired, I just want to sleep.

Something cinches me around me waist, yanking me up though I hadn't realized I'd been falling. I blink, trying to determine by the blurry sandals who caught me, but fuck that. My head is thick with sleep and I don't care. As long as I can sleep.

I'm lifted onto my savior's back, my nose pressing against their hair, irritating my skin. Before I fall to sleep, I catch a whiff of a familiar scent.

Apples.


	42. Loser

**Disclaimer:** Same as in previous chapters. Please enjoy, comment, and review. Thank you!

**A/N:** One of my favorite chapters to write this far. I'm so glad to be sharing it at last. We've reached a milestone here! Thank you for reading, thank you for sticking around.  
-deardeer.

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 42: Loser**

Sky. Deep blue and cloudy sky hangs over my head when I open my eyes. I press the back of my hand to my forehead, pushing the dizziness out as grass brushes against my ankles and fingers.

F—where am I? I groan, closing my eyes against the overwhelming sunlight. Something prods my ribcage repeatedly, annoying in that it's dull and unrelenting. I swat at it, rolling onto my side and pushing myself to my knees. I blink at the trees surrounding me, recognizing that I'm sitting in the clearing of a park that I frequent, and, oddly enough, Shikamaru is by my side.

He sits cross-legged and frowning and watches me as I shake my head and push my hair from my face. There had been a dirt street under me when I fell, so why—

_Sasuke,_ the bond offers, filling my nose with another whiff of the apple scent.

God damn Sasuke.

"You okay, Ren?" Shikamaru asks.

I let out a heavy sigh, brushing grass from my hair. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Hey, Shika," I say, rubbing my eyes. Of all the places to leave me when I've fainted, Sasuke chooses a park. What a gentleman. I can see why the ladies swoon over him. "So you found me, huh? I heard you've been looking."

Shikamaru regards me skeptically, like he thinks I've been hiding from him, not missing him by chance. "Yeah? Who'd you hear from?"

"Asuma," I say, dropping Sasuke from my mind. No point wondering where he's gone now after he's left me in a park. A hospital, I can understand. At least then he would know I hadn't collapsed because my heart had failed. And it isn't as though he doesn't know where I live. He could have dropped me off at my house easily. And—god, never mind. "I ran into him a few…uh. Earlier today. What d'you need?"

"Nothing," he says, stretching out over the grass. "Just hadn't seen you in a while. My mom asked to have you over for dinner again, so I thought to look for you. Where've you been?"

A pang of hurt pulses through my head. I rub my temple as I answer, "Around. Missioning and whatever with the team. You know."

"Are you sure you're okay?" he says, keeping an eye on me. "You look exhausted. Maybe you should go home and rest."

Thinking about walking all that way to my house makes me more tired. I groan again, falling face-down into the grass which pricks and irritates my skin. "I'll pass," I say. "Too tired."

This brings an end to our riveting conversation as I try to assess how much strength I have left. It's true—were I to trek home at this moment, I wouldn't make it halfway. Better to best out the afternoon here until the evening, as usual.

I curse silently, pressing my face harder into the grass, hoping that I'll sink into the earth and be able to sleep there for eternity, never having to wonder about how I'll survive because I'll live off the fruit of the land. When nothing happens, as I expect, I ask Shikamaru, "What time is it?"

"Hmm? Early afternoon, I think," he says as I plop onto my back, spread-eagle. My fingers hit against his arm before bouncing off into the grass. "Exactly how long have you been sleeping out here, Ren?"

"Too long," I grumble, scowling at the sky. "How long have _you_ been here?"

"Hmph. Two minutes maybe before I saw you," he says. "I was just looking for a place to get away from my nagging mother and then I find you, sleeping like the dead, and have to bother with waking you up to make sure you're okay."

"You're too kind," I deadpan, rolling my eyes. "Not as though you don't come here every other day of the week. You just had the misfortune of finding me today. Anyway, you've had enough time to recover from the Chuunin exams now. It's time to put you to work again."

He harrumphs in an ambiguous way and says, "Don't remind me. Those exams were a disaster."

Although disaster, I think, we can both agree is a horrendous understatement.

"You think they'll have decided on a Genin to promote?" I ask quietly, blinking at the clouds flying overhead. They swirl into curlicues and sink into each other, malleable as ever. "Considering…you know."

Shikamaru stays silent, taking the time to analyze the matter. He says, "Doubt it. After what happened, they're probably more concerned about smoothing things over with the Sand and finding a new Hokage. We can't last as a village without a leader for long. Compared to finding a new Hokage, what's a few Genin to them? Besides, being a Chuunin is too troublesome. It means you have to do more work for people."

"Didn't ask you if you were interested in the job, Shika," I say. "And, FYI, you should think of being promoted as a privilege. Means you have talent and that someone's recognized you for it. Any normal ninja would be happy about it. Naruto, for example."

I hear him exhale sharply through his teeth. "Naruto doesn't know when to stop. I want to relax," he says. "Take things slowly."

I scoff. "With that kind of attitude," I say, "sometimes I wonder whether or not you really want to be a ninja."

To that, he doesn't answer. I resolve with only watching the clouds, wondering for the nth time why Shikamaru enjoys this so much. Yeah, it's calming and an easy spectator sport, but—those clouds. Those clouds what drift in and out without an agenda, molding to whatever shape they want because nobody expects them to be a certain way. He must see it, the freedom and luxury that comes with being a cloud. He must envy it.

But I don't. Because all I see is water vapor, being pushed around because it doesn't know what it wants to do, because it doesn't have a will of its own. I see white wisps that can so easily be manipulated, that people assume to be whatever they want it to be.

Fatigue hits me and my eyelids droop, darkening my vision. I give into it, figuring the worst that could happen is that I fall asleep again and am woken by Shikamaru late into the evening and asked to dinner at his house. But my tiredness reminds me of Sasuke, and how he hasn't taken my advice to slow down with the training. I can feel it: his body losing stamina, testing the limits of his chakra, how many times he can use the Chidori before he collapses. What an idiot to believe this kind of physical exertion could help him stretch the bounds of his chakra to reach Naruto's level.

Damn Kakashi for ever teaching Sasuke such a high-power move to begin with. It even has Naruto swooning and trying to figure out how it's done. The first day back on Genin duties, when we were meeting for a mission briefing, I arrived in the middle of Naruto hassling Kakashi about the Chidori.

"Idiot," I said with a scoff, watching on with Sasuke and Sakura. "He's hopeless that one."

Sakura smiled, giving me the same look she had on the day of the Hokage's funeral, like now we had some kind of common ground because we both shared annoyance in Naruto's persistence toward lost causes.

"Oh," she said, blinking at Sasuke as she was reminded of something. "Sasuke. Thank you. For that time you saved me from Gaara's sand."

I nearly laughed at this, knowing Sasuke had been too crippled by the curse mark to do much more than grimace and stand dumbly by while Naruto and Gaara battled it out. For a second, I thought he was going to ignore it, brush it off to add to his cool nonchalance that made him famous with the girls of Konoha. But then he said, "No. The one who saved you was Naruto."

I choked on the breath entering my lungs. Sakura, likewise disbelieving although for a different reason, blinked at him, confused, and said, "No way. You're being modest. Sure, Naruto is getting stronger, but that Sand guy—"

"It's the truth," he said. "To save you, Naruto risked death. Up until now, you haven't really seen him, so you haven't really recognize his strength either. It was him," Sasuke repeated when Sakura continued to look nonplussed. "Not me."

Sakura turned to me, confused. "Is that right, Ren?" she asked.

"What, are you actually thinking that your darling dearest could be lying to you?" I said with a smirk, and she scowled at me. "You've come a long way, Sakura. But yes—it was Naruto who saved you."

She stared at me a moment and I shrugged. It didn't matter if she believed me. The fact of the matter is, when she regained a loopy kind of consciousness when we returned to the village, she was being carried on Sasuke's back while I supported Naruto. It would make sense that the only two left awake by the end of battle would be the saviors, but in this case, that simply wasn't true.

Sakura looked at Naruto then, watching as Kakashi tried to explain the nuances of Chidori to him. And she smiled.

I watched Sasuke throughout this. He never twitched, never gave off any indication that he was annoyed to be admitting that Naruto had saved us. But, finally, I think he saw it, too, finally: the threat that Naruto posed to his standing as number one Genin in Konoha. His standing as number one interest in Sakura's eyes. Because he shifted, side-glancing at her, and, upon noticing how she was smiling at Naruto, I felt the pang of jealousy, anger, run through his extremities. He wanted, _needed_, that admiration he was so used to receiving. And the only way to achieve that was to get stronger. Strong enough to defeat everyone who stood in his way because that would be the only chance he had at defeating him.

…Itachi.

The bond shakes at the mention of the name, and I feel the fear deep in my chest too. After all, this man had killed my family. The Uchiha weren't the only victims.

But the idea that he is the lone survivor, the lone avenger of his clan is what motivates Sasuke to become stronger. Why he must beat out everyone he faces. It's the only way he can feel at ease.

Of all the things he could want in this world.

"Shikamaru," I say, keeping my eyes shut and wringing my hands through the grass. "What do you want most? Out of life, I mean. Generally."

He lets the question simmer a moment, gives himself time to think, and says, "An easy life. Where everything's uncomplicated and plays out the way it should."

I grin, thinking I could have expected as much out of him. "Sounds nice. Sounds like you."

"Why do you ask?"

"Just curious," I say. "You don't really think you're going to get such an easy life, do you?"

He sighs, and I can hear the frown on his lips when he speaks. "It doesn't seem like it. I'm trying too hard to stay alive, and that makes people start to expect things from me. Plus, with the company I keep, nothing's gonna be easy. It's all troublesome from here on out."

"I don't know what you could possibly mean by that," I say, laughing. "Life with me can only be a breeze. When do I ever cause problems?"

He scoffs, and in lieu of a reply to my question, he asks one of his own. "What do _you_ want?"

I open my eyes and the deep blue of the sky assaults me in profuse. "Exactly what you want," I say. "Only a little bit more." I sigh, bringing my arm over my forehead to block out the sun that causes me to squint. What a troubling life that, even when people require so little out of it in order to achieve their happiness, they have to overcome mountains of trouble and peril. If only—

Terror cuts through my head like a migraine, making me flinch. I sit up with a jolt, tangling my hand through my hair trying to contain the throbbing. _Danger, danger,_ the bond shrieks, pushing me to my feet. Sasuke. Something's alarmed him, but he refuses to share it. He's denying it, dreading that it could be true. But he has to go and make sure, so he's on the move, sprinting so quickly through the village that it all blurs together in a whirl of colors and sounds that mean nothing.

Anything is possible, he thinks. But god damn it if it's true. God damn it all.

Anger. Bitterness. Regret, fear, but above all else, vengeance. He must get his vengeance. He's waited too long for this.

I inhale sharply, struggling to breath as I realize what all these feelings boiling together in the pit of Sasuke's stomach means.

Itachi. He's back.

God damn it all.

"Ren?" It's Shikamaru. As silly as it sounds, I'd nearly forgotten he's with me in the wave of all these emotions. "Hey, are you okay?"

"I…yeah," I say, pulling my hands free of my hair. I must look like a psycho now with my hair pushed up at odd angles, my eyes wide and flickering back and forth as though Itachi will appear any moment and strike. "Just…I think something bit me."

Lies. All of it. I'm too distracted by Sasuke's thoughts streaming into my head to notice if Shikamaru knows I'm lying. Naruto's in danger, apparently. Itachi's after him. Sasuke had heard it himself when he'd gone to visit Kakashi and found him resting in bed with a bunch of other Jounin surrounding him like a funeral viewing. And then that Nin, rushing in and spewing it—_Is it true? Has Itachi really returned? Is he after Naruto?_

The ramen shop. Sasuke's reached it and is looking, but there's no trace of Naruto. Where is he?

"Shikamaru, do you have any idea where Naruto is?" I ask quickly, the words stumbling over in my mouth.

Shikamaru is taken aback by the randomness of my question. It takes him a few seconds to answer me. "No," he says, and my shoulders slump. "I haven't see Naruto since the funeral. I've hardly seen _you_ since the funeral."

"Hmm, yeah," I mumble, dropping my hands into my lap. Sasuke is still running. He's headed to the next town over, Otafuku Gai, where the old man running the ramen shop had said a man named Jiraiya has taken Naruto.

And the flashbacks start.

I close my mind off to his thoughts as best I can, but when has the ever helped me block off his feelings?

Besides, I remember it too. The normality of the day as it starts. The horror that hits when he arrives home to find everyone in his family dead. The betrayal that he feels when he finds out that his brother is behind it all. I remember it too because I was there. I had felt it, feel it now, crushing me. The burden of this bond, looming over my head forever in the worst way. The ultimate betrayal that caused my family to die.

Shikamaru is saying something to me, but it doesn't register. He was there too, I remember. Not physically. But as an idea. All I'd wanted was to go to school with him.

"I don't want to walk with Sasuke," I complained that morning, pulling my sandals on.

"You'd still have to go to school even if Sasuke wasn't, Ren," my mother said, flicking my nose teasingly. I swatted her away. "You have to learn how to be a great ninja too, you know."

I frowned because she was missing the point. It wasn't that I didn't want to go to school. Contrary, I loved the Ninja Academy. It saved me from staying at home and listening to the grown-ups gush about the latest Uchiha achievements. It was the company I would be keeping on the way there that bothered me.

"But can't I walk to school with Shikamaru today?" I asked, giving her my best doe eyes. "Just for today."

This may be all in my head, but the mother I remember tensed, looking nervous when I mentioned Shikamaru's name. She crouched to be at my eye level and said, softly, "Ren. _Ren_." She took my chin, forcing me to focus on her as she spoke. "Keep in mind that Sasuke will be your responsibility one day," she told me. "You're going to have to put him ahead of everything else, every_one_ else, including Shikamaru. This bond you have with Sasuke will make your relationship with him the most dependable thing you have in this life. I know," she added, lowering her voice, "that you think Shikamaru is your best friend. But Sasuke could be your best friend too if you let him."

"But he doesn't want to be my friend," I said. "He wants to be like Itachi."

The voice that spoke next sent chills up my spine. Even in memory, he's menacing.

"That's enough," my father said, stepping out onto the porch. My mother let me go and straightened immediately. I lowered my eyes, not because I was ashamed of having upset him but because I hated it when he said a word to me. His speeches were always full of ignorance, blind Uchiha loyalty. As young as I was, I understood that much.

"Stop fighting this," he said. "It's going to happen and no matter what you do, you won't be able to prevent it. We Kagiru have a contract with the Uchiha that we abide by loyally, admirably, not simply because we are bound to fulfill it, but because it is an honor."

I kept from scoffing, clambering to my feet to face my father. "This isn't a contract," I said. "Contracts end. This bond doesn't. It's a curse!"

And with that my father struck me. A mighty slap across my face that made my head whirl and my eyes water from the sting. My mother let out a small gasp of horror, reaching for me and pressing my head into her stomach as though that would ease the pain.

"Are you okay, Ren?" she asked, and then, to my father, said, "That was unnecessary, Katai."

"She needs to know her place," my father said, his feet padding away. "I told you from the moment she started acting out: We need to keep an eye on that one."

_That one_. I was just another brat to my father. It would've made my heart break if I hadn't already known I hated him too. He could've claimed everything he was doing was out of paternal instinct to put me in line or to protect me or our family from the wrath of the Uchiha should we end our alliance with them. It wouldn't have changed the fact that he meant as much to me as the dirt I stomped on or the logs I used for target practice. I wished he would drop dead on more occasions than I could count, and there was no coming back from that.

And when I had returned home that night, late from a lesson with Sasuke, there was absolutely no turning back.

Sasuke's memory comes tumbling back to him, one after another—the staleness in the air as he comes home, the blood smeared all over the streets, his father and mother crumpled over each other with his brother standing over them, Sharingan shining, hands, face, and body red with Uchiha—and Kagiru—blood.

I lied when I said I didn't remember what happened before I woke up on the Uchiha compound and those two Nin had found me, barely conscious the morning after the massacre. The truth is, I don't care to retell it, not then, not now, not ever. Because I resent it. As much as I hated my family, as much as I hated the foundation on which we had built our entire existence, I didn't want us to go out with a whimper, unable to hold onto any honor.

I don't know what my family did to deserve that. They had served as obediently, blindly, brilliantly as any master could have hoped for. We were the ideal servants under ideal circumstances—a bond that can't be broken, a bond that runs deeper than blood. And yet that bond had betrayed us. If we had somehow managed to sever ties with the Uchiha, just a little bit earlier, we wouldn't have had to suffer such a tremendous loss.

I don't care to admit my own bitterness toward Itachi and not being able to kill him myself.

That's why, nearly a week later, I was gone. Why I am so desperate to break this bond. Because, I feel, this is the only real way for me to avenge myself. To avenge my family. Our honor.

I guess Sasuke and I aren't so different in that respect.

_Everything. I've lost everything._

Everything.

"Shikamaru," I say, and his head perks up. He has sat up in the lapse between when we'd last spoken and now, and is watching me with curiosity, wondering what I could be thinking of that has kept me quiet for so long. I don't have a lead in, had only said his name because he's the only thing that sets Sasuke and I apart. I had someone to anchor me to my senses, whereas Sasuke—

Sasuke is alone.

_My fault,_ a piece of me says, and another says, _No. His._

Sasuke and his superior Uchiha ways. Sasuke and his single-mindedness. To become like Itachi. And then, after the massacre, to kill Itachi. I had been his friend up until I met Shikamaru, and I realized how it felt to have a real friend, to be a real friend, to be able to do as you pleased because there weren't bonds to keep you in line and still want to make your friend happy even without a blood oath to keep you obedient.

"Ren?" Shikamaru prods me out of my thoughts and I jump. I give a weak laugh and apologize when he says, "You seem more distracted than usual."

"Tired," I sigh, and it's true. Thinking about the past makes me so tired. And Sasuke—he's running, trying to get out of the village and to Otafuku Gai to find Naruto. His nerves make me anxious too. Tired. Good lord I'm tired.

"Well, is there something you wanted to say?" Shikamaru huffs, scowling. "You said my name like you wanted to make a comment."

Hardly. I said it for my own reassurance. But then I realize, yes, there is something I want to tell him. And by god, it's about time I tell him.

"Yeah," I say, meeting his eyes, sharp and narrow, milky brown in the sunlight. "Remember—six years ago. Remember when I had to leave because my family had been…you know. Killed, along with the Uchiha?"

Shikamaru looks grave as he answers, "Yeah. What about it?"

"When I left," I say, the words coming out unreserved. "The story was that I went to go live with some relatives in the next town over. That didn't—"

Pain. A shooting pain erupts from the bottom of my lungs, up straight through my heart. I let out a little gasp, crumpling over as I clutch my chest and the bond cries, _No! Sasuke. Sasuke Sasuke. _as though, by telling Shikamaru the truth about the massacre, the truth about the bond, I will be replacing its darling dearest. I take deep breath, pushing oxygen into my lungs and feel a hand placed on my back, feel Shikamaru as he leans close to me and says, alarmed, "Ren! Are you—"

_Sasuke._ It's not about replacing him. It's about finding him. There is something abhorrently wrong with Sasuke, and I need to go protect him.

I brush Shikamaru off as the bond yanks me to my feet. "I have to go," I say, flinching as the rush of getting up too quickly hits my head. He stares at me blankly, mouth agape and stuttering for a question to ask, but I say, "Sorry, Shika, this is an emergency it seems. But I'll be back," I promise before the bond can force me to go. "I'll find you later tonight, and I'll tell you everything."

I don't have time to hear if Shikamaru responds because the bond rushes me out of there before I can finish my sentence. _Otafuku Gai,_ it informs me, showing me images of what Sasuke sees as he gets to town himself. The bond insists that he needs help, will need my help, considering the fact that Itachi—Itachi!—will be there. If he is there.

_He is,_ the bond hisses, and I feel the same tingly-ness in my fingers that I've been feeling all week. _He is. Can't you feel it? The Uchiha blood. It's nearby…!_

But I'm only bound to Sasuke, I think as I sprint through town, shoving past children playing in the streets and their parents who carry groceries and chide me. Just because I'm bound to an Uchiha doesn't mean I can feel all of them.

_You only think that because they're all dead,_ the bond says. And while that may be true, I hadn't felt anything for any other Uchiha except for Sasuke even when they were all alive.

_That's because the bond hadn't formed fully yet._

I shiver at the thought, at the idea that the bond between Sasuke and I, at its current stage,is fully formed. What if there's no turning back from this?

Another shooting pain, this time in my wrist. My entire arm goes numb, and I shake it out as I run, hoping this doesn't have to do with Sasuke, but knowing that it does because the bond wouldn't have me like this if it wasn't.

God, Sasuke. _Sasuke!_

[+]

The bond gets me to Otafuku Gai faster than I would've been able to get there on my own. It allows me to locate Sasuke in a matter of seconds, and I dart up the staircase of the hotel that he's in, despite the protests of the man behind the desk. I stagger, actually, because by the time I get to Otafuku Gai, I'm so worn by the bond's crippling blows. I haven't been able to tap into Sasuke's mind, for some reason, and the bond doesn't relay any images to me beyond the ones of the roads of Otafuku Gai and of the hotel in which I'm storming now, yet it continues to barrage me with these emotions, this pains of guilt and fear and pain.

I suppose it wants to allow me the pleasure of seeing it for myself.

When I turn the corner on the second story, only one expletive comes to mind, and after that, I press against the wall, so struck with fear that I can feel it rising in the form of bile in my throat. I hold my hand over my mouth, trying to contain it as I try to catch my breath.

Itachi.

He stands beside a tall man with pasty blue skin and features closely resembling a shark: gills on his cheeks, sharp eyes and silver hair that sticks up like a fin. And yes, I can feel it now: Uchiha blood, simmering through the bond, alien in how it moves through my body, uncomfortable in how in permeates the bond.

"Itachi," I choke, as though saying his name out loud will make this less real. But it doesn't, because his image doesn't flicker and he doesn't once smile like he would if he were in my memory.

And it all comes flooding back. The night, the putrid smell of blood, so much blood, poured all over the streets of the Uchiha compound, stuck to my very flesh as I tried to escape after I'd seen Sasuke's parents, seen the bloodlust in Itachi's eyes. The fear as I tried to escape, the humiliation as I abandoned Sasuke in that room with Itachi, leaving him to fend for himself when I should have gone in after him, should have protected him from those eyes.

Those eyes.

They still burn a bloody red, a stain of all the people he's ever killed, the stain of the Uchiha, the Kagiru.

My family.

_I have lost everything, everything…!_

Everything.

Of all the moments, of all the times I've ever missed my family, now it hits hardest, when I'm in the face of the person who has caused me all this pain, all this suffering, caused Sasuke all this suffering. God, I want to kill him. I want to kill him so badly. I want to avenge my family—_our _families, our honors. At last I understand the hate Sasuke carries with him.

"Ren," Itachi greets coolly. My anger flares. I want him to take it back. I don't want to hear my name come from his lips, never want hear it come from that traitorous mouth ever again because he has no right. At the same time, I cower because he says my name gently, welcomingly, sending chills up my spine, as though he had been waiting for me to arrive. In fact, he adds, "Where have you been? Gone when Sasuke needed you the most."

Sasuke. The bond pinpoints him immediately. Lying in a heap behind Itachi, shaking as he tries to sit up. A crater has been dug into the walls along the left side, ending in a huge hole, just beside where Sasuke lies defenseless.

Chidori. Of course he would have attempted Chidori. And of course it wouldn't have worked against a ruthless man like Itachi.

The man beside Itachi clucks. "Who's this?" he asks, his smirk never once wavering from his thin lips. "Another one of your own? It's like a family reunion, minus the good feelings and memories."

"No. She is one of the Kagiru," Itachi says, and his companion blinks at him.

"Kagiru," he repeats slowly, turning to me as he revels in the name. "So, one of your toys, huh? And here I'd thought _they'd_ been wiped out too! What a day to be in this town."

"Itachi," I say, ignoring the man. I mean for my voice to come out forceful, full of hate. But the fear is too overwhelming, sitting in the front of my mind as I take a shaky steps toward Itachi, trying to get to Sasuke. "Please, stop this. You've done enough damage to last a million lifetimes! Sasuke—"

"Shut up, Ren," Sasuke says, on his feet. His left arm twitches as he tries to force it to work. But it's broken, that much I can tell from how it's bent and starting to bruise halfway up his forearm. I remember how my arm had gone numb as I ran here, and shake it out as the ghostly feeling comes back. I wish Sasuke would stop, know when to call it quits. Then again, this is Itachi, a man to whom Sasuke will never surrender.

"Stay out of this," Sasuke growls, the fingers of his unbroken arm flexing into a fist. "This is none of your business."

"None of my business?" I echo, dumbstruck. "Sasuke, I swear to god—!"

But then, Itachi lurches toward Sasuke, driving his fist into his brother's stomach. My eyes widen as Sasuke is sent flying down the hallway past me, where he slams into the wall above the stairwell. The rush of wind flutters through my hair and I freeze at the suddenness of Itachi's movements, the swiftness of it.

And then Itachi is close by my ear, saying softly, "I thought you're supposed to be protecting Sasuke, Ren-chan. You appear to be doing a poor job of it, as usual. What happened to the fervor you used to approach it with? You used to be in love with my little brother, and now you're leaving him to die."

The sweat of his breath brushes against my temple and his fingers knead into my shoulder. A simple shrug would release my from his hold, and I can't do it.

This fear that bubbles in my stomach erodes any burning fury that could fuel my body.

"You know you owe him your life," Itachi continues. "He's the only reason you were spared, Ren-chan, so that he could look at you and see—of all the people to be allowed to live, it was the one person who harbored the most resentment for him, for his family. Every time he looked at you, his anger grew. His bitterness. His hatred. You, in part, have made him what he is today."

No. _No._ I have sacrificed everything for Sasuke! My family, my life, any chance I had to live normally. All of it for Sasuke. I had fought alongside him against Rain Nin and Zabuza and Haku, healed him in the Land of the Waves, helped him against Orochimaru, held him as he was delirious with pain from the curse mark, come to his aid after the preliminaries, after the finals. This is what the bond tells me, but it gives me absolutely no comfort.

"You," Itachi says, when I can't muster up any kind of reply, "are useless."

My hair sways as Itachi moves away from me, making a beeline for Sasuke. And then a wave of darkness overtakes me as Sasuke is attacked—kneed first, and then punched into the wall, against which I can feel bones breaking. The taste of copper fills my mouth as I stumble forward, falling to my hands and knees at the same time Sasuke folds to the floor.

_What have I been doing?_ he asks himself, and I feel inclined to do the same. What have I been doing that Sasuke is seemingly at the end of his life? He's supposed to be safe, supposed to be blissfully ignorant that anything like this could ever happen to him. I was supposed to make sure of that.

Here he lay though, crippled and defeated by the man who has already done so much harm. I can't begin to think about what this will do to Sasuke—facing his brother and, for the second time, losing everything, everything.

"Everything…!" I cry, pressing my eyes closed tightly to fight the genjutsu that I feel coming before it starts.

I have lost everything.

.

Darkness.

There is an impenetrable darkness that surrounds Sasuke as he looks about, searching for other signs of life. He comes up fruitless, however, examining his hands, oddly outlined white in the darkness, turning them over as though they will reveal a map out of this abyss if he turns his palms enough times.

"You're weak," a voice echoes through the dreamland. Sasuke lifts his head to the heavens, alarmed by the voice, the familiarity of it, the bold condescension behind the words.

Ghostly lights begin to appear, swirling like fog before they solidify into three bodies. It's Sasuke's mother and father, sitting beside each other, their faces blank, staring ahead as though there is nothing wrong with this darkness. And perhaps there wouldn't be anything to be alarmed about if their hands weren't bound behind their backs and, looming over them, their oldest son, holding a knife high in the air behind them, ready to slash at their necks and torsos, arms and legs and faces in his twisted lust for power.

"For twenty four hours," the voice says, obviously belonging to Itachi, but disembodied from the apparition of him that appears before Sasuke, "you will relieve that day. You will see."

I can feel Sasuke's breathing picking up in his lungs, his heart thudding so hard in his chest I'm sure it's going to explode. His palms are clammy, his forehead beading over with sweat. He wants to lunge for Itachi, stop his brother from executing their parents, but his feet are melded to the darkness, his entire body locked in place.

As the blade comes down on Sasuke's parents, his eyes go wide and flash over their heads, panicked and scared and helpless.

He looks right at me.

.

He screams at the same time I do. Even though the genjutsu makes twenty-four hours pass in a matter of seconds, those seconds could not have passed more slowly. My stomach lurches as I open my eyes and find myself staring at the dirt crusted floor of the hotel corridor. My fingers have clawed streaks in the layer of gunk along the floor, and although I try to push myself up, the weight of my body is too much.

While the genjutsu has successfully debilitated me, the bond rejuvenates me, sending me one last outpour of strength that presses me to my feet, which stumble underneath me. When I look up, I'm beside Itachi, grabbing onto his arm and shaking him to let go of Sasuke, begging, "Please. _Please_. Itachi. Itachi!"

He knocks me off with a simple shrug, and I fumble for something to grasp onto and catch myself, but there's nothing. Shikamaru's not here, the walls are slick and empty, and the bond, the bond.

I can't feel it.

.

Everything.

I have lost everything.


	43. Gone

**Disclaimer:** Same as in previous chapters. Please enjoy, comment, and review. Thank you!

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 43: Gone**

Just as I fall to my hands and knees, the floor twists under my fingers, morphing into moist bulging pink flesh that pulses under my hand. My fingers cinch around the fleshy substance as Itachi's eyes flash at me, bright crimson and apparently irritated.

It crosses my mind that he might cast another genjutsu—or maybe I've been caught in one his illusions already, considering how the walls, floor, and ceiling have transmuted into the same pulsating pink flesh as I had clutched onto—but instead he glances over his shoulder at his partner and, with a quick nod, they sprint past me and flee down the hall.

I let them go without trouble. My main concern is Sasuke. I scramble to reach him, taking his face in my hands and standing on my toes in order to meet his eyes. He's been soaked into the fleshy walls, which acted as kind of buffer between him and Itachi. But what did it matter when Itachi had already done the worst?

The genjutsu has caused something to snap inside of Sasuke. His brain signals aren't matching up, his nervous system somehow knocked out of whack with them. When I say his name, he doesn't reply. His eyes don't flicker with recognition—they don't flicker with any light at all. And, god, I can't sense him. The bond, the connection: It's all gone.

Before, I could feel it. Tingling in my lungs, where his ribs have been fractured. Numbness in my left arm, where his own arm had been broken. Now, there's nothing, like there's a gaping hole in the center of my chest and mind, empty and irreparable.

There is one thing. A lingering loneliness unlike anything I've ever felt before, like nothing will make me feel better.

This isn't what I wanted.

"Sasuke," I say, wiping dirt from his face. A verbal trigger. Maybe there's a verbal trigger that will get him to snap to his senses, like with my mom. "Sasuke, hey, wake up. Itachi's gone. You're okay. You're okay. I'm here, I can heal you, just—wake up, Sasuke!"

Nothing.

I let out a strangled cry that I have a hard time recognizing as my own. Pressing closer to him, I lean my forehead against his like it's supposed to reconnect the bond somehow, spark something that will fix him. I close my eyes, trying to feel it, trying to sense something, _anything_ from him, but nothing, god there's nothing!

There is a soft slurping sound as the fleshed walls begin to retract, smoothing out until they disappear completely. Sasuke slides down, falling onto me. I catch him under his arms, hugging him gently as I lower him to the ground and lean him against the wall. I whisper his name the entire time, like a prayer that will grant me a miracle and wake him.

Someone prods my shoulder, breaking my incessant stream of _Sasuke Sasuke Sasuke_. It's Naruto, his eyes wide and bright with worry.

"Ren," he says. "How did you—"

"Sasuke," I interrupt as though Naruto can find a way to help. Sasuke wouldn't be here if he hadn't been looking for Naruto in the first place. Naruto must know how to help. "Sasuke."

Naruto's expression drops, looking bleak and then growing alarmed as he notices something I don't care to pay attention to.

Heal him. I need to heal Sasuke. Turning my back on Naruto, I press my hands to his rib cage, flowing my chakra into the bruises and fractured bones. In my mind's eye, I can see the bones mending, feel them regenerating more quickly because of the added chakra, but there's still no sense deep down in my heart that it's happening, no prickle signaling the vicarious healing of Sasuke's wounds, so I can't be sure that I'm doing anything.

I want to help. Wake up, Sasuke, wake up because I can help you I can heal you I'm still here I'm right here I'm always right here.

"Wake up," I say, my voice coming out breathy. I take his face in my hands again, leaning closer to him, closing my eyes so I can search for the bond because it couldn't have broken so easily! Not this bond, which has lasted for a century, this bond that runs deeper than blood, that runs into our very soul, binding us together. God, wake up, Sasuke, _wake up_!

A hand takes me by the shoulder, gently pulling me off of him. "Ren," a voice says, a voice I don't recognize, and I shrug it off because I only want to hear Sasuke. I want him to blink, for his eyes to clear of this blankness, and for him to say my name, brush me off, and insist that he's okay, he's all right.

"Stop bothering me," I breathe, focusing solely on Sasuke, the paleness of his face, the coldness of his skin as my finger graze his cheek. "Stop trying to keep me from doing my job. I'm here, I need to keep him safe, I need to keep Sasuke safe. I can do it," I say softly, the brush of my words bristling Sasuke's hair as I lean closer to him, speaking only to him. "I can protect you, Sasuke, I can keep you safe this time. Wake up; wake up and give me one more chance because I can do it I promise you I can do it."

And then arms wrap around my waist, dragging me from Sasuke at last, but I cry out, reaching for him and struggling in my captor's hold. My hair sticks to my face with sweat or tears or god knows what but, damn it, Sasuke. Sasuke!

_Please. Please don't leave me alone._

"If you give me one more chance," I say desperately, pawing the arms holding me back. "If you just give me one more chance, I can heal Sasuke. I promise, I know what I'm doing. I've been trained for this, honestly, I have, my mother—my clan. I'm Kagiru. Please. _Please._ Let me—"

"There's nothing more you can do for him, Ren," says the person detaining me. I look up to see Gai, grim-faced and eyes set on Sasuke. "As talented as I know you are, the damage that's been done to him goes way beyond your expertise. You're done for now."

[+]

Promises are made.

Naruto clenches his hand into a fist, his now established way of a pinky promise, and swears, "Don't worry, Ren! Pervert-Sennin and I will find this Tsunade lady, and Sasuke will be better in no time!"

I blink at him, scrutinizing. Not that I don't believe him; I can always trust to hold Naruto to his word. But why doesn't he think that I'm capable of fixing Sasuke in the time it takes them to return with Tsunade? Granted, she has the reputation for being the legendary medic who can heal wounds that most others would deem impossible, but people had said the same about my mother at points during her medical career. If I had that kind of blood running through me, then I would be capable of finding a way to heal Sasuke.

I lower my gaze, pursing my lips. There is an uncomfortable silence that permeates the air outside of Otafuku Gai, where we've gathered to see each other off. Naruto and Jiraiya, this man with an aged look to him, white hair that hangs down his back, and a prestigious name, stand before us, ready to head off on their mission while Gai and I take Sasuke home.

Sasuke.

He's being carried on Gai's back, although I had insisted to carry him myself. Jiraiya had deemed me in no shape to do as much and Gai had agreed. But it isn't as though I'm weak or worn from fighting. I hadn't done anything. I hadn't been able to help at all.

_You are useless._

I flinch at Itachi's words, how it rings in my head, filling the space the bond has left behind. _Useless, useless._

"Say goodbye, Ren," Gai prods when everyone is exchanging farewells. I take a deep breath and only bow my head in response. Gai sighs, like seeing me upsets makes him upset in return, and with a final goodbye, Gai turns to head back and I follow at his side.

"You don't need to worry," he says when we're a good distance from the town. "Naruto and Jiraiya-sama will find Tsunade-sama. They'll bring her back and Sasuke will be fine then. Even Lee! Tsunade-sama is really amazing in that way."

I know, I know. As one of the legendary three, she has to be incredible, otherwise she wouldn't have such a reputation to her name. And Jiraiya.

_Pervert-Sennin_ Naruto had called him. And, before the Chuunin finals, in the hospital. Naruto had asked, "Where's the pervy-sage?" It occurs to me now that he was referring to Jiraiya, but I should have put it together earlier.

_Sennin_. Jiraiya is one of them too, like Tsunade. I couldn't have recognized his name had Naruto not addressed him by his title. I hadn't bothered researching the other two of the three legendary Nin when I was traveling across the country looking for a way to break this bond, but I don't think anyone would lie about being a Sennin and be able keep up the ruse for so long. Besides, even Gai had called him by the one of the highest honorifics.

What company Naruto manages to keep.

In spite of it, though, I want to be the one to take care of Sasuke. I don't need their help, don't need them to find anyone or bring anyone back, even if it is Tsunade.

[+]

I hole myself up in my house for the next few days after we return to Konoha. With Sasuke and Kakashi both bedridden and Naruto out on a mission, there's not much for Team 7 to do, unless I want to get together with Sakura. But that's really the last thing on my mind.

I read. My mother has a plethora of medical books stored in the boxes that still fill my parents' room. I flick through all of them, trying to find a way to heal Sasuke before Naruto and Jiraiya return with Tsunade. I've read some small passages on neurology before, but it hadn't made sense to me. That kind of training was normally reserved for the older kids in my family, the kind of training I might be doing now if my family were alive.

Still, reading up on a subject doesn't compare to actually learning it from someone, practicing it, and seeing it in practice, but I don't have anything to practice on, and it isn't exactly encouraged to experiment on someone's brain without knowing what to do.

I _do_ know the basic gist of it, though, how sending chakra through the nervous system to adjust the chemical levels and realign the signals could cause it to reconnect—or disconnect, depending on your intent—to the brain. But how much chakra is required in that kind of operation, how lightly I should apply it, how smoothly, which chemicals do I need to balance—I don't know.

The books don't tell me much more than I already know; when they do, they're so clogged with medical jargon that I don't understand any of it. I never thought of myself as stupid, but those medical books have a way of making everyone inferior.

I don't bother to go check on Sasuke in the hospital. I'm sure, once Sakura catches wind of his condition, she'll be frequenting his bedside all hours of the day. Besides, if anything were happen to Sasuke, I would feel it. I would know immediately from the bond. Because I've figured that it's not broken. Only…out of commission since Sasuke isn't awake. At least, that's what I'm thinking.

It's silly that I'm so concerned about the bond when I've been trying to break it for so long. Yet here I am, hoping that it's still intact, wishing it would tell me what exactly is wrong with Sasuke so I can heal him. Which is how I know the bond hasn't broken, because, if it were, I wouldn't be so worried about Sasuke. Not to say I wouldn't be worried about him, but I wouldn't have what I consider to be Sakura-level worry—you know, over-the-top, visit-him-at-the-hospital-every-day worry that gives you frown lines way before your time.

So I pace my kitchen, medical book in hand, growing tired early in the afternoon and sleeping until late at night and daydreaming between paragraphs to boot. Dishes and laundry pile up and I'm left falling asleep at my kitchen table most nights, unless my body starts to ache or the books piled on the table grow too overwhelming. Even then I just trudge to the living room and fall asleep on the couch.

About a week after returning home, a knock comes at my door, breaking the tranquility of sleep that had been hazing over my eyes. I wait to listen for the second round of knocks, weighing whether I should get up to answer the door by the level of determination of my visitor. But then I realize it could be Shikamaru, who would only really bother knocking once, and I suppose that if it is my best friend, I shouldn't ignore him.

I groan, pushing myself off my table and wiping my mouth to make sure I haven't drooled. Once I've deemed myself presentable, I amble to the front door and answer it with a groggy, "Hello?"

It is, indeed, Shikamaru who stands on my porch, obviously tired and irritated that it had taken me so long to answer and apparently reluctant to be here. And for once, I'm indifferent to seeing him, hoping that he'll tell me whatever he needs to tell me and then go away. I need to research. I need to find a way to help Sasuke.

"Hey," he says, his eyes flicking over my shoulder to peer into my house. I follow his line of sight and, seeing nothing but the muggy yellow light that's veiled the entirety of my house, ask, "What?"

He shakes his head, dismissing my question. "My mom and dad want to go out to celebrate tonight and we thought you'd want to come along. So you in?"

"Celebrate?" I say, pressing the heel of my palm into my eye and doing my best to rub sleep out of it. "Celebrate what?"

His ever present scowl deepens, and he shifts on his feet as though repeating himself is going to be uncomfortable. "It's all really troublesome," he admits, rubbing his neck. "You know how Dad works on the council. Turns out they ended up deciding on a Genin to promote after all, despite the Chuunin exams being cut short. And they picked me." Shikamaru lets out a heavy sigh and his shoulders sag more than usual. He leans his head back, asking the heavens for help. "So now my parents want to go out and celebrate tonight and they want to know if you want to come."

By no means is Shikamaru a fast talker, which is no surprise, considering his personality type. Still, it takes a while for his words to sink in, and by the time he finishes his explanation, the words _they picked me_ were just registering in my head.

Shikamaru, a Chuunin. It's not that I can't believe it so much as I don't want it to happen. Before, maybe I would have been fine with it, when Sasuke wasn't hurt, when I hadn't seen Itachi, as powerful as ever. Because Shikamaru was right when he said Chuunin have to do more work. They have more that's expected of them, more that's required of them. On missions in particular. And if Shikamaru goes on higher ranked missions, he'll be in more dangerous situations, face more dangerous enemies, maybe face the likes of Itachi, and—what if he doesn't come back?

I've lost everything.

I step closer to him and pull him into a hug, pressing my face into his shoulder. This late into the day Shikamaru smells like sweat and dirt and the sweet dew of cut grass. His shirt feels grimy against my face, but he's here and, unlike Sasuke, he's conscious and coherent, but most of all he's here, he's here, and please don't leave me alone. Please. I have to be able to keep something or someone close to me safe, be able to preserve them how they are forever so I never have to come to terms with them leaving me in any way.

"Er, Ren?" he asks, sounding not awkward or concerned about my odd behavior, but confused, like he had expected me to gripe with him.

"Congratulations, Shika," I say quietly, releasing him and brushing off my bout of insecurity. "Who'd have thought that the laziest shinobi in Konoha would be deemed the most competent? Funny how that works out."

He frowns.

"Anyway, thanks for going to the trouble, but I can't come with you tonight," I say. "I have things to do on a deadline. Have fun, though. What?" I ask when I notice Shikamaru has narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips into a tight line. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Shikamaru says. "I came all this way for nothing then. How troublesome."

"You should have called," I say, flicking my hair from my eyes. I really need to get it cut. "Left a message if I wasn't home. I would have gotten to it."

Shikamaru says, "For some reason, I don't think you would have."

I freeze, my fingers stiffening around the door handle. Blinking at Shikamaru, I say, "I don't know what you mean."

He shakes his head. "Nothing," he says again and then, turning on his heels to leave, adds, "Have you gone to see Sasuke, yet? Ino told me he's been in the hospital for the past week. Sakura's been visiting him a lot, apparently, but when Ino asked if either you or Naruto have gone with her, she said Naruto was gone on a mission and you were just gone."

_Sasuke_. It's the first time I've heard his name from someone else's mouth since returning to the village. Immediately, I wish Shikamaru hadn't said it because it makes my heart clench and my eyes go droopy. An entire week of steady studying and I haven't managed to find a cure yet, or a single comprehensible solution to Sasuke's problem. Obviously, I'm doing something wrong.

Maybe I should go see him. Since the bond can't tell me about his condition, I could go see it for myself. Maybe then I'd understand what these medical books mean by all their technical terms, and something will click and I'll be able to come up with a way to heal him.

"I'll visit him," I call after Shikamaru, who is already halfway down the street. "And I don't need you checking up on me!" I add when it occurs to me that's why he had come all this way. I should have realized it when he invited me out, or by how he had relayed his information to me—_she said Naruto was gone on a mission and you were just gone._—I should have realized it then.

Shikamaru waves at me over his shoulder as though we're only exchanging heartfelt goodbyes.

Nosy bastard.

I sigh, watching as his back recedes into the distance until he disappears completely. This was probably all part of his genius plot, I figure as I slink into my house to clean up and go to the hospital. Ask me to hang out with his family and then guilt me into visiting Sasuke—although he had probably been anticipating to guilt me into visiting, not inspire me to approach Sasuke's injuries differently. Either way, he's succeeded in his trip, and that's the part that bugs me the most. I suppose that's why he's become a Chuunin though; the way he's going about things, he'll have his enemies in a jumble before they realize what he's doing.

Shikamaru, a Chuunin! I scoff at the idea of Shikamaru, that lazy, unmotivated bastard, being promoted to a higher rank than me. It had seemed a reasonable likelihood, until it actually came true.

But if anyone deserves it, it's Shikamaru. Although, I might be biased.

It's odd that this good news can come from the Chuunin exams when everything else has been so thoroughly messed up because of it. Sasuke, branded with a curse mark from Orochimaru; our village, beaten and bruised by an invasion headed by our allies; our Hokage, dead at the hands of, I'd come to learn in the subsequent days after his death, his former student. With the return of Itachi and Sasuke brain dead to top it all off: Yeah. I'd have to say the Chuunin exams signaled the end of happy days.

My pessimism eats at me as I enter the hospital and am directed to Sasuke's bed. Unlike when Naruto had been here, Sasuke doesn't get a room to himself. Instead, he's lined up in a room with other miserable patients, the only thing barricading them from each other being a flimsy cloth curtain that surrounds the whole of his bed and a nightstand, hardly leaving room for very many visitors.

I dismiss the nurse with a curt "Thank you." and she closes the curtains behind me as she leaves, reminding me that I can ask her if I need help with anything.

If she could help me at all, I would take her up on her offer gladly.

Visiting Sasuke is as awkward as visiting my mother all those years ago. There is a stool beside his bed, but I ignore it, choosing instead to stand because I can shift on my feet and fidget more easily. I step closer to him, watching him carefully for signs that he might open his eyes suddenly, rejuvenated by the bond, because this is the closest I've been to him since we've returned, and maybe having all that time away from him has given the bond a new power to reconnect us.

Nothing of the sort happens.

I push his hair from his face, my fingertips brushing his forehead lightly. Sasuke's skin is cool and subtly damp, like someone has been coming periodically to dab his forehead and make sure he's comfortable.

My chest burns with guilt when I remember that's supposed to be my job. It's times like this when I'm supposed to take care of Sasuke, be at his side all day and night to make sure he's on his way to a full recovery. But the level of damage Itachi has done to him has effectively reinforced the fact that I have failed in my duties.

_Not yet,_ I remind myself, and take a deep breath, spreading my hand over Sasuke's forehead. I shut my eyes, focusing on the network of cells and veins and chakra flows what lay beneath his skin. From there, I sink into Sasuke's skull, deep in the back of his brain where the central nervous system lies.

By how his chakra flows through his body and by pulling the vibrations close to measure the amount of activity going on within his brain, I can sense the neurons that are jumbled in their networks, how their chemical levels are off and how their electric signals are weak. If I can—

The vibrations swirl as the curtain is pushed aside and I jerk away from Sasuke, my elbow bumping into the wall and sending a sharp tingling up my forearm. I gasp and shake it out, massaging my elbow as though that will help return feeling to my arm.

The visitor is, unsurprisingly, Sakura, who blinks at me rapidly, expecting me to disappear or something. "Oh! Ren," she says, letting the curtain fall behind her. "Hello."

"Hi," I say weakly, recoiling from Sasuke as Sakura walks around the foot of the bed to the nightstand on the other side. She promptly pulls out the tulips that had been wilting there and replaces it with the ones she had carried in, fluffing them as though they'll beam a light across the room and make everything better.

Silence ensues, wherein we avoid each other's eyes by watching Sasuke as he sleeps. There's nothing particularly interesting about how he lays there—pale and peaceful, like any other coma patient.

"Have you been coming to see him every day?" I ask, keeping my voice low, more because I don't want her to hear me than I don't want to disturb the other patients in the room.

The question seems to make her more melancholic as she says, "Yes."

I don't know how she can stand it, seeing him like this for days on end, sitting by and mulling in the fact that she's unable to do anything for him. It must be wearing her down to the core. "How's he been doing?"

She takes a moment to answer, sighs, tucking her hair behind her ear, and says, "Same as always when I come in. He just…sleeps. And no matter what I say, I can't seem to get a reaction from him. The nurses told me the doctors can't do anything for him because it's not as simple as his brain being damaged; it's his central nervous system and…and something about the chemicals and neurons and, god, I don't know."

I flinch at the mention of the neurons, remembering how close I had been to adjusting their chemical levels before Sakura had burst in and interrupted me. My hands shake as I realize how hard I could have messed up. My conscience goes into a flurry, reprimanding me for being so careless and barreling forward without thinking through all the things that could have gone wrong. I could have ruined any chance of Sasuke recovering. I could have broken him for good.

I massage my temples, saying, "I think I'm going to go home, Sakura. I'll see you later."

"Ah, Ren," she says, stopping me as I'm leaving through the curtain. Her eyes are bright and wide, anxious. "I…you're a medic. Could you—I mean, can't you—?"

"Fix him?" I finish for her, smiling bitterly. Just like when Naruto had demanded I do something for Lee during the preliminaries, Sakura is asking more of me than I can provide. Like I have some kind of divine power granted to me from the gods. If only. "No, Sakura, not this time. His injuries are out of my league. But the woman Naruto is bringing back, she's a well-known miracle worker. You'll have to wait until he comes back with her, and knowing Naruto, that could be any day now. Soon," I say, when she deflates.

"I wish I could do something for him," she says softly, glancing at him through her peripheral. "In the Land of the Waves, in the Forest of Death, the preliminaries, even during the finals: You and Naruto were always the ones to help him. But me? I stand around, gushing over him, panicking and freezing and crying. I'm useless."

_You are useless._

I rake my hand through my hair. "That's not true," I say. "You fought off those Sound Nin in the Forest of Death. You protected him from Gaara during the finals. You put forth an effort, Sakura. I think…I think that's what matters."

She laughs weakly, as though she doesn't really believe that. "Yeah," she says, turning her back to me. "I guess so. I'll see you later, Ren."

Before I leave, I give Sakura one last piece of advice: "Don't spend so much time here. It's…not healthy. It starts getting to your head after a while. Even though I can't do anything to help Sasuke, I can tell he can be healed. Don't worry about him, okay?"

My eyelids are heavy as I leave the hospital, and I consider reverting to my old habit of finding a park to fall asleep in instead of walking all the way home. I already feel as though I'm going to fall over where I am. But I push through, stumbling as I reach my front porch, and then collapsing on the couch where I drift into a dreamless sleep.

When I wake up, I'm not sure if it's the next day or the same afternoon, but I know the sun is high and my stomach is empty. I rub the drowsiness away as best as I can and push myself off the couch, landing gruffly on the floor.

Getting to my feet, I scrounge around my house for bits of money, eventually coming up with enough to buy a small bowl of ramen from Ichiraku's. I pocket the cash and drag myself out of the house, shutting the door behind me without bothering to lock it.

It hits me, as I'm slurping down a mouthful of ramen, that with the bond M.I.A., my life is dull and thoroughly wasted. The bond had given me purpose, drive, in that it both required me to serve Sasuke and compelled me to break it at the same time. When I wasn't focused on one, I was determined to do the other. The bond, I realize, has only tricked me into believing I was doing things for myself.

Self-improvement for the sake of self-improvement was lost to me. I loitered around and did things I enjoyed to avoid adhering to the bond. I encouraged Sakura and Naruto, created bonds with them and the others, because the bond knew it was only with their help that Sasuke would be able to succeed. Everything I did, no matter how self-driven or rebellious it seemed, was in part due to the bond. It has ruled my life in every way.

_This bond will consume you, Ren._

I get sick halfway through my meal and shove it away, dropping all my money on the counter and leaving without getting my change.

My feet carry me through the crowds on the streets, past quiet neighborhoods where people are settling down for lunch or supper or whatever mealtime it is, and bring me to the more business-y area of the village. I'm crossing the road past the Administration buildings when I hear someone call my name. I take a deep breath before coming to a stop and turning on my heels to find Shikamaru and his father walking toward me.

"You again," I say, frowning. "Are you trying to keep _that_ close an eye on me, Shikamaru? I told you I'm fine."

Shikamaru mirrors my expression of displeasure and says, "That's not it."

"Shikamaru's told you he's been promoted, hasn't he, Ren?" Shikaku says, patting his son on the shoulder. "We're filing the official paperwork today and wrapping up the last of the loose ends. From this day forward, Shikamaru will be a Chuunin of Konohagakure."

Shikamaru sighs, muttering, "So troublesome." under his breath, and I swear a see his face flush red before he says, "What are you doing in this part of town?"

"Going to the hospital," I say quickly and explain, when they regard me with confusion, "I took the long way, to kill some time. Anxious about Sasuke's condition and all that."

A knowing look passes through Shikamaru's eyes and he says, "Well, we won't hold you any longer then. I'd rather we get this paperwork over with quickly anyway. It's such a drag to be stuck in the Administration building in such serious circumstances. See you later, Ren."

Shikaku nods a goodbye to me and I wave to them as they go. I faintly remember having to tell Shikamaru something, but the thought is as fleeting as it came. Once they enter the Administration building, I break out into a run, my chest tight with anticipation to get to Sasuke, to get to Sakura.

There's no doubt in my mind that Sakura is still with Sasuke or—if I really slept into the next day—with him again. She's so dedicated to that boy that, if I didn't know any better, I would expect _her_ to be bonded to him too.

Which is exactly the kind of thing I want to pull her from, because no good can come from tying herself down to someone who will not give her the same level of dedication in return.


	44. Grand Scheme

**Disclaimer:** Same as in previous chapters. Please enjoy, and don't forget to favorite and review. Thank you!

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 44: Grand Scheme**

I breeze through the hospital doors, past the nurses' station, and to Sasuke's little corner, where he lies deathly still. When I arrive, Sakura is there, sitting on the stool beside his bed, and she is as surprised by my appearance as before.

"Hey," I say to her, glancing at Sasuke, afraid he can sense what I'm doing and will wake up at any moment to stop me. "I see you're here again."

She furrows her brow, following my line of sight to Sasuke, and purses her lips. "Yeah," she says. "Still nothing."

I make a noncommittal noise and move to Sasuke's bedside to brush some of his hair out of his eyes. He doesn't twitch. "Listen, Sakura," I say, facing her. "I want to talk to you about—this." I wave my hand through the air to address this general situation. "You being with Sasuke all the time, I mean. I don't think it's good for you."

She lowers her gaze and says, "You've already told me as much, Ren. I know you don't necessarily _like_ Sasuke, but you have to understand I—"

"_You_ have to understand," I interrupt, shaking my head. "Sasuke can be a good guy, sometimes; I'll admit that. But lately he's been different. You haven't spent a lot of time with him these days because he's been busy with the exams and training, but I have. And he's changed, become a lot more…severe. You know how he is when you try to help him—he doesn't appreciate it or want it. You're wasting your time here."

"Where do you get off saying those things?" she snaps, glaring. "You spend more time than I do caring about Sasuke, on our missions and during our exams, when _you weren't even supposed to be a part of it_." I flinch, but Sakura carries on. "If I shouldn't be concerned with Sasuke, then what about _you_? Of all the hypocritical things I've ever heard, you beat them all, Ren."

"It's my job," I blurt, and she eyes me suspiciously, as though she has been waiting for this confession. "That is, I'm a medic. I can't help but to care for people. It seems like I care about Sasuke more in particular because he's the one who always gets himself into danger. Next to Naruto, of course, but Naruto heals more easily than other people and hardly ever needs my help."

Sakura turns her back on me, pressing her hands together tightly in her lap. "So long as he's here," Sakura says, "I'm not going to give up on him. You can keep trying to convince me all you want, but I know Sasuke-kun is…kind. I'm allowed to care for someone who's always protected me at least, aren't I?"

"That's not the—"

The curtains ruffle behind me and we both glance over our shoulders at the visitor. Or, should I say, visitor_s_, really. A woman, young and blonde and smiling, enters with another woman and man trailing behind her.

"May I come in?" the first woman asks, eyes soft as they flicker from me to Sakura to Sasuke.

"Ah, who…are you?" Sakura says, taken aback that anyone else would come see Sasuke. I don't recognize the young woman, or the woman behind her, but the man—tall, white haired, aged—I know immediately.

"Jiraiya," I say, stepping back to give them space as they all crowd into the cramped area. "You're back. Then, that means, this is—"

"Sakura-chan!" Naruto leaps out from behind the first woman, grinning widely. "And Ren! You're here too? Well, neither of you need to worry anymore. Sasuke's gonna be fine." He jerks his thumb at the blonde woman, who I'm quick to assign the identity of Tsunade, a hunch that is confirmed when Naruto adds, "She's a great doctor."

Tsunade, amused, smiles at Naruto, who beams with pride as Sakura blinks at them, the situation at last registering. She gets quickly to her feet, bowing her head and keeping her hands clenched in nervous fists at her side. Naruto bounds over to me in the meantime, and I offer him a weak smile.

"Glad to see you made it back in one piece," I say, and he grins.

"Wasn't easy," he says, adjusting his headband. "Grandma Tsunade here really beat me up. Of course, I let her win, being that she's a girl—and also our next Hokage. I have to have some sort of respect for her, right? But hey, Ren! I have a new move I want to show you later! This takes the cake off of Sasuke's Chidori!"

Jiraiya overhears our conversation and smacks Naruto's head, reminding him that he's not supposed to be brandishing his new jutsu, as the words _next Hokage_ sink into my head. I glance at this busty woman, with her light hair and even lighter presence. The great medical ninja Tsunade will be here to stay then, huh? Maybe I'll be able to pick up some tips then.

"I heard from Gai-sensei," Sakura is saying. "Please…please help Sasuke-kun."

"Leave it to me," she says graciously. Tsunade steps forward and I move to the foot of the bed in order to give her more room. But mostly so I can watch her work without appearing overly obvious. Placing a hand over Sasuke's forehead, she doesn't seem to need to concentrate in the least bit as her hand glows a bright green. I pull the vibrations close to her hand, measuring the frequency of her chakra and taking notes. But how it fluctuates makes it hard for me to discern exactly how she's determining the amount of chakra necessary to adjust his chemical levels and fix his nervous system.

The vibrations yank against my skin suddenly, cutting the flesh of one of my fingers and causing me to flinch. I release them, but that doesn't ease the pressure that's coming down on me and making my head feel as though it's about to explode.

I feel tugs on the back of my head, like someone is pulling me by my hair. Pain sears through my skull, a knife cutting through my brain, burning and yet comfortably warm, aching but soothing in the warmth that fills my head, makes me drowsy and dizzy.

"Fuck," I murmur, the sting intensifying as I press the heel of my hand to my forehead.

"He'll wake soon," Tsunade says, her voice sinking in and out, like my ears are water-clogged. I tilt my head, trying to alleviate the pressure building up behind my eyes. Instead, this make my dizziness worse and I suppress the groan that threatens to burst from my lips.

There is a flicker and—the bond springs to life as abruptly as it had gone. Its return is so overwhelming that my knees give out and I stumble into the foot of Sasuke's bed, my leg slamming against the metal frame. The clang of bone to metal catches everyone's attention, but luckily they're drawn back by Sakura hurling herself at Sasuke, who has sat up in his bed, eyes glazed.

To say my head feels on the verge of exploding wouldn't be adequate. It feels as though it has already been crushed by hammers and ruthlessly kicked apart and separated beyond repair.

Sakura, the sickly sweet scent of her perfume, her hair bristling his cheek and the very tip of his nose. The young women smiling endearingly at him or Sakura or maybe at the sight of the two of them together. The white haired man who stares past the curtains through which Naruto has just left. The bond relays all of Sasuke's thoughts to me, no matter how choppy or simplistic they are. The scents, the images what barrage his eyes, the ache of his bones from not being able to stretch for so long. All of it rushes my mind without a filter, adding to the pain that pierces straight through my skull and makes me lose my breath.

I jerk away when something touches my shoulder, only to find Tsunade eyeing me carefully. Her easy demeanor has dropped, and now there's genuine concern on her face as she says, "Hey, are you all right, kid?"

_All right, all right,_ the bond slurs, drunkenly happy. _He's all right._

"Fine," I say, backing away from her, reaching out behind me for the split in the curtain. Behind Tsunade, Sakura has let go of Sasuke, who still stares blankly ahead. She's wiping tears from her face, but looking happier than I've seen her since the end of the exams.

"Worrying," I say, clasping onto the end of the curtain at last and pushing it apart so that I can leave. "Been doing too much of it lately, for Sasuke's and Naruto's sakes. I guess it's finally taking its toll on me now. I'm just…so relieved," I say lamely, and Tsunade quirks an eyebrow at me. She seems to want to say something, but I cut her off with, "Thank you for healing Sasuke. I have to go. Excuse me."

I run out before anyone can say otherwise, stumbling into some of the empty gurneys the nurses push by, once ramming into a patient in a wheelchair who doesn't move out of my way fast enough. I don't apologize to any of them and am severely reprimanded by all, but the complaints are lost to my ears. I'm out of that hospital so fast it doesn't comprehend to me until I've reached the park, breathing hard and sick to my stomach. I find myself doubled over, my forehead pressed into the slick grass beneath me.

I had been right: The bond hadn't broken. It had merely been dormant while Sasuke was in a coma, and apparently it had missed him. I won't be separated from him for so long ever again, the bond reassures, but that's not a fact I'm particularly happy about.

I mumble profanities to myself, digging my nails into my sides to distract from the pain blundering through my head. Eventually, the bond wears me down so much that I roll over on my back, splaying my arms out and lifting my face to the sky.

The clouds whirl overhead.

[+]

Even through a nap, my head throbs. The bond is so jubilant about Sasuke's return it won't stop sending me every signal from his end of the stick. I get the story as Sakura tells him about how worried she's been, how Naruto had gone to find Tsunade to help him, how she had sat by his side all this time, and, after all that, when he doesn't reply to her is when she finally shuts up.

When I wake, Sakura has gotten up to excuse herself for a moment, and that's when Sasuke has time to really think. He stares down at the crisp sheets that cover him, his fingers limp in his lap. They twitch when he tells them to, furl and unfurl upon command. He pulls his chakra together, gathering it in his palm, before I step in.

Well, before the bond steps in, really. But since it operates through me, I'm the one to do its bidding, the one to bear the consequences of its actions.

_Sasuke,_ I chide, the bond suppressing his chakra. _You shouldn't be straining yourself when you've just woken up. Otherwise, you'll never get better._

He doesn't respond. Instead, he clenches his hand into a fist, his nails digging into the flesh of his palm, stinging as they cut deeply into it. His grip goes slack again when Sakura reenters with an apple on a dish and a knife perched precariously on the edge of the plate. She grins, says something about having brought him a snack, a gracious effort which is duly ignored by Sasuke.

I groan, finding that, despite how sick I'm feeling from the bond, sitting around isn't making me feel better than running will. So I get to my feet and run, weaving through town, focused on the road that unravels in front of me.

Unsurprisingly, I end up at the hospital again, short on breath and angry at myself. Of all the other places I could have gone, the bond draws me back to Sasuke without it occurring to me what it was doing. And, yeah, I'll admit: These bonds, these bonds. Sometimes they just happen. But _this_ bond doesn't just happen. This kind of compulsion isn't natural.

I fan myself with the collar of my shirt and consider sprinting off into the distance, running from the hospital to see if my feet will lead me here again, if I'll notice it the second time. Mostly, though, I'm hoping that, if I run fast enough, far enough, the bond will ease up on the updates about Sasuke's health, his thoroughly blank thoughts, and replenish my energy so I can do as I please.

I brace my head as another image bombards my mind: Bright red eyes that flash with malice, an abysmal darkness that presses down on him, suffocates him until all he hears are screams and cries and anguish.

_Hate, _Itachi's voice murmurs, and I wince, trying as fast as I can to build up the barrier between me and Sasuke. _That is why you're weak. Not enough hatefulness._

_You're useless._

A strangled moan cuts into the back of my throat as the bond, still strong from its recent resurrection, cuts down the effort I make to block Sasuke's memories. Sakura admiring Naruto instead of him. Naruto so impressively strong in the fight against Gaara, summoning the giant toad and displaying such a great show of force that he could barely move by the end. Sasuke's Chidori pales in comparison now.

What has he been doing that he's still outshined?

We've distracted him.

I can feel something inside of him snapping.

I'm in the hospital and flying up the stairs to Sasuke's room without much thought besides _Sasuke Sasuke Sasuke_. He's slipping through my fingers, and the bond quivers with a fear more intense than when Sasuke had gone comatose. We're losing him in a way worse than to mere unconsciousness. Before, when he had been sleeping, his absence hadn't been voluntary. He's on the verge of turning on us and never looking back.

The hospital room is eerily quiet when I arrive. It's not eerie in that it's the too tranquil kind of quiet someone would expect from patients sleeping soundly or the melancholic quiet of patients dying slowly. It's eerie in that it seeps into my pores, aches deep in my heart, but that might be because I'm affected by what's going on in Sasuke's head, by the desperate clawing of the bond for me to do something to root him to the ground.

Reaching Sasuke's small area, I hear Sakura ask cheerily, "Want some apples, Sasuke-kun?"

I part the curtains as the plate goes flying out of her hands, knocked aside by Sasuke's anger, his impatience. The flutter of the curtains catches his eye and he glares, then averts it to the window.

What has he been doing here?

"Sasuke-kun," Sakura says softly, oblivious to my presence. "Wh—"

"What's gotten into you?" I demand, prompting Sakura to jump to her feet. She clasps her hands together, blinking at me as I sidestep a shard of the shattered plate, glad there aren't any hospital personnel in the room to be alarmed. "Did Tsunade forget to reawaken your manners when she fixed you up?"

"It—it was nothing," Sakura says quickly, but I can tell by how she avoids my gaze that she's thinking about what I had said earlier. _You're wasting your time here._

I'm not going to call her out on it. Now is hardly the time or the place. Instead, I step past Sakura, straight to Sasuke's bed, and place my fingers lightly on his shoulders. He slaps my hand away, baring his teeth. He doesn't face me.

Naruto. Naruto is so strong. His power—that is the kind of power he needs if he hopes to defeat Itachi. Where can he get that power?

"Stop it, Sasuke," I say, low under my breath. "You don't understand half of Naruto's story to be thinking these things. Give yourself time; once you've recovered—"

The bond whimpers, sealing my mouth shut. Sasuke won't hear it. He doesn't have any more time.

Besides, Naruto had had as much as time as he had, and look at how far _he'd_ gone. Summoning giant toads that rivaled the power of Shukaku, being able to fend for himself in the Forest of Death, able to fight against Haku in the Land of the Waves after Sasuke had passed out.

_It was different,_ I think, forcing my way through the barrier he tries to build up. If I couldn't talk, then I would nag him through the bond. _Those situations were different. You have to understand, Sasuke, it wasn't you._

_Yeah,_ he replies. _It wasn't me._

And that's exactly the problem.

Fuck. Why do I have to be so incompetent? If I had been able to protect him against Itachi in the first place, he wouldn't have been injured, physically or mentally, and his pride would still be inflated to the point where he has faith that he can still be better than Naruto. But now, the animosity, the bitterness—it's all getting the better of him. Something must be done.

I look to Sakura for help, but she doesn't notice me. She's staring at Sasuke, sadness and worry tugging on the ends of her lips. Goddammit.

The drapes around Sasuke's area shift open. It's Naruto, poking his head through the curtains, and the moment I see him, I let out a stifled gasp. What bad timing!

Naruto sniffs the air, peers around for the sweet scent of the apples, and, upon noticing them strewn across the floor, he frowns. Sasuke whips his head around, sensing the familiar chakra, and I'm in front of Naruto immediately, grabbing the curtain from his hand and shoving him out.

"Go away, Naruto," I say gruffly, pulling the curtain closed. He pushes back, protesting, but I raise my voice, shove him harder, and hiss, "Get out!"

"_Ren_," Sasuke says, and I freeze, halfway through the curtain, gaze still narrowed at Naruto's bemused expression. The bond, reluctant as I've ever felt it to obey Sasuke's command, forces me aside, drawing the curtain back so that Sasuke has a full view of Naruto.

Naruto gawks at me as he enters Sasuke's hospital area, his foot sliding on one of the apple pieces. He makes a small noise of disgust and asks, "What's going on here? Is—what? Why are you staring at me like that?" he adds when he notices Sasuke glaring at him.

Sakura's eyes flick between the two, panicked, her hands clasped close to her chest. She's never seen Sasuke this way before, never seen him so angry, so malicious. She comes forward, on the verge of saying something to dispel the tension, but ends up stuttering.

"Fight me," Sasuke says, ignoring Sakura all together. "Now."

Naruto furrows his brow and crosses his arms. "What are you talking about?" he retorts as I feel the vibrations hitch up, growing restless. "You're still recovering—"

"Shut up," Sasuke growls, and fear strikes across Sakura's face, "_and fight me._"

My sight sharpens to the point where it everything becomes grainy and the colors burn my eyes. Sasuke has activated his Sharingan and is presently stepping out of his bed, saying, "Do you think you helped me that day? That foolish Fifth Hokage or whoever that old man was, butting into other people's business." Sasuke scoffs, and Naruto tenses, gritting his teeth.

But I don't hear him decline Sasuke's invitation to fight.

Sasuke takes his silence for agreement as well, stepping barefoot into the apple slices Sakura had carefully carved. _Stop him,_ the bond urges. _He's not well._

He brushes past me easily, choking the bond mid-plea. I'm left without a word to say, without the power to do anything but watch him as he motions Naruto forward.

"Come with me," he says to Naruto—solely to Naruto, who gives me a sidelong glance before diverting his gaze and following Sasuke out through the curtain.

Sakura and I are left alone in the hospital area, the sickly sweetness of the apples wafting through the air. The silence that ensues doesn't last long. Sakura is at my side at once, grabbing onto my shirt sleeve and begging, "Ren. Stop him. Please. You and Sasuke have always—"

I tug brusquely out of her hold. "I've never had any leverage when it comes to bargaining with Sasuke," I mumble, free of the bond with Sasuke out of the room. I keep my eyes trained on the ground, where the apple slices have been mashed into a distasteful yellow slush. "Go…go stop him yourself."

Her grip on me tightens, and she makes like she's going to continue her begging. But then she releases me and races after Sasuke and Naruto, to the roof, I sense. Sasuke's unadulterated anger permeates through the bond with such ferocity my head sways on my shoulders. _Distract yourself_, I think, dropping to my knees and picking up the broken pieces of the plate. _It's hopeless now. Useless to try to stop him._

_You're useless._

The distraction of cleaning up the apple pieces doesn't work. I can hear the angry words being quipped back and forth. I can feel Sasuke's irritation spiking. He hadn't presented a challenge to Itachi at all, but Naruto—the stupid boy we had gone to school with, who couldn't even properly pull of a simple cloning jutsu, could now summon frogs the size of which rivaled Shukaku, could now spark an interest in secret organizations. Goddammit, goddammit.

I nick myself on one of the shards of ceramic and flinch. The bleeding stops quickly, though, as my chakra surges forward to heal the broken skin. Goddammit, goddammit.

And the battle begins.

The power Sasuke's exerting sends a jolt of pain splinter through my skull. I curse, dropping the shards I'd picked up. They fall to the ground and break into smaller pieces that can't be helped. I grab my head as the bond heaves me to my feet, dragging me out of the hospital room and down the corridor. _Sasuke,_ it cries. _Sasuke, stop, please._

By the time I've reached the stairwell leading to the roof, the battle is well underway. Through the door that opens to the rooftop, I see fire erupting across the area, sending heat waves down the stairwell and warming my face. Sasuke, suspended midair by the heat that makes him rise, sends the fire down in a steady stream. Though I can't see him, I know Naruto is in the midst of the fire somewhere, burning up.

Sakura has taken cover in the stairwell as the fire crackles, swirling thickly before spinning into a whirlwind that devours and dispels it, revealing Naruto and a clone, standing closely together. Sakura sees me coming and lets out a series of gasps that, when put together without interruption, I'm sure means something, but I'm distracted by how the vibrations are drawn to a single point in Naruto's hands and realize it had been the whirlwind that had banished the flames.

It's a single, smooth orb, kept together by a layer of chakra that surrounds it. Inside, a maelstrom of winds seem to churn, sweeping in all directions at once. The vibrations are riled by the movements taking place in the orb, and my stomach rumbles as I start to think about the damage those racing vibrations could do to a person.

The vibrations flux, shooting further off the charts than I have ever felt them. At how they bend and buzz, I recognize the jutsu causing them to shift: Chidori.

The incessant chirping of the jutsu sounds in my ears as soon as I think its name. I look to Sasuke, finding that he has conjured the lightning, which sputters and spots my eyelids with the bright green aftershocks.

These two are out of their minds! They can't think they'll be able to survive those attacks when they collide. Especially when they collide. Not to mention the explosion that will take place will blow this hospital to shreds, and everyone inside, all these people who are injured and don't know any better to leave or can't leave.

This fight has gone beyond a regular grudge match at this point. They're aiming to kill if I've ever seen murderous intent in my life. And they don't care what happens in the meantime.

Pink twitches in my peripheral. Sakura has stumbled out of the stairwell and into place beside me. She's mumbling under her breath, her eyes wide, wild, focused on the fight. Her hands are clenched into tight balls at her side, and by the time I realize what she means to do, I reach out and grab her too late.

She's running at them, shouting for them to stop. I call her name, but my voice is barely audible over the chirps of the Chidori which grow as Sasuke gains speed from falling out of the air. There's no chance in hell either of them will be able to dispel their attacks before Sakura is hit; their momentum has carried them too far, the violent chakra collected in their respective jutsu drawing them forward and nullifying any possibility of them stopping mid-attack. At this rate, Sakura's insides will be splattered between them, burnt to crisps.

All I can do is watch. Even then I fail.

I press my palms over my eyes, digging the heels of my hands into my sockets and mumbling, "Stop stop stop stop stop," but it doesn't stop, and I can feel the vibrations rushing forward still, feel them blasting the air and my skin and shaking so vehemently that my senses go numb.

The numbness running over my skin reminds me of the night of the massacre, when Sasuke and I had arrived moments too late to be granted the honor of dying along with our clans. I remember how I had run upon being confronted by Itachi, how—despite the distance I had put between us—when Itachi was showing Sasuke everything, I saw it too: How he killed everyone, how he mercilessly slit their throats and splintered their organs and blistered their hearts despite their begging and pleading and crying. I saw it all, saw his family and my own die, all of them, all wiped out from existence by the hand of a single person, no older than I am now.

God. I have lost everything!

_Stop!_

The vibrations crush me under their combined weight as I activate the Genshindou, before being displaced all at once. I send them away, encasing myself in a cone of silence where only a few strands of vibrations are left to brush against my cheeks. Even then I'm dissatisfied because I don't want to feel this. I don't want to feel any of this.

I have lost everything, and there's no way for me to recover it all again.

There has to be a way to escape this misery. I have to escape.

The vibrations flurry as what I can sense only as balls of chakra fly over my head. Then, the vibrations die down, simmering back into calm, but I still keep them at bay, retaining my cone of silence around my body. I flinch as something—rather, some_one_—breaks through my threshold, disturbing the peace I have built up. They pause, undoubtedly discomforted by the lack of vibrations in the air, before continuing toward me as though nothing is wrong.

It's Kakashi. I can distinguish his body type in the shape the vibrations take as they follow him in. He kneels down in front of me, lays a comforting hand on my shoulder and says, his voice muffled without the vibrations around to amplify it: "Hey. Everything is okay, Ren. I stopped them. Drop the vibrations."

I shake my head because I know it's a white lie, and I won't fall for it. But I do as he says and ease the vibrations back into place, careful to let the vibrations in slowly to avoid having them come crashing down on me and rubbing me raw. Kakashi breathes a sigh of relief when the vibrations are released. He pats my shoulder and repeats, "It's okay. Everything is going to be fine."

I hate it when they lie to me.

Sasuke's irritation flares. He had come too far to be thrown off by Sakura and then thwarted by Kakashi, who had grabbed him and Naruto by their wrists and redirected their attacks to two water towers directly over my head. Effectively, Kakashi had stopped them. Essentially, he'd pushed them over the edge.

Brushing Kakashi off, I go quickly to Sasuke. He's yanking himself free from the metal water tank, which has crumpled and folded in on itself, twisting around his arm where the Chidori had gone through. Water gushes out in a deluge that soaks the roof. When I leap up to the water tank, I can feel the spray of the water misting off and brushing my cheeks.

As Sasuke gets to his feet, he glances at Naruto, who has his hand pressed into a smooth, small crater worn into the water tank. His smirk contains so much smugness I wish I could slap it right off his face.

"Sasuke," I say, stepping in front of him and blocking his view of Naruto. His self-satisfied smirk drops, replaced by a scowl. "What in god's name were you thinking? Of all the places to have a death match, you choose a hospital roof! And then to throw around the Chidori at _Naruto_, who is, above all else, your _friend_. _Listen to me_," I hiss, grabbing his wrist as he makes to blow me off. I step closer to him, keeping my voice low under the rush of the water, and say, "Stop. Whatever you're thinking right now, stop it, Sasuke, because it's not going to get you anywhere."

"Shut up," he spits, stepping back. "Quit it with your Zen lessons, Ren. You don't know any better than any of us!"

"Contrary," Kakashi says from atop the water tank where he has taken a seat to give Sasuke a lecture of his own. Sasuke glares at him, his lips pursed so tightly they almost disappear. "I would say there's wisdom in Ren's words. Your superiority complex is getting the better of you, Sasuke. That level of Chidori you used just now isn't appropriate for use against your own comrade. Unless…you're trying to kill Naruto?"

Sasuke rolls his eyes, like the audacity of the idea is too foolish even for him. But at this point, I wouldn't put it past him to be considering subconsciously: _If I can defeat Naruto, if I can kill him, then I won't just be a footnote in my brother's agenda._

Sasuke yanks his arm free of my grip and leaps over the chain link fence wrapped around the perimeter of the roof. I ruffle my hair, annoyed by his quick escape, when the sound of a quiet sobbing reaches my ear. Sakura is standing on the roof, her hands pressed to her face to wipe her tears as she cries. Something about seeing her like this makes my heart burn.

She loves this boy so much.

I sigh, motion to Kakashi my intentions, and pursue Sasuke over the fence. I land beside him on a window covering, the soles of my sandals slipping on the water that has somehow dripped over the edge of the roof. I examine it for a second, wondering where it came from, before I look at Sasuke, who has his head tilted back to stare at something with wide eyes.

I follow his gaze and am as shocked as he is when I see it. The back of Naruto's water tank has burst open completely, reels of metal rolling backward as though they've been punched through by a giant. Water drips from the metal peelings, dropping onto my cheeks as I continue to stare at it, dumbstruck.

Naruto has really become incredible.

I'm jolted out of my awe by Sasuke, who lets out an aggravated groan and punches the hospital wall with the side of his fist. He doesn't break anything, but he leaps off quickly, forcing me to give chase as he jumps from rooftop to rooftop, until he's a satisfactory distance away from the hospital.

He nestles himself onto the branch of a tree with thick bushels of leaves, where he hides in the shade. His anger never once levels out.


	45. Prelude

**Disclaimer:** Same as in previous chapters. Please enjoy, comment, and review. Thank you!

**A/N:** Last month, I had a record of monthly views after I posted _Grand Scheme_: 1,000 total views in April alone! This month, before I even posted this chapter, I was already at 900+ views. I'm so very thankful that you guys keep coming back to read. It's encouraging for me as an author to see my story being so well-received. I would also like to thank the people who have reviewed BOUND and added it and me to their favorites/alerts list. I can't even contain how much I value your opinions. Thank you.

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**Bound  
Chapter 45: Prelude**

Believe me when I say I want to do as much as I can to make Sasuke happy. I want him happy because, it seems, most everyone else is happy when he's happy. Sakura and Naruto don't have any problems when Sasuke is in a good mood, and when Sakura and Naruto don't have any problems, Kakashi doesn't have any problems, and the other Jounin don't have to get involved, and generally, a whole domino effect of happiness, resulting in my own happiness, tends to occur.

At face value, this may seem absurd, considering 1. I don't honestly care for Sasuke that much, especially since 2. he's part of the reason my family is dead and 3. I want to break this bond more than anything, which, essentially, makes him even more bitter about the fact that I'm the only one left alive with him. It's also odd because only a few weeks ago, I had been so focused on solely my own happiness, but that was before I started working on these bonds. Before I realized that my bonds with these people made me care about _their _happiness, which became what made me happy.

If you break that down, though, you'll see again that it's just the bond twisting everything to make it seem like it's about me.

I land on the branch beside Sasuke, his anger feeding my own. Why can't he stuff it and take this 'defeat' in stride? Grow from it, become a better person. Instead, he sinks to a new low and starts to think that the only way he can win is if he beats his friend to a pulp.

"Go away," he says when I approach him. "I don't want to hear it."

"Not that I have to say anything you haven't already heard or don't already know," I say, tucking my hair behind my ear. "Sasuke, please. Enough is enough. Wasn't this all better when revenge was the last thing on your mind?"

"My revenge," he growls, "has never been on the backburner. Who are you to lecture me anyway? What about the bond? You want to break it as badly as I want to kill him."

I'll give him that. If breaking the bond were as simple as being able to kill someone, I'd do everything I could to sever my ties with the Uchiha once and for all. But. "The difference between my revenge and yours," I say, crossing my arms, "is that I won't have to hurt anyone to get what I want."

He grips his hands into fists and begins to push himself to his feet when a shuriken flies between us, a string tailing behind it. It whirls around the tree trunk, strapping Sasuke to the down before he can stand. I'm startled as Kakashi falls into place beside me, holding the other end of the string to prevent it from loosening around Sasuke and allowing him room to move.

"Thanks for keeping him at bay for me, Ren," he says with a curt nod. "Who knows how much farther I would have had to look if…anyway," he cuts off when I glare at him.

"What's the meaning of this?" Sasuke snaps, pulling against the string, which holds surprisingly fast.

Kakashi, cool as ever, says, "If I didn't do this, I'd risk having you make a run for it. You, like another certain someone we know, are not the type to listen quietly while I preach."

I frown at Kakashi's not-so-subtle reference to myself. He continues on, undeterred by my scowl.

"Sasuke, quit seeking revenge," he says plainly, and Sasuke grits his teeth. "In this line of work," Kakashi explains, "I've seen how badly guys like you become. In the end, those who tasted revenge weren't satisfied. You'll only hurt and suffer more. Even if you are successful in your revenge, all you'll be left with is emptiness."

"What the hell do you know?" he demands, jerking forward, and for a bit I'm glad Kakashi has him restrained. More for his safety than for Kakashi. "Don't talk to me like you understand."

"Hey, calm down," Kakashi soothes, keeping his voice soft. But Sasuke doesn't buy it. His eyes flash to me, making it clear that his words areas much for me as they are for Kakashi.

"What if," he says, a twisted smile sliding over his face, "I were to kill the one you love most? How much would you go back on what you've said? Then you would feel true pain."

I'm horrified by what Sasuke has proposed. This is a new low, even for him, to make that threat. That's not even something to bring up hypothetically, but there is a sense of seriousness in his voice that neither I nor Kakashi can ignore.

I step closer to Kakashi, trying to find comfort his presence, repeating to myself in my head, _He doesn't mean it, he doesn't mean it._ It's a weak comfort. My motion doesn't go unnoticed by the Jounin. Kakashi gives me a sidelong glance and says, so softly that I can only hear it because of the vibrations, "It's okay, Ren."

Lies.

"That," Kakashi says, giving Sasuke his undivided attention, "would work. Unfortunately for me, however, no such person exists. Those dear to me have already been killed."

Kakashi's tone is light as he says this, and my breath catches in my throat as though his sadness has escaped into me because of our close proximity. Just when I thought I'd had enough bonds.

"I've also lived in a long, hard era," Kakashi says, giving his end of the string a small shake. It loosens and unfurls from Sasuke, dropping limply into his lap. "I understand how terrible true pain and loss are. We aren't the lucky ones, that's for sure—but we aren't the worst off."

Kakashi places his hand gently on my head and smiles at me brightly, showcasing me as a prime example as he says, "Both you and I have found precious companions. And Chidori is a power given to you because you found things that are important to you. That power shouldn't be something to use against your friends, or for revenge. You should know, from your loss, what that power should be used for. Think hard about whether you can hold true to what I've said," Kakashi finishes, and with that he leaves Sasuke and me alone.

I keep my gaze low for a moment, until I sense Sasuke's anger has truly quelled. Kakashi's lecture has, seemingly, gotten through to him. But I still feel that he won't be so easily appeased. He needs more. Always needs more.

This time, I'm willing to offer him whatever he wants to hear. Because it's not all about me. It's about Naruto and Sakura and Kakashi, and having them happy and at ease when they have a mound of other things to be worried about.

I step forward, kneeling down at Sasuke's side to pick off the string Kakashi had left lying in Sasuke's lap. "You know what Kakashi means," I say, coiling the string up around my fingers and placing them to the side, "when he told you that you should know what to use your power for. We shouldn't toss these friendships aside like they're nothing, Sasuke. You—_we_—need to do everything in our power to protect it all. We can't lose everything. Not again."

Sasuke doesn't look at me. He keeps his focus on his knees, but he knows what I'm saying makes sense. _Never again,_ he'd said during the confrontation with Gaara. _I've already lost everything once before. I don't intend to watch those dear to me die before my eyes again._

"I'll stop," I say. I cringe as I go over my speech in my head, but I mean every word because I want this to work. I don't want to lose everything. Not again. Never again.

Sasuke knows what I'm going to propose before I get it out. He hears it loud and clear through the bond, which jubilates, tells me this is the best course of action I've ever thought to take. He looks up, unblinking, daring me to go on. He wants to hear it straight from the source.

"I'll give up trying to break the bond," I say quietly, meeting his eyes and holding his gaze. "I realize now, what I said earlier was wrong. My revenge _does_ hurt someone: Both you and me. I see now. So I'll stop everything, Sasuke, I'll stay with you because this revenge isn't making either of us happy. But…but I'll only give up if you give up seeking revenge too."

Sasuke continues to stare at me, and his silence goes on for so long I have to check with the bond to see how he's feeling. I come up fruitless, however, because he's blocked me from his mind, built up a barrier so heavily reinforced that I can't push it down no matter how hard I try. I don't know whether this is a good or bad sign, but I take it in stride. He has to come to his senses now, I figure. He has to understand how much these people, this village, means to the both of us.

"Go home," he says. "It's getting late."

His response is anticlimactic, and I'm left stunned speechless. "Go home" is all he gives me after this? After I've just offered to stay with him forever?

_Take it in stride,_ I remind myself, breathing deeply to keep my cool, but it ends up turning into a sigh as I stand up. "Okay," I say, adjusting my shirt sleeve. "You get home soon, too. It's cold at nightfall."

I drop from the tree into a deserted alleyway below. Brushing myself off, I start home, the events of today heavy on my mind.

I know Sasuke isn't taking my offer seriously—but I meant every goddamn word of it. I want to stay here so badly, I will give up everything I have worked for in order to keep things as they are. I won't let us lose everything we've created here. Not a chance. Not again.

There's a small voice in my head that begs otherwise. Sasuke is a lost cause, it tells me. Sasuke desires instant satisfaction; nothing less will please him. But the compromise of me abandoning my mission must mean something to him.

Maybe I'm thinking too highly of myself. After all, the only thing he'd said after I'd pledged myself to him was "go home". Just "go home".

I sweep my hair from my face. It's become too long to bear, and I swear I'm going to go home and slice it all off, Sakura-style, when my name is called not far away

Coincidentally, it's Sakura, Naruto at her side. They're both grim-faced, tense, as they approach me. Seeing them makes me tired because I know what they want.

"How is he?" Sakura says without delay. "Did you manage to talk to Sasuke-kun?"

"I did," I say shortly, hoping she'll catch the hint and let me off at that. Instead, she waits patiently for me to continue. I sigh and say, "I said everything I could have possibly said to help the situation. Kakashi, too. It's up to Sasuke now to decide what to do. It's his life, Sakura. I can't change that, no matter how many words I say to him."

Sakura bites her lip, twisting her fingers into a tight knot. "I told Naruto," she says as though it's just occurred to her. "About the curse mark. I know," she says quickly when the alarm shows on my face, "I know Sasuke-kun said he didn't want us telling anybody, but Naruto should know why Sasuke-kun is acting like this."

"So," I say, speaking slowly as I look between my friends. "You're using the curse mark to excuse Sasuke's behavior?"

"I—no, but—"

"Exactly," I say, as Sakura appears horrified by what she's insinuated. "No buts. Listen, both of you. I know you're concerned about Sasuke's wellbeing, but you have to understand that we can't talk Sasuke through his problems this time. He has to figure things out for himself and if we keep hounding him like this, we won't be doing anything but driving him away. The best thing we can do for Sasuke now is to leave him alone and let him think this through. It's the only way he'll be able to clear his head. Now, I'm tired and I want to go home, so I'll see you guys later."

"Ren," Sakura says, taking my shoulder to stop me.

"I don't have anything left to say to you," I say, shrugging her off. "Sorry. I'm tired. I'm going home. Bye."

It's abrupt and insincere and generally rude, but it's the truth. Unless she expects me to come clean about the bond, I have nothing on Sasuke that will give her more insight to what he wants to happen in order for things to go back to the way they were.

There's nothing left. But god I don't want to lose it all.

I wish Sasuke would recognize the trouble these people are going to in order to keep him happy and that, as he suffers, they suffer too. It's part of the burden that comes with bonds, one of the compromises I had such a hard time coming to terms with myself when I had just returned to Konoha.

Sasuke's restless thoughts keep me up for a good part of the night. To be fair, my own thoughts keep me up too. Almost a year ago, I had sworn that I would never be this concerned about Sasuke—yet here I am. I swore I wouldn't go creating bonds, caring for people who would end up making me miserable, but then there's Naruto and Sakura and this jumble of emotions what tangle in my chest and make me tired.

I could use that sleep-walking ninjutsu right about now.

When I arrive home, I don't bother washing up or changing out of my clothes. Tracking dirt across my house, I kick off my sandals in my room and unclip my holster and hip pouch, tossing them to the ground and falling into bed with a thump.

Sasuke's mind buzzes with reminders of Itachi, revenge, Sakura, Naruto. Orochimaru. Rinse, repeat.

I squeeze my eyes shut, tucking my pillows then my sheets over my head, pressing my face so hard into the mattress that my nose feels like it's going to cave in and suffocate me.

It's a long while before I manage to muffle the bond and drift into a fitful sleep.

Sasuke's thoughts infuse with my dreams. Itachi, revenge, Sakura, Naruto.

Orochimaru.

Rinse. Repeat.

[+]

I wake up breathing hard and sweating profusely, my room still cloaked in the darkness of night. My heart is thudding hard and my fingers tingle with a rush of adrenaline that's odd to wake up to. _Sasuke,_ the bond buzzes, and my heart jumps into my throat. _Sasuke is in danger!_

"Danger," I echo, pushing my hair back as I stumble to my feet, half-awake. What kind of danger could he possibly be in? The bond doesn't bother filling me in, only focuses on getting me armed and out of the house, my sandals forgotten as I rush out into the night.

The moon lights my path and the bond directs me. I'm heading back to the place where I had left Sasuke. As I approach, the vibrations press harder against me, humming so closely in my ear I know immediately that there's someone else here who can manipulate them.

The bond connects it all faster than I can comprehend it, but by the time I hear Sasuke's cries and see the shadows, it clicks: Sound. Ambush. Sasuke.

_Sasuke._

He senses me through the bond. He attempts to order me home, but then one of his ambushers jump. He catches them in time to block the attack, and I take the chance to leap up the tree, bracing myself as I see Sasuke in close combat with a shinobi I don't recognize. Although Sasuke, at first glance, looks like he's trapped in a compromising situation, he has the upper hand and swings his fist right into the shinobi's stomach, which he's left as a wide open target. But the other shinobi flips his hands through a few signs and I feel the vibrations pulse, pushing forward with such might I know this attack will hurt.

I jump quickly to the branch I had stood on with Sasuke earlier today and open my arms, catching Sasuke as he's whipped away from the Otonin and before he slams into the tree trunk. I take the hit for him, but I've cushioned the air with the vibrations and feel the pain of the attack much less than he would have.

"Where did that come from?" he mutters, shrugging me off. I press my fingers to my rib cage, which has, despite my best efforts, been fractured.

"The vibrations," I tell him as the man grins at us. "They're from the Sound, Sasuke, they use the vibrations."

While I don't recognize any of these Sound Nin, I know what they mean this is Orochimaru's doing. The only other Sound Nin I'd encountered, after all, aside from Rei and her friends, were direct underlings of Orochimaru's. And I'm reminded of what Rei had told me the last time I'd seen her, and shivers run up my spine. Sasuke wasn't marked just because. Orochimaru has a plan.

"Clever girl," says the Otonin who had attacked us, apparently unsurprised by my appearance. "You must be the Kagiru Orochimaru-sama told us about. Still. You won't put up much of a fight."

He's barely finished with his sentence when another Nin swoops in. Sasuke and I get out of the way in time to avoid the assault, but then the Nin puffs out his cheeks and spits.

In lieu of normal saliva, the man spits a fluorescent web that's shiny silver in the moonlight. It hits Sasuke and sticks to his forearms as he tries to block it. With a simple whip of his head, the man tosses Sasuke aside and sends him flying at another Nin who is quick to slam into Sasuke's back and knock him toward the building on which the first Nin stands.

"Orochimaru-sama said you would get in the way," says the Nin who still occupies the branch beside me. He smirks. "But you've only been standing aside, looking helpless and scared."

_You're useless._

Provoked, I slide my foot back, kicking up the vibrations and whirling them into a ball, like I had seen Naruto do earlier. My technique isn't nearly as powerful or concentrated as his is—in essence, it's nothing like this technique at all. But it's effective in throwing the Nin off his guard as I send it flying at it him and allows me to make a run for Sasuke, sweeping the vibrations together as I move.

I feel the air shift behind me as I escape, and when I look over my shoulder, I see that the Nin has managed to dodge my attack and woven another web to spit at me. It shoots out, blindingly fast, but in the way it catches the light off the moon I'm able to avoid it easily. I drop from the tree, the web flying over my head. I grab onto a rain gutter and pull myself up on the roof, just a few meters away from where Sasuke is taking care of the other Sound Nin. I'm getting to my feet when another glint of silver shines in the air, signaling that the man has sent another glob of web my way, and without hesitation I swipe the vibrations through the air. They move sharply and slice the web, which rains down like streamers to the street below.

That's what I'd thought would happen, at least. I turn away from the web before I can see the results of my vibrations, and instead of being in the clear, the sticky web strikes my back and drags me down from the rooftop.

I have the sense to reach up and wind my arm around it, wrapping the web in my hands and tugging on it in an attempt to either pull myself back up or drag my attacker down with me. I'm able to induce the latter, as the shinobi is yanked from his perch on the branch and tumbles from the tree. Except he's able to detach from the web at the last minute and catch himself on a lower branch, while I slam right into the pavement and have the breath knocked out of me.

The web falls in a heap beside me, and despite how much try to shake it off, it doesn't budge. I grab and twist it, but it only ends up gluing my fingers together. I glare at the Nin, who is climbing the tree like a creepy crawly to rejoin his teammates.

Like hell he will.

Careful not to touch anymore of the web than necessary, I whirl it into the air and toss it at the Nin. It smacks him on the back and sticks. His fingers clutch the trunk as I tug, both of my arms woven into the silk material of the web. The force of it is enough to wrench him off the tree and send him careening into his teammates, who have Sasuke surrounded.

I allow myself a small victory laugh before I'm mercilessly jerked into the air by the web that still plasters my arms together. The force of the pull is heavy on my shoulders, and when I'm up on the rooftop, the man swings me into the building, breaking off small chunks of the wall. I curse, but my lungs are empty and it comes out as more of a gasp that makes my already fractured ribs send stabbing pains through my torso.

I've become even further entangled in the web with that retaliation; it wraps around my legs and sweeps over my shoulders, binding my arms to my side. I writhe in the web, but that only makes it stick closer to my skin.

"See what we mean?" asks one of the Nin. I don't bother looking up at them because Sasuke is beside me, his hand clutched over his curse mark. I can feel his chakra bubbling inside his stomach, and I think to him, _Sasuke, don't. Don't do it._

"If you stay in this shitty village, you'll always be weak like the rest of them. Playing family games with your comrades will only make you rot."

When a heart is sufficiently focused and ruthless in its desires, Orochimaru said, then for good or for evil, the end will justify the means. Sasuke possesses such a heart. The heart of an avenger.

"Come with us!"

_Sasuke, don't,_ I plead, pulling harder against the web, like if I get free I'll be able to cover his ears and block out their words, convince him to stay.

"If you do, Orochimaru-sama will give you strength."

He will seek me out. Hungry for more power. Baited.

_Sasuke!_

"So what will you do?" asks the Otonin who is very obviously the leader of these four. He steps forward as he speaks, nudging Sasuke with his foot. Sasuke recoils, sinking into crouching position, his hand never leaving the curse mark on his neck. "I'll be very clear: No hesitating. Will you come or not?"

"Sasuke," I say, finally finding my voice to speak up. "Sasuke, stop listening to them. Nothing good can come of this. Believe me, nothing good can come of leaving!"

The leader of the pack harrumphs, propping his hand on his hip. "We were told to bring your girlfriend along too," he says, and chills run up my spine at the thought of what Orochimaru could possibly want from me, "but she seems reluctant. Regardless, it's pointless to bring either of you against your will. I always end up wanting to kill the indecisive brats."

My nails dig into my palms when an incredible power shoots through my body. My vision sharpens, like twisting binoculars to hone in on a target. The power, at once familiar and foreign, makes me shake where I sit and I have to turn away from Sasuke as he growls, "Just try it!"

The bond shakes, quivering in the presence of the curse mark breaking out across Sasuke's skin. Because without even looking at him, I know it's happening, know the curse mark is drawing its way over its body, turning his chakra a sickly black.

This isn't Sasuke. This isn't Sasuke.

He lunges forward with a brash war cry, only to be knocked away with an easy swing of the Sound Nin's arm. The dull thud of Sasuke hitting concrete elicits a small gasp from me as the sound rings in my ears and through my bones. The air begins to fill with more dark chakra, causing the vibrations to buzz so fiercely against my skin that my extremities go numb, and I'm appalled that none of the other shinobi in the village can feel this. It's so overwhelming and pressing that it should wake them right from their sleep.

So far as I can tell, Sasuke and I are alone, threatened by these damned people, and being persuaded to turn our back on our own kinsmen, which I wholeheartedly refuse to do.

But Sasuke.

"You're not the only one Orochimaru has taken a liking to," says the main Otonin, pushing his hair back so we can better see, in the moonlight, the oblong shapes that worm across his skin, staining and stigmatic. "That seal isn't something you should use so carelessly," he adds, taking up the same tone Kakashi had when he was warning Sasuke against letting the curse mark subdue him at all. "It doesn't look like you can control it very well, but if you continue to throw it 'open' like that, so to speak, it will slowly erode your body."

Sasuke makes a sharp intake of breath, and at the news of his eventual decay, quickly the curse marks begin to fade from his face. He grits his teeth, irritated by the disadvantage of his power. The one thing he had trusted to give him immeasurable strength is also draining him.

"Since you're in the first stage," the Otonin carries on, "the decay is slow, but should you let it continue, you'll cease to exist forever."

"Ominous," I snarl at him, tired of his shit. "That happens to everyone anyway, idiot; it's called death. You can't honestly be offering eternal life to us."

The man smirks at me, as though he had expected such an outburst. "No," he agrees. "But what Orochimaru-sama can provide for you will be equivalent to having lived a hundred lifetimes. The power that will be available at your hands will all but make up for the sacrifices you have to make."

"Sacrifices?" Sasuke echoes, unwilling to have to give up anymore than he's lost.

The only girl in the group speaks up, her voice monotone as she speaks. She, like the other foreign kunoichi I've encountered thus far, gives me bad vibes. "Instead of gaining power through the seal," she says, "you will be bound to Orochimaru."

I choke on the breath entering my lungs. _Bound. Bound to Orochimaru. More bonds, more chains, more shackles. I can't do it. I can't._

I'm not sure whether this thought occurs to me or Sasuke, but it's there, and I hear it reverberating in Sasuke's head too. _Bound. Bound._

"For us, we have already lost our freedom," she says, and again it becomes hard for me to breath. Already, these four—all of them are tied down to that man? How do they bear it, the burden of consenting to his every will, the dark chakra rolling around in their respective bodies? How are they able to put up with his thoughts and feelings and—

_That's just you._

"But in order to gain something," she's saying as I take deep breaths, trying to contain the fear that's threatening to erupt in my throat, "you must throw something away. Don't you remember your goal? Will you go on forgetting about it, go on surviving in this pathetic village, even while injuring your companions? Forgetting about Uchiha Itachi, just like your girlfriend said?"

"What?" I interject then, my surprise getting the better of me. I'd said that hours ago, when the day was still light. How could they have—

"Do not forget your goal," says the first Otonin without acknowledging me, his curse marks retreating. "This village will become nothing but shackles for you. It would be best to rid yourself of these worthless ties. If you do, you can gain even greater, more splendid power. Do not forget your purpose."

"Purpose," I mutter, kicking the web off of my feet as the four Nin disappear. The web merely jostles and then settles back into place around my legs, more snug than before. "F—how do I get this goddamn web off!"

I'm frustrated. I'm so _frustrated_. The thoughts streaming through my head are muddled and incoherent because everything they have said has barraged me and the bond is stressing over it all, over Sasuke, Sasuke Sasuke. It's always about Sasuke.

Sasuke stay. Sasuke come. Sasuke forget. Sasuke remember.

"Sasuke," I say as he clenches his fist around a leaf that has fallen into his hand. His thoughts are dark and unyielding. Remember. Remember.

When he turns to me, his face is generally blank, save for his eyes, which are narrowed at me so slightly that I'm only be able to see the condescension in his expression because of our close proximity. I'm reminded of when I had first arrived home and had come to his house seeking refuge. He had the same guarded look about him, the same level of coldness because he refused to have me abandon him again.

"Help me?" I say quietly, holding out my arms. "I can't get free."

He blinks at me, giving no inclination that he's going to do as I ask. But then he kneels beside me and kneads his hands into the web. He tugs.

It doesn't give.

When he tries to adjust his grip on the web to pull from a different angle, his hands don't budge either. Should have figured.

The irony of this situation would make me laugh if I weren't so desperate to get untangled. Sasuke and I stuck together in an inescapable web without an apparent means of separating. This is a great metaphor for the bond if I've ever seen one. It must be some sort of divine retribution. Neither of us is panicked about the situation, though, like it doesn't matter if we're stuck like this forever. Bound together forever.

"Don't go," I say abruptly, fiddling with the web to avoid having to look at him. "One bond is enough, don't you think?"

My lame attempt at a joke fails to amuse him. He stiffens, wishes he hadn't been so kind as to try to help me.

"I'll stop," I go on, reiterating what I had said earlier. I don't care that the bond is making everything about Sasuke anymore, don't care that it's taking all my other bonds and twisting them so that none of it is actually for my own benefit. I'll take this fake happiness over being alone any day. "Sasuke, I'll stop trying to break the bond. And I'll forget about everyone else. They don't"—I take a deep breath.—"Nothing really matters to me anymore. I'll stay with you, I'll help you with your revenge, just…please don't go."

Instead of answering, he twists his hands in the web and ends up yanking me forward so that I almost fall into him. Luckily I'm able to maintain my balance and remain on steady ground, but the web just squeezes more tightly against my skin. By the way Sasuke's reacting to my pleading, however, it's obvious he doesn't want to talk about this anymore. So I won't. I just focus on getting us free.

The vibrations rub against the web, seemingly stuck to it too. What is this web that it remains so sturdy, even after the Otonin who had fired it at me has left? I consider taking it between my teeth and tearing at it, but to risk sealing my mouth shut is going too far.

I resort to sawing at it with the vibrations, thinking maybe, before, the vibrations hadn't been concentrated enough to cut the web and had just slipped through it. It's difficult directing the vibrations with my hands bound, but I manage to flick my finger back and forth, like I'm conducting a mini-orchestra, and the vibrations move along, sawing first at the gauzy web keeping my arms at my side.

Unfortunately, this only results in me being cut by the vibrations, my blood drawing and staining the web black in the moonlight. I groan, so disgustingly tired and fed up with the events of the day that this small cut irritates me to no end. I'm able to reposition my arms in a way that allows me to heal myself quickly. Gathering my chakra, I swipe my hand against the cut and—

The web moves away with it.

Stunned, I sit blinking at it for a while. Only when Sasuke nudges me and says, "Do it again." am I able to gather my wits about me and, in fact, do it again.

I concentrate my chakra and grab the web with it, at first shifting it, and then taking it in both my hands and tearing it apart. The web comes away surprisingly easy then, and I realize: the web has been infused with chakra in order to sustain itself. That's why the vibrations were attracted to it. That's why it takes something chakra infused to break it.

I quickly go to work at freeing myself, ripping the web before thinking to shape my chakra into sharp pinpricks on my fingers and just slice through the web, which works much faster. I have to be careful as I peel the web off my skin, lest I cut myself, and then I work on freeing Sasuke.

He gets up as soon as I'm finished and, without so much as he thank you, he leaves.

I have half a mind to follow him, but I'm so tired I also have half a mind to fall asleep on the roof, which, inarguably, is a bad idea. I decide to do neither, slipping carefully off the roof and onto the ground to find a park. While not substantially better than sleeping on a roof, it's considerably closer than my walk home, and that's enough of a compromise to convince me. Besides, I'd been sleeping in parks for the past week. One more night won't make a difference.


	46. And Fugue

**A/N:** fugue (n): A state or period of loss of awareness of one's identity, often coupled with flight from one's usual environment. You'll see why I find this to be an appropriate title for this chapter.

Anyway, thank you for your continued support and your reviews. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 46: And Fugue**

Kakashi calls off our missions until further notice, citing that we need to calm down and take time apart from each other before continuing. He's being called on his own missions, anyway, and doesn't have the time to juggle both team duties and his own. So we're left alone and, as it is, we don't see each other. Naruto and Sakura do whatever the hell they do as Sasuke and I stay in our respective houses. Sasuke mulls over Orochimaru's offer; I mull over Sasuke.

He weighs his options. Day in and day out, it's all he can think about.

We both know which option he's leaning toward. He doesn't need to keep stalling. But he does, cooping himself in his house and refusing to let me into his head as he deliberates. I grow weary of it before long, thinking only that I'd been more efficient about my decision to leave seven years ago. Within a week of the massacre, I was gone.

In comparison, it takes him more than two weeks to get out, and even then he goes back and forth between staying and leaving up to the final hour.

This isn't a victory on my part by any means.

On the night of his departure, I sit waiting for him on his porch. I watch the moon, bright and silvery against the inky black of the sky. In its crescent shape, its considerably outshone by the millions of stars dotted around it, but it's the goddamn moon. It doesn't care.

The front door clicks open softly, and I purse my lips, listening as he steps out and shuts the door behind him. He doesn't bother locking it.

"About time," I say, standing. He has his bag packed and strapped securely over his shoulders. I doubt he'll be in much need of any of those things though. "Ready to go?"

He regards me blankly, and I feel him debating on whether to tell me to go home, but it won't matter. I'm not going to leave him. So he leads the way, through the sleeping neighborhood and down a road lined with thick, lush trees on either side. It occurs to me we're taking the long way to the village gates, but given the way he's been so wishy-washy about things lately, I'm not surprised nor put off by his further attempt at stalling. Or maybe he wants to tire me out so I'll drop my guard and he can force me off his trail.

Even in the event of that happening, I'd never be able to lose his trail if I wanted to.

"Ghosting me isn't going to make me lose my nerve and go home," he says, stopping at a fork in the road. I walk ahead, hands in my pockets, as if this leisurely stroll in the park is a nightly routine.

"Not my intention at all," I say, brushing off his sentiment. "Hey, hey, let's not dawdle; don't want to lose another hour, do we?"

"You know you have no plans to follow," he says, and I sigh, drooping my shoulders when he doesn't move. "Why do you keep bothering me?"

"Again," I say, turning my nose up at him, "not my intention. I haven't been able to sleep very well these past few days, as you may know considering _your _thoughts have been keeping me up. I now have no regard for any kind of conventional sleeping pattern. In other words, I've become a creature of the night. Minus the fangs and everything, of course."

This elicits a glare from him, to which I reply with a hearty laugh. "Listen," I say, walking back to him. "I only want to see you off, Sasuke. I have nothing better to do. I've lost everything! And with you gone," I say, lowering my voice, "I'll really have lost everything."

He scoffs, pushing past me. "You're not so tragic," he says just as quietly as he walks away, and I can't help but laugh again.

"I suppose I'm not," I say, tucking my hair behind my ear. "But you have to admit, I'm a pity. Orphaned at seven with her family dead at the hands of a lord and master, tied down to a boy who doesn't care that he's betraying his entire village—betraying his _friends_—and tailing said boy who's about to abandon her and leave the two of them indelibly alone while he goes off and dabbles in the dark arts and she wallows in the aftereffects of the bond." I inhale sharply through my teeth. "Ooh, yeah. Poor girl. But, you know, I think I'll manage because I have friends who will be and always have been there for me, and I'll inevitably grow from all this pain and become stronger. Somehow, life works out that way."

He harrumphs. "I thought you weren't trying to persuade me to stay," he says.

"Not my intention," I reaffirm, allowing the distance between us to grow. "At all."

He doesn't answer and I end up coming to a stop when I feel the vibrations shift. I eye the trees suspiciously, waiting for some night duty guard to jump out. When no one does, I continue to go after Sasuke, until I see a dark mass shifting ahead. Someone gets up from a bench, their hands pressed close to their chest. It doesn't take me long to figure out who it could possibly be.

I slip behind a tree to avoid being seen and associated with Sasuke. There's no reason for anyone to know I'd been with him or even that I had any idea that he was going to leave. I would be reprimanded and endlessly lectured; they would say things like I could have given the adults a head's up, they would have been able to talk more sense into him, force him to see reason, etc.

Yeah. And they would have been more effective in their pursuits than me, and Sasuke would stay and we'd live happily ever after.

Sasuke, already irritated by my lecturing, stops, mostly out of surprise. He hasn't seen Naruto or Sakura for weeks, so how Sakura's been able to find him on his night of escape is beyond him. Perhaps this is only a stroke of luck on Sakura's part though, and she's run into him by accident.

He says, "Why are you prowling around here in the middle of the night?"

I maneuver around the trees easily, sliding closer to them in order to continue following Sasuke once he passes Sakura. I'd been serious about seeing him off. I want for his last memory of me to be the exasperating bond mate he'd left behind for his bigger and bolder dreams. I want to haunt him until all he sees when he looks back is how much bitterness he's left behind.

"I knew you'd come this way," Sakura says. "If . . . if you were to leave. So I waited here."

I freeze. Every night for two plus weeks? That's dedication.

She must really love him.

"Get out of here," he says, keeping his tone flat. "Go back to sleep."

I hear his feet plod down the pathway, past Sakura's voice. At this point, I don't feel like following him anymore. I want to take Sakura by the shoulders and guide her home. Dispel the illusions she has about Sasuke.

She won't listen, admittedly. She never does. But anything would be better than listening to her as she says, voice shaky, "Why won't you say anything to me? Why do you always keep so quiet? You never tell me what's wrong."

"I told you," Sasuke says, his footsteps stopping once more. "I don't need your help. Don't try to look after me."

I hear Sakura emit a small chuckle. She says, sighing, "No matter what, you just always hate me, don't you? You remember, when we became Genin, the day our team was first decided. The first time we were here by ourselves, you were furious with me."

He starts into a memory, only to shut it out quickly so I don't see it. I frown, displeased that, of all the things he chooses to keep from me, this memory would be one of them. I don't care, either way; what's Sasuke's is Sasuke's, and I'm not going to be the one who takes that from him.

"I don't remember that," he lies.

Sakura laughs weakly, shifting on her feet. "Yeah, I guess you're right," she says. "That's all in the past. That's when it all began though. You and me, Naruto and Kakashi-sensei. And Ren, of course."

I flinch when she says my name, at the way she says my name. Like it's supposed to draw some kind of reaction from Sasuke. "I told you Sakura," I say under my breath, sinking to the roots of the trees as it doesn't seem like Sasuke will be making it much farther with Sakura here. "I have never had any leverage with Sasuke. And you said it yourself. I was never meant to be there."

I listen as Sakura recounts our missions, each trial we had to overcome. I'm taken by a sweet sense of nostalgia, reminiscing with her about this past that is heavily glorified and romanticized, but I let it slide. It feels wonderful to pretend I can wake up tomorrow morning and Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, and I can meet at a rendezvous point and wait hours for Kakashi to show up to our mission briefing. Sakura and Naruto would berate him. He would make up an ludicrous excuse. I would roll my eyes and call him out on it while Sasuke sits stoically next to me, unwilling to comment.

We would go on our mission. We would tease each other as we train. We would come back at the end of the day with something to gripe about. And we would go home, thoroughly contented with our lives and the monotony of it all.

We would be happy.

I press my palms into my face, washing away the fantasy. I will not be so optimistic.

"It was painful," Sakura is saying, "and difficult at times, but even through that . . . I enjoyed it."

Sasuke doesn't respond.

"I know about your past, Sasuke," she says, her voice so soft the vibrations barely pick up on it. "Even—even if you get your revenge, it won't bring anyone happiness. Not you. Not me."

My anger flares when I hear her add that last part. As though she can even be included in his revenge. Like she's even a factor in whether he goes through with his plans. Although I suppose: whatever makes him happy makes her happy. Because she loves him and shit.

"I know," Sasuke says, self-satisfied. He's thought his plan through and through, and Kakashi had pointed it out to him earlier. He knows this revenge isn't going to do anything for him. But without it, what does he have to live for? It's the same with me: I will never be complete, I guess, unless this bond is broken. Even if I'm killed in the process. And it doesn't matter that I'm happy or unhappy. It matters that it's done. Only then can I be free.

That's what this is about. Being relieved of those bonds what anchor you to your suffering. Absolutely: There may be ways around the suffering that don't require you to go to such lengths, but why do anything half-assed? Especially when you've dedicated so much of your life to getting it done.

"Up until now," he says, "we've done everything as a group. But I'm different from you. I can't be following the same path. There's something else I have to do, and I've already decided on revenge. It's the only reason I live. I'll never be like you, or Naruto."

He's left out my name. He's left out my name because he knows I'm the same way. Knows I'll follow the same path. Knows I'll follow him.

"Do you want really want to go back to being alone?" Sakura demands, a new ferocity in her voice as she realizes her speeches aren't getting through to him. "You told me how painful it was to be alone, and right now, I know your pain. I may have friends and family, but if you were to leave, I would be just as lonely as you."

I shoot up to my feet, jostling the nearby brush. I don't know if it catches Sakura's attention, but I'm past not wanting to be detected. I want her to shut up. I swear to god she needs to shut up before I go out there and backhand her to see if that'll knock some sense into her thick skull.

Loneliness. She doesn't know the first thing about loneliness.

Undeterred by either Sakura's preaching or the anger rising up in my stomach, Sasuke says, "From here on out, we all begin new paths."

"Sa-suke," she cries, his name choking on her sob. "I—I love you with all my heart! If you were to stay with me, there would be no regrets. Every day—we'd do something fun every day, we'd be happy, I swear! I would do anything for you. Just . . . please, stay with me."

_Don't leave me._

I clap my hands over my ears as she goes on, crying, hiccupping and sniffling. The vibrations still draw her voice to my ears. "I-I'll even hel-help you with your-r revenge. I-I don't know what I-I could do, but I'll d-do my best to do so-mething. Please, stay with me. Or-or take me with you if you can't stay."

I dig the heels of my hands into my ears, gritting my teeth. Stop. Stop crying over this bastard who doesn't give a shit about you because he's just going to leave. Don't say you love him, don't think that what you're saying is true, because he's just going to wrench your little heart out of your chest and smash it into irreparable pieces.

Stop begging. Stop crying. Stop trying to make him stay. He will not change his mind. He will not stay. He will abandon you and leave you as alone as you have ever been. As you have always been.

I hear the chuckle rumble in my chest, the hum of his words, as though I'm the one speaking.

"You really are annoying."

Annoying. What an understatement. I lower my hands, pressing close to the trees as I feel Sasuke pass. I watch the cobblestone path warily as he comes and goes.

He is a lost cause. Stop begging. Stop crying. Stop trying to make him stay. He will not stay.

"Don't leave! If you do, I'll scream," Sakura shouts, and her last desperate attempt rings through the air so vehemently that I jump and Sasuke jolts to a stop.

Bad move, Sakura.

I hear her gasp, and when I step out of hiding, Sasuke is setting an unconscious Sakura down on the bench. He lets her down gently, carefully, as though he hasn't already broken her. For a moment, he stares at her, and I feel as though I've missed something in their exchange.

"Did you tell her I was coming?" he asks.

I cross my arms and raise my chin. "Like hell," I say. "I'd never compromise you. In all seriousness, though, she must have really waited here for you every night for the past few weeks. I don't understand _why_. For the brightest kunoichi of our age, she's surprisingly thick when it comes to you."

He reaches out, as if to brush her hair aside, but thinks better of it at the last minute. He recoils and then turns on his heels, on his way out at last.

"Not even a goodbye," I mutter, glaring at his back before looking down at Sakura. Her face is wet and streaked with tears. It's pathetic and I feel no sympathy for her. She'd set herself up for this disappointment, this humiliation. I will not be like her. I will never submit as she did to this foolishness.

Despite that, seeing Sakura in this state triggers something in me. _Do it from them,_ it says, small and weak and emaciated. It yanks hard on my heartstrings, affects me more deeply than any other voice in my head, deeper than the bond, and I have a feeling this small piece is the only part of me that really belonged to only me.

_Help them,_ it whimpers. _Do something. Please._

I run my hands through my hair, exhaling through pursed lips. And I speak up.

"Sasuke," I protest, my cries echoing in the emptiness of the night. I jog to catch up to him and seize his forearm before he can get farther, wishing for once the bond would let me win, let me help him see. He reads my motive immediately through the bond and narrows his eyes as he turns to face me, appalled that I have the audacity to stop to him now when I'd been so complacent earlier.

"I thought you had no intention of trying to stop me," he says.

"You and I both know that was a load of bullshit," I say offhandedly. "Listen, Sasuke. I know I haven't been the best friend to you, but I am making an effort. While I'm not going to fall all over myself crying like Sakura, I stand by my offer. I won't break the bond, Sasuke. I don't . . . I don't want to be alone as much as you don't want to be alone. I wasn't kidding when I said I'll have lost everything if you leave."

Sasuke stiffens. He says, "The problem with what both you and Sakura said is none of that has anything to do with me."

I stare at him dumbly, but I see what he's saying. Thankfully, I have a rebuttal. "So what happened to not wanting to see those dear to your suffer anymore?" I ask. "Didn't you say that, during the fight with Gaara? In the Land of the Waves, even. Why did you so readily sacrifice yourself then? Don't you see, Sasuke," I say more forcefully as he tries to jerk out of my grip. "You want these people around you as much as they want you here."

"Then why did you leave?" he snaps, whirling on me, and I'm so taken aback by his question that I'm left stuttering for an answer.

"I . . . I didn't realize what I had," I say.

"Bullshit," he snarls. "You knew you couldn't have both. You knew you couldn't have stayed here and been content to stay here without trying to break the bond. You had a chance to leave, you took it, and you left."

"It's not hard to leave, I'll give you that," I say, returning his glare full force. "Especially when you think you've nothing to lose like I did. Like you do. But there's more to this place than you think. I'm saying this," I hiss when he rolls his eyes, "because I've been through this, Sasuke. I left, thinking that the world out there would be better than the world in here, but now I'm back, and I've realized I was wrong. Just...give it time. Give this place time and you'll—"

"I can't become stronger here," he says. "This place will do nothing for me."

"Remember," I say, tightening my grip around Sasuke's arm. "Remember back in the forest, when Naruto was fighting Gaara? Remember how he exerted all that power and summoned that giant toad? He didn't get that power from simply training, you idiot. It wasn't until after he saw you and Sakura that he was able to summon up all that strength and defeat that monster! Sasuke," I say, pulling him back as he tries to shrug me off. "Do you see? Becoming strong isn't about isolating yourself or abandoning everything. You have to stay!"

"There you go again," he spits, "spewing your goddamn holier-than-thou attitude, Ren! Don't you get that you're no better than the rest of us? You try to act tough and like you're such a good ninja, but what have you done that's worth any kind of acknowledgment?"

_You're useless._

"What have _you_ done?" I retort as he jerks out of my grip at last. "Defeated the Demon Zabuza or his protégé Haku? How about Gaara of the Sand? Or those Sound ninja who attacked us in the Forest? Resisted Orochimaru's temptation like you've done such a good job of, as evident in how you're _running from everything_ now?"

His fist flies forward and I swing out of its way, retaliating with a sharp kick to his side. He staggers, dragging his feet against the cobblestone street to stop himself. When he looks at me, his Sharingan gleam bright crimson.

"Sakura and Naruto are your friends," I say, "aren't they? You'll lose them—what will you do then, after you've lost everything!"

His words come softly to my ears, the extra edge of the vibrations feeding them to me, and I flinch as they hit. "They don't mean anything to me," he says.

"Wh-what's wrong with you?" I ask, the coldness of his statement causing my jaw to fall wide. "I never thought that you, of all people, would take this for granted. Sasuke, we've lost everything. They're all we have left, and like hell if I let you take that away from me."

"You don't have to come," he says. "You never had to come."

"And you don't have to go," I say, unrelenting.

"Get out of my way," he snarls, "or I'll kill you."

"Solid threat," I retort. "Give our village more reason to put a bounty on your head. Plus, that'll be a surefire way to break the bond, won't it? It's a win-win for me."

"You want it broken?" he says, fed up, and a creeping feeling of dread fills my lungs. _You have done something terrible,_ the bond says. _Take it back. Take it back!_

I won't take it back.

"Fine," he says, although not in response to my thoughts so much as to settle the finality of his decision. It still causes me to flinch. "Then I hereby relieve you of your guardian duties as a Kagiru. No contacting me, no sensing me through the bond at all. No more warnings for my sake, no more of my emotions seeping into you through the bond. From this day forth, you're as free as it gets with this contract still in place."

His words knock the breath out of me. My head fuzzes over, and my vision shifts in and out of focus. There is a bone-splintering pain that shoots through my head. If I can get more oxygen, maybe it won't hurt so much. But my lungs constrict and thick needles begin to stab through my limbs. My knees threaten to give out, but I hold steady to the bench.

I think: Could this be the end of the bond? Could this be all it took to break it?

_Hardly,_ it hisses, angry, and multiplies the pain in my head until I gasp. No, of course not. Not this bond which has lasted for a century, this bond that runs deeper than blood, that runs into our very soul, binding us together.

"Quite the favor you've done me," I say through my grimace. I have to keep gasping for breath between each shooting pain through my head and migrates down my spine to hit the tips of my toes and spread to every other part of my body from there. It's like bolt of electricity has zapped all of my organs and they're in the process of failing. It eventually becomes too much, and I push aside Sakura's legs to sit down on the bench beside her. "Although it suits you just as well, doesn't it? No way for us to find you when you're gone, no way for me to predict where you'll be hiding next under Orochimaru's care. You'll be free of the village while bound to that snake. You know he wants more from you than your loyalty," I call after him as he continues down the path.

"So long as I get my revenge," he says. "It doesn't matter."

I groan, doubling over as my stomach clenches and the bond stabs at the side of my skull. I don't have the stamina to pester him anymore. He's not going to stop and I'm not going to stop him. I still have my friends and the village and a home, and I will remain here as long as my happiness holds out. I will not follow him like Orochimaru expects of me, like the bond expects of me, despite its dismantled state. I won't abandon my village. I won't lose everything.

"Never again," I reaffirm to the cobblestone streets, and I notice black drops seeping into the darkness by my feet, plopping one after another and staining the ground. I wonder if it could be raining—how convenient, considering the circumstances—until I hear myself sniffle.

I'm crying.

_No,_ I think, refusing to blink, some twisted logic inside me saying that, if I don't blink, the tears will evaporate before they leave and my eyes will all but dry of any moisture that could be considered tears. But the tears keep coming anyway and my heart aches tightly in my chest, and I wish he hadn't left.

Sasuke, Sasuke, come back.

I gather my legs up to my chest, which is tight from gasping and sniffling, and I wipe my cheeks on my knees. I lean my head against the side of the bench, shivering in the cold, my face chilled with tears. I push Sakura's legs farther away from me, irritated by her mere presence. If she hadn't shown up—

I pull myself closer in the corner of the bench and wait for the sun to rise, the sound of my crying persisting well into the night.

[+]

My eyes are wide and unfocused as the sun comes up without fail. I hadn't managed to fall asleep through the night, although Sakura has managed to sleep soundly. She fidgets, occasionally, and actually kicks her feet out at me once, but I give her a sharp shove and she stops her muttering and twitching and sleeps.

Sasuke is gone. I'm not sure how to proceed. Someone should go after him. But not me. I know I'm in no shape to do as much. I'm no use for it without the bond.

And the bond. The bond, which shakes and quivers and, in effect, causes me to shake and quiver, cries for Sasuke throughout the night, making it impossible for me to get a moment of rest. It pulls itself against the contours of my head, digging its clingy nails into the sides of my skull, and wails for Sasuke to come back. It makes the backs of my eyes ache and collects thickly in my throat. It presses me to follow after him. But by his words, by our master's own command, I can't.

The sound of footsteps approaching and echoing voices jolts me to alertness. I straighten up, blinking out the sleep and watch as two older Nin come into view. Their heads are barely visible over a stack of papers they carry, and they're griping about being ordered around by the Hokage, having to stay out to ungodly hours.

Hokage. They have connections to the Hokage. So I stand as they pass, garnering their attention. I recognize them vaguely, but I don't care to put their faces to situations.

"Hey," one of them says, stopping in his tracks. "What are you doing out here at this hour? Get your friend to wake up and go home. If you sleep in a place like this, you'll catch a cold!"

His voice, loud and piercing in the morning quiet, causes Sakura to stir. She brings her hands to her face, prepared to stretch and yawn and go through her usual morning rituals, when her eyes widen and she jolts upright.

"Sasuke-kun!" she gasps, her shoulders trembling. She scans the area, back and forth, looking for any sign that he's still around, somehow missing the sight of the three bewildered Nin before her. I move to her, pressing a reassuring hand to her back. She startles at my touch and stares at me blankly in her stupor.

"Ren," she says, and then relaxes, like, because I'm here, then surely Sasuke must be here. Her words must have gotten through to him. He must still be here. The way I avoid her gaze must give me away though because she adds, "You stopped—"

"Go home," I advise her. "Get some rest."

"But . . . but Sasuke-kun," she starts, and I cut her off with a shake of my head. She blanches, gripping my forearm so tightly she cuts off the blood circulation to my fingers. "R-Ren," she stammers, and pull my arm free. Finally, she understands. Her expression turning to one of horror that doesn't go without notice by the older Nin.

"What's the matter here?" one of them is wise enough to inquire, and I sigh. The ache of last night returns to my head as the bond reawakens, feeble and useless detached from Sasuke.

_You're useless._

The bond digs sharply into my temple and I flinch, but I push it aside, wanting first to deal with the matters at hand. The bond, like before, can be reawakened later, can be satiated later. Sakura needs to be tended to now.

"It seems," I say slowly, pushing Sakura to her feet. She's dead-weight as I steady her, and she clutches onto my hand as I finish, "Konoha's last Uchiha has decided to leave the village in hopes of gaining power from Orochimaru."

Alarm flashes over the faces of the Nin, and they tense. They exchange looks as Sakura begins crying again, her pink hair sticking to her cheeks. She mutters, "I tried to stop him. I tried," under her breath, like she's trying to convince me of it, and I soothe, "I know, Sakura. I know," and she leans against me, her knees shaking under the weight of her body.

"I tried," she cries into my shoulder, and I am made wholly uncomfortable by her tears. "I tried."

"What are your names?" one of the men say.

"This is Haruno Sakura. My name's Ren," I say, saving my last name for when I can use it as leverage, because undoubtedly I'll be able to use it as leverage. Especially in the case of Sasuke.

"We're going to need you to tell us exactly what happened," the other Nin says, and I nod and tell them. Sasuke'd left around midnight. We'd intercepted him here. We understood his motive: Power. Power Orochimaru had promised him when he branded Sasuke with the curse mark in the Forest. We don't know how far he's gone or how quickly he left after he managed to slip away from us, but he's gone. He's definitely gone.

The men make a noise of displeasure and one asks, "How sure are you that's he's gone to Orochimaru?"

"One-hundred percent," I answer. "He mentioned him and didn't deny it when we called him out on it. There's nowhere else for him to go, in any case."

They exchange quick glances before telling us to go home, once again, but I refuse, offering that I may be able to clarify any questions Tsunade might have. "My clan is Kagiru," I say, and hope they know the story of my lineage to catch on.

Apparently, they do, because they consider each other for another moment before nodding and welcoming me along. I push Sakura away, glad that she had been too preoccupied by her tears to notice my conversation with the shinobi.

"Sakura," I say gently, taking her by the shoulders. "Sakura, go home. Get some rest. I'm going to go with these guys and talk to the Hokage. We'll find a way to catch up to Sasuke. We'll . . . we'll try to bring him back."

"You _have_ to bring him back!" she says, desperation knotting her voice. Her tears start rushing out faster, and I pull away from her. "You have to, Ren, please."

I stutter for a lie, but I know I shouldn't get her hopes up. Sasuke won't come, just as he didn't stay. "Go home," I say, not meeting her gaze. "Just go home, Sakura."

I'm sure this doesn't convince her, but we don't have time to waste. The Nin shuffle quickly to the Administration building despite the loads they carry. They usher me into the building in front of them and I lead the way to the Hokage's office. I feel like I'm retracing my steps from the months prior, when I had returned and been directed here under the escort of an older Nin. Except the old man doesn't await me at the end of the hall and the news I bring is much darker than what I had brought with me then.

Back then, I knew I was going to get off easy. This time, I'm not so sure.

The Hokage's office is as stiff as I remember. The only difference is there's no heavy smoke from the old man's pipe to press on my already tight lungs. I watch Tsunade wipe the ink from her cheek, erasing evidence that she had been sleeping, and greets her lackeys with a wave and an easy grin.

"Thanks for your hard work!" she says over one of the Nin's indignant cries about having to work while she slept. The Nin's partner shakes his head and looks around his mound of papers and says, "Anyway, Hokage-sama. There's news we'd like to report."

This perks Tsunade's interest and her eyes settle on me. "You," she says. "You're one of Naruto's friends, aren't you?"

"That's irrelevant," I say as the men set down their papers. "I don't mean to be rude. There are more pressing matters at hand, Hokage-sama."

And then one of the Nin fills in Tsunade as the other goes to shut the door. I stand, fidgeting in my spot, behind the men as they speak, and Tsunade's face goes through the emotions of shock and horror, then downright disbelief. She slams her hands on the table as the men finish telling their story and demand, "Is that true?"

"From what we heard from Haruno Sakura and Kagiru Ren"—the men's eyes flash to me and Tsunade narrows her eyes at me as though she suspects I am in cahoots with Orochimaru as well.—"there seems to be no mistaking it."

"Orochimaru seems to have been planning this for a while," I say, pushing my hair from my face as a yawn threatens to escape. "He came to us during the Chuunin exams and—and threatened more than once that Sasuke would be drawn to him after the curse mark was placed on him. He said that Sasuke wouldn't be able to help it, being that he's driven by his ambition to avenge his clan."

"And he," Tsunade says, slowly, "Orochimaru, told you all this in the Forest of Death?"

"Yes," I say, but she still regards me as though she doesn't believe me. "_Yes_," I say again, rolling my fingers into fists. "He told Sakura as well. I'm not just making this shit up so you go after Sasuke and leave the village vulnerable."

I know as soon as I say it that I shouldn't have. The man who stand on either side of me tense, and their feet twitch toward me, as though ready to pounce on a moment's notice. Tsunade notices the change in their attitudes, but doesn't wave them down. She means to intimidate me, but I won't be so easily threatened.

"You act as though you don't know the history of your own clan," she says. "Part of your family broke off and helped to settle the Sound when time came, you know that? They were the ones who planted that idea into Orochimaru's head, even though he didn't need any convincing."

"Well, they're all dead," I say. "So let that same fate fall upon me if I'm making a terrible decision right now in telling you about Sasuke rather than going after him myself."

"Hey," says the man standing on my right. "Mind who you're talking to!"

"To add on to that," Tsunade says before I can retort. "You family, the Kagiru, has close ties with the Uchiha, don't you? How will I be able to tell that this isn't a trick?"

"Are you talking about the bond?" I say. It feels weird saying it out after keep it a secret for so long, but since Orochimaru knew about it, I'm not surprised that Tsunade would know about it too. "Because when Sasuke left, he severed it! He told me I wasn't bound to him anymore if I didn't want to be and—I can't _sense_ him, otherwise I would have recruited people and gone after him myself."

A bark of laughter escapes her mouth and she says, "_Bond_. You expect me to believe in such a thing? The Uchiha-Kagiru bond is just a myth—"

"It's _not_ a myth," I say, wishing I could prove it to her, but knowing that would be counterproductive to what I want to happen. Not to mention, it would be incriminating since I just told her Sasuke has severed it. No matter what, I can't win. Until I think to say, "The Third believed in it. He believed _me_. And if you know what's good for this village, you'll believe me about this too."

Tsunade purses her lips, clasping her hands together. She appraises me for another minute before dropping her head in thought, fiddling with her fingers as though she can't decide how to act. However, when she speaks, it's with the utmost confidence.

"Izumo, Koteshi," she says to the two men at my side. "There is someone I would like for you two to bring to me. The Genin who was recently promoted—what's his name?"

The men exchange glances of confusion, and I'm given time to process what she asks. "Nara Shikamaru?" I prompt, surprised at the sudden mention of him. "What could you possibly want with him?"

"You know him?" she asks instead of answering my question. "Good. Then here's a small chance to prove your loyalty: fetch him for me. No use explaining to you why yet; when you're both here, I'll tell you. Now go. We don't have time to waste."

"I—" The men step aside before I can ask how I've been dragged into doing this favor for her. They look at me critically, their gazes asking, _Why are you dillydallying? You've been given a direct order by the Hokage._ So I go, slowly first, then breaking into a sprint when I remember how urgent the situation is. We have to catch up to Sasuke, have to be able to get to him before he gets outside the Fire Country, otherwise he'll be lost.

There's no part of me that truly believes we'll be able to bring him back though. If tears and pleading and the prospect of being able to have a happy life here in the village won't stop him, then a mere show of force won't do much good either.

But we'll send out troops anyway, make an attempt to bring him home. We'll make toys out of our shinobi to lure him home, even if he breaks them beyond repair in the process. Shinobi are our little playthings after all, and some may need to be sacrificed in order for us to retain the secrets, and thus the integrity, of our village.

Because when it comes down to it, it's Sasuke's lineage we're trying to preserve. With that Sharingan, god knows what Orochimaru can do to us. We can't let one of our most powerful assets fall into the wrong hands. Forget protecting him. Forget trying to convince him he's in the wrong. We just need him home.

He doesn't matter to us anyway. So far as I'm concerned, those who break the rules and codes of the ninja world are considered trash—and those who abandon their comrades are lower than trash.

They're dead to me.

In the face of it all, I wish I had thought to run away too. Not with Sasuke, but in a general direction where I might stumble upon ways to break the bond or find a way to live while forgetting about this all together: the village, the people here, Sasuke, Orochimaru, the bond.

Granted, I don't want to leave. I don't want to lose everything. But—but I think leaving this all behind would be easier than being left behind myself.


	47. Imago

**Disclaimer:** Same as in previous chapters. Please enjoy, comment, and review. Thank you!

**A/N:** This early update is brought to you by my forgetfulness! Last week I forgot to mention: there are only a few more chapters until we reach the time skip, and I have some extra pages to write filler scenes after I figured out all the main events that would be taking place. Are there any particular happenings you guys wanted to see over the two and half year span? If you have anything, leave them in reviews or message me about your ideas, and I'll see if I can fit it into the story. Thank you! And thank you for your support, sticking around, and reading my story. I appreciate it very much.

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**Bound  
Chapter 47: Imago**

The Nara estate, in my opinion, always smells of freshly cut grass, no matter what season. This is what I'm thinking as I ring the doorbell, teetering slightly on my feet from the lack of sleep: Freshly cut grass, and the fact that Tsunade had somehow overlooked the deadness in my eyes this morning and sent me on this menial task of 'fetching' Shikamaru for her. Sure, I'd made an effort to appear presentable, but surely I didn't look well-rested enough to do anything but stand there and look pretty, despite my intention to answer questions Tsunade may have had.

To my surprise and great relief, the door is answered without much delay by Shikamaru's mother. Seeing her makes me fatally aware of my fatigue and hunger. I want to collapse in her arms and have her tuck me in and feed me each morning, soothe me with her gentle words—but Sasuke.

"Good morning, Yoshino-san," I say with a small bow of my head.

"Ren!" she answers, the surprise blatant in her voice. "I have to admit it's alarming to see you here so early. Are you all right? You look exhausted. Why don't you come in and rest for a bit? Shikamaru and his father are having—"

"No," I say, stopping her as she's about to step aside and let me in. I know, once I'm granted entrance, I'll never want to go back to the Hokage's office and Shikamaru will get the message too late because I'll fall asleep on his couch and I won't wake up until next week.

"No," I say again, and worry begins to dig creases into Yoshino's forehead. "I'm strictly here on business—the Fifth's orders. But thank you."

"The-the _Fifth_?" she echoes, a hand fluttering to her chest. "What's going on?"

"Nothing too serious," I lie, and the lines on her face ease. I'm at once filled with guilt lying to Yoshino like this. There's no woman I respect more in the entire village. But there's no reason for her to worry. Not yet anyway. "I actually carry a message from the Hokage for Shikamaru. If you could send him out, please."

"Of course," she says, and lets out a small sigh. "You kids are about ready to take over the village yourselves, aren't you?" I'm about to reply, but she cuts me off and says, "Oh, look at me, wasting your time with my old thoughts. I'll go get Shikamaru."

I'm glad as she shuffles back into the house. Mostly because I can drop my pretense of being awake and alert, but also because I don't know how I would have kept the conversation going. In any case, we need to finish with the briefing and dispatching soon. Even without the bond, I know Sasuke is getting farther and farther away the longer we dwell in the village. If we're lucky, he'll be wandering the forest surrounding the village looking for a way to get to Orochimaru; he'll be easier for us to track that way.

But in the case that he might have someone leading him to Orochimaru—

"Ah—Ren?"

Shikamaru appears at the door, checking the street behind me as though he's expecting to find someone accompanying me. Although he seems a bit groggy from the earliness of the morning, he's dressed and ready for combat, except for the quintessential flak jacket his new Chuunin status allows him to wear.

"I thought a messenger from the Hokage was supposed to be here," he says, scowling.

"I am the messenger," I say, rubbing my eyes. "But that's beside the point. The Hokage's requested an audience with you. Hurry up and get ready. We have reason to believe the situation is, at the moment, quite dire."

"What?" he asks, brow furrowed.

"You probably wouldn't be asking questions if I weren't the one here to tell you this," I say, my irritation rising the longer I stay awake. "I'm sorry I took away from your reality check, but the old lady sent me here in lieu of the real ninja. But it doesn't change the reason why I'm here. So." I take him by the shoulders and forcibly turn him around, shoving him inside. "Go grab your gear and whatever else you may need on a mission. I'm giving you one minute before I go into your room myself and drag you out here. Hurry."

I'm generous and give Shikamaru a few seconds more than I promised, but when he returns, I yank him out of his house and push him into a run to the Hokage's office. He tries to get me to tell him what's going on as we go, but I shake my head, refusing to talk. I've gone an entire day without sleep. The least he can do is wait for the Hokage to formally tell him what's wrong. At this point, whatever I tell him would probably just come out as babble anyway.

Upon my return to the Hokage's office, the air is heavy and harder to breath than when the old man had Third had filled it with the smoke from his pipe. The Nin I had run into earlier this morning are gone, and Tsunade sits still and serious behind her desk. There are no telltale signs that she has gotten any work done in the interim between my leaving and my return, and when we enter her office, her face is grim and Shikamaru tenses.

"What's going on?" he whispers to me as I close the door. I wave him away, ushering him to stand before the Hokage while I hang back, pressed against the wall where I can rest my legs and mind, and maybe even my eyes for a half a second while they speak.

Their words are garbled in my ears, but I hear the inflection in their tones: Tsunade's always steady, pressing; Shikamaru, alarmed and urgent. I wish I'd followed the orders of the Nin and gone home when they'd told me to. I could sleep, pretend none of this was happening, have fanciful dreams of darkness.

I think of running away again, a thought I quickly dismiss when Tsunade's eyes flash to me, golden in the sunlight that's starting to stream through her open windows. Shikamaru follows her gaze and I have a feeling they've been talking about me, but I can't think of a way to respond that wouldn't make it apparent that I hadn't been paying attention.

So I settle on asking, blankly, "What?" and Tsunade shakes her head and Shikamaru turns back to face her.

Maybe they hadn't been talking about me after all, I think, breathing a sigh of relief, until Tsunade says, "I'm sure Ren will be able to fill you in on whatever else you need to know. For now, you must get going. You have thirty minutes to gather as many worthy Genin as you deem fit and leave immediately!"

This is our dismissal, and Shikamaru and I take our cue to leave. As he turns, he says, "This is going to be troublesome, but being that it's someone I know, I just can't forget about it." His face twists with displeasure. "I'll see what I can do," he sighs, as if he has a choice whether to go on this mission or not.

"There is someone I'd like to recommend to you," Tsunade says as we're halfway out the door. "Uzumaki Naruto. He…is a handful, but he's strong-willed. I believe he was in the same cell as Sasuke as well. His inside knowledge may be useful if worse comes to pass and you have to beat Sasuke into submission to bring him back."

I feel Shikamaru looking at me as Tsunade finishes speaking, like I should mention I was also in the same cell with Sasuke, but I'm already out the door. He follows soon after. In the hallway, I give myself the chance to read his expression. He seems to have been worn out by the conversation alone. He rubs the back of his neck, exhales through tight lips.

"This is absolutely—"

"Troublesome?" I finish, tugging on the ends of my hair. "I know. But let's not linger. Come on."

"How did you get involved in all this?" Shikamaru asks as we break through the doors of the Administration building. "The way the Hokage was talking made it seem like you're more informed than she is."

"Doubtful," I say, wondering if she knows about the bond too. She's certainly old enough to have heard the stories. Orochimaru had known. But that may have been because of his digging into the Uchiha lineage. "I'm only here in the first place because—"

Because what? I had sensed through the bond that Sasuke would be leaving and had gone over to his house to walk him out? And I remember how I had started to tell Shikamaru about the bond the day in the park before our conversation had been cut short. I had promised Shikamaru I would tell him about the bond, that I would find him and tell him everything later. I could tell him now, come clean about the bond and everything it entails and why I've been up for twenty-four hours, running around the village and exerting all my stamina instead of sleeping and minding my own business.

_No_. A small but firm _no_ from the small but wholly me voice in the back of my head. Shikamaru doesn't need me to drop the bombshell that is the bond on his shoulders, not in the midst of the stress from this mission. He needs to focus on the task at hand, and any information that isn't immediately necessary to him shouldn't be brought up to muddle his thoughts. It's a sound justification to hold off on telling him about the bond.

It just sounds like an excuse.

"Sakura's been acting shady," I say, hoping the pause between when I'd last spoken and now hadn't been long enough for Shikamaru to be suspicious. "I—couldn't sleep last night so I went on a walk. I caught Sakura prowling the streets and followed her to see what she was doing. I guess she had a feeling Sasuke was going to leave, because she managed to intercept him near the Academy. She tried to stop him, but she ended up unconscious and Sasuke ended up slipping right through our fingers. I sat with her all night to make sure she was okay, and then went with the Nin who found us this morning and reported to the Hokage."

Shikamaru hums in thought. He must see the holes in my story. He must know I haven't been out of my house these past few weeks—if I had gone out, I would have been with him, training, lazing in the park, eating dinner at his house with his family—and that even if I had left, I wouldn't have stepped within two feet of Sakura with our team out of commission. And what a coincidence for me to have walked to the Academy, which is much farther from my house than I'd like to admit, on the same night Sasuke happened to be leaving and Sakura happened to be there. And, if Sakura had been knocked out in her attempt to make Sasuke stay, then was the fact that I was awake and running around mean I hadn't tried to do anything at all?

These thoughts must run through his head. He must be suspicious. But maybe I'm over-thinking it and all he's focused on right now is getting a viable team together to pull off this mission because he asks, "So, if you've been up all night, I suppose you wouldn't be able to come on this mission with me."

"No," I breathe, following him as he begins to take the lead. "I don't think that would be a good idea."

Shikamaru lets out an exasperated breath and slows his pace near a vaguely familiar apartment complex. "The Fifth suggested I take Naruto with me," he explains, "and I think I can agree with her on that. If anyone can convince Sasuke to come back, it's him. Not to mention, Naruto has the right energy to bring to this mission. I figured if you were to come too, it would even things out more, since you know both Naruto and"—I flinch, expecting him to say Sasuke's name, but he finishes with—"me. With you out of the picture, this is going to be complicated. I guess I'll have to settle with any other Genin I run into."

"Well, let's get Naruto first," I say, guilt once again overwhelming me. Why did I have to be such a brat last night and see Sasuke leave? He would have left regardless of my protests, would have been fine leaving on his own. Then I could have woken up this morning none the wiser and helped Shikamaru with his mission. And I could have told him about the bond and tracked Sasuke with it. The bond wouldn't be this shattered thing, lying useless in my head while we're in dire need of it. I wouldn't be useless.

"Yeah," Shikamaru is saying, waving me up the stairs of the complex. "I think his apartment is—here." We stop in front of a door indistinguishable from the rest, and as Shikamaru knocks, he lets out a small groan. "It's too early to deal with this guy," he says. "I can feel it."

Before I can respond, we hear the deadbolt click. The door opens a few centimeters and a dazed Naruto reveals himself, rubbing his eyes and wearing a ridiculous nightcap over his blonde hair. "Yeah?" he answers, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, though I can tell he's not really fighting it. "Ren? Shikamaru? What are you two doing here?"

"Naruto," I say, fighting the urge to rub my own eyes and yawn. "Get dressed and get out here. Sasuke's run away to Orochimaru and we—that is, Shikamaru—needs your help to bring him back."

Immediately, Naruto's eyes widen and he shouts, "WHAT?" his door flinging open in his alarm as though seeing us fully will make what we've said more believable. Shikamaru frowns, pressing his finger into his ear as Naruto says, just as loudly as before, "You're _joking_!"

"No joke is worth getting up this early," I say, crossing my arms and shifting uneasily on my face. "Come on, Naruto. We're running out of time."

"I've gotta change," he mumbles, darting back into his house. He doesn't bother to close the door as he changes, and I look away, pressing my fingers to my forehead. Shikamaru grumbles, "Why…why did he have to shout?" as things bang and clatter in Naruto's house.

It isn't long before Naruto is out in the morning with us, shutting the door behind him. Shikamaru takes the lead, Naruto close at his side and listening to him as he explains the situation. I have enough energy to keep pace, but by the time Shikamaru has reached his next destination, I've fallen considerably far behind. I'm glad I hadn't pretended that I was well-rested enough to go on this mission. It would undoubtedly end in failure if I did.

As we close in on the front door of a house I don't recognize, Naruto looks at me and says, "Are you coming with us, Ren?"

I shake my head, weary. "I don't have that kind of stamina right now, Naruto," I say. "I've been up all night with—" I think better of finishing that sentence and shake my head again, saying, "I'm not sure how I'm still standing right now."

Naruto frowns, disgruntled by my explanation. "But you've always had this way with Sasuke," he says, lowering his gaze as though he's embarrassed to admit it. "It was like…he always seemed to tolerate people a little more whenever you talked to him about it first."

F—not Naruto too. I don't need everyone in the village suspicious of what's going on between me and Sasuke. Obviously I haven't been doing enough to hide the bond. Well, not that I'll need to now, being that the bond is 'broken' and Sasuke is gone.

"You and Sakura," I say, sighing as we wait for someone to answer the door. "You two like putting these fanciful thoughts in your heads about Sasuke and me. I've never been able to convince him of anything. And if I have, it wasn't recently. He hasn't been himself since the Chuunin exams. Since…since the curse mark."

Naruto knots his eyebrows together, as though he hasn't noticed it himself. He says, "You haven't been much yourself either, Ren. I figured it was because Sasuke—"

At last, the door opens and there is Chouji, already cradling a bag of chips in his hands. Shikamaru grins at him and swiftly relays the information to him while Naruto's confusion turns into a scowl and he seems irritated. When Shikamaru finishes talking, Naruto stomps his foot and says, "Didn't you say _excellent ninjas_, Shikamaru? If we need someone, let's ask Shino or—"

Shikamaru effectively cuts Naruto off with a simple raise of his hand and explains, "Chouji and I have been working closely as a team for a long time. Aside from Ren, he's the easiest person for me to work with."

"And right now," says a voice that comes out of the blue, "Shino's out on a mission with his dad."

A bark subsequently follows the voice, and we turn toward it. There stands none other than Kiba, Akamaru at his feet. They both have the same smirk on their faces as Kiba lets out a heavy sigh, shrugging as though what's happening before him can't be helped.

"I guess this is what I get for waking up early and trying to take walk," he says.

"You would _willingly_ wake up this early for a walk?" I say, gawking. "Good lord—"

Another voice breaks through the air, saying, "Well, that all sounds like quite the dilemma to me."

It's Lee, coming up behind Kiba. He leans on his crutch, but not as heavily as weeks before during the exams. "While I wish I could assist you myself," he says, waving us forward to follow him, "it'll be hard for me to do so in my current condition. However, if you're looking for another person to join your team, I know just the person for the job."

The pieces fall into place as light steadily floods the sky. Lee recruits Hyuuga Neji for us, and we're out by the village gates within five minutes of our encounter. Shikamaru's squad of five is as good as it gets given the current conditions. As Lee and I stand back, watching the boys prepare to leave, bitterness rises in me. Sasuke couldn't have picked a better time to leave us. With our government in transition from the Third to the Fifth and most of the Jounin and Chuunin trying to make up for the shortage of hands after the invasion, we're too disorganized for the success rate of this mission to be very high. Not to mention, these are Genin we're sending out to bring him back, in the face of the Nin who could be escorting Sasuke right now, who are probably all well above Genin level.

This is a death sentence.

Shikamaru begins to brief his motley team on the conditions of the mission and dangers they could be facing, and I'm reminded of our last 'track Sasuke' mission, when Shikamaru had taken charge of our ambush plans. It's unnerving to see the parallels of this situation to the one during the exams—Genin are being sent out on an A-rank mission because we're short on shinobi, they're going to be led by a canine-shinobi duo but a canine nonetheless, and they're chasing Sasuke who is once again too obsessed with proving his strength that he doesn't consider us, the people he's leaving behind.

Sasuke—it's odd, thinking about him and being unable to tune into his feelings and hear his thoughts. Although, I suppose this is how it is for most normal people. In spite of that, I almost miss it, that presence in the back of my head that never left me alone. Annoying as it could be sometimes, it was comforting, knowing there would always, _always_, be someone with me, no matter where I went or how bad things got. Even if that someone was Sasuke.

Oh god. I can't honestly be missing him. With all the shit things he's done to us in the past twelve hours, he doesn't deserve another second of my attention, unless it's to find a fitting punishment for abandoning us. In fact, maybe I should tell Shikamaru to make room in his plans for me, so when we find Sasuke, I can dole out my wrath immediately, instead of sitting here, waiting and worrying.

I press the heel of my hand to my forehead and suppress a groan. My head is heavy and achy, and it's becoming harder for me to connect my thoughts rationally. I need to get some rest before I lose my sense of restraint and start acting out.

Lee's chuckle distracts me, and I look up to see him grinning at Shikamaru, who is getting up from the floor for I don't know what reason.

"What's funny?" I ask, keeping my head low to level out my thoughts.

"Nothing," Lee says with a shake of his head. "I'm just impressed. He came up with a perfect formation for a mix of five random ninja. It's incredible, is all."

I watch Shikamaru as he brushes himself off, asking if there are any questions about his plan, the whole of which I've apparently missed. The others stay silent and Naruto shakes his head. Shikamaru stand straighter, pushes his shoulders back as though he can finally feel the responsibility of his leadership pressing down on him. And I say, my voice so quiet that I don't think Lee hears me, "Yeah. He is pretty incredible."

"Well," Shikamaru says, sighing, "if you have nothing to say, I guess I'll finish up with the most important thing." He shifts on his feet and puts his hands into his pockets, bowing his head a little as he considers his words. "Sasuke's not a very close friend of mine," he says, "nor is he someone very important to me. However, he _is_ a fellow shinobi from our village, just like you and me. He's our comrade. This is why we'll risk our lives for him. This is the way of the Leaf."

They're noble words—noble, but terrifying even so. Shikamaru thinks Sasuke has been lured off in all his innocence by an evil man. But no—_no_, I want to say. That's not how it had gone. Sasuke had abandoned us. He had considered his options, weighed us against Orochimaru, and chosen Orochimaru, despite everything he would lose. He has lost everything, and he doesn't care. He is not our comrade. Don't sacrifice your lives for him. Stay. Stay.

"Even someone like me," Shikamaru finishes and I repeat the word over and over in my head—_stay. Stay. Stay._—waiting for him to hear me like Sasuke used to hear me, "can't goof off on something like this. I am responsible for all your lives."

They fall into a stunned silence during which I begin to panic. What have I done? By not putting up more of an effort to make Sasuke stay, I've sentenced my friends to their deaths. I could have done more—I should have done more. I should have anticipated that someone would be sent after Sasuke, should have anticipated that we wouldn't let him go as easily as I had. I'd been so stupid not to consider this would happen.

Sasuke. Goddamn Sasuke.

I jump when Lee puts his hand on my shoulder, his brow furrowed together with concern. "Are you all right, Ren?" he asks.

"I'm okay," I say, taking deep breaths. "Nervous. As good as Shikamaru's plan sounds, I can't help but feel nervous. You know."

Lee glances at the team gathered before him, their pouches extended in offering to Shikamaru as he goes around and checks their stock. Lee nods, saying, "Especially at times like these, you always wish you could do something to help your friends. But sometimes the most you can do is hope for them and support them, and sometimes that is more than enough for them to come home."

I want to laugh at his naivety, as though such useless hoping and wanting could actually affect the outcome of events. So far as I knew, if I wanted something done, I did it myself. None of this wishy-washiness, none of the helplessness of sitting back and watching as everything goes by.

I don't say this to him, of course. I merely hum ambiguously, and go to Naruto, who absentmindedly stares at his pouch in his hands. "Hey, Naruto," I say, and he jerks up before diverting his gaze quickly as though he expects me to reprimand him. "What's the matter?"

"I…I promised Sakura," he says, his voice barely above a whisper, but so fervent that I feel he has to get this out or else risk bursting. "I told her Sasuke would never submit to a guy like Orochimaru. _I_ thought he would never—" His face twists with angry disbelief, and my guilt expands in my chest.

I could've tried harder. I could've. But I didn't.

"I think we'll be okay," I say, squeezing his forearm as Shikamaru comes up beside me. "I think, no matter what happens today, we'll be okay. Don't worry about it."

Naruto blinks at me, and offers me a weak smile as I let him go. I step aside to give Shikamaru room and meet his eyes for a moment. His face is still serious, but beneath it I see his familiar idiosyncrasies: the small twitch of his lip indicating that he's tired, the way his eyebrows crease his forehead as he mulls over how troublesome his situation is. And I find myself wishing he didn't have to go, that I hadn't exerted all my energy staying up, that I hadn't pushed Sasuke over the edge so he wouldn't have broken the bond. Then I could have tracked him down myself and tagged along with him under the pretense of wanting to stay by his side, only to find a way to contact that Leaf and have them send reinforcements to help me drag Sasuke home, and possibly out Orochimaru along the way.

"All right," Shikamaru says when he finishes checking Naruto's supplies. He brushes his hands together and, with his sights set on the road ahead, he says, "Let's go."

They start to file out around me, and I fight the urge to sneak away with them. I'm no use sleepless and distracted as I am by my sleeplessness. Not to mention, if the bond catches wind that I'm pursuing Sasuke, it'll start to act up and give me deterring headaches. Best I stay home, I convince myself. Best to wish and hope and wait.

"Wait!"

The boys freeze in their tracks. Undoubtedly, the desperation in the voice that calls out to them causes them to turn around with uneasy eyes, but I know without even looking that it's Sakura coming up to us.

And there she is, face brimming with sadness as she approaches. Her eyes are puffy and sag from her own late night out, and her lukewarm green eyes are dull as ever.

"You should be resting," I chide, only to remember what she had told me a few days ago about being a hypocrite. I nearly laugh out loud at the memory, at the truth of it, but there's no point in wasting energy, especially when the situation in itself isn't funny at all.

"I—I know," she says, averting her eyes to the ground. "I only—"

"I heard from Ren," Shikamaru says, stepping up beside me and propping a hand on his hip. "Sorry, but I can't take you on the mission, if that's what you want. Even you couldn't convince Sasuke to stay, right?"

Naruto inhales sharply, glancing back and forth between Sakura and me, expecting one of us to tell him the full story of what had happened last night. But Sakura doesn't answer, only fiddles with her hands, and I will feign amnesia brought on by my lack of clarity at the moment if he asks me to tell him outright.

"Seems like we have to force him to understand," Shikamaru says. "Sakura, your job is done."

Sakura's face contorts, the green of her eyes gleaming as they begin to well with tears. I make a noise of displeasure as she begins to cry and step away from her, as though her tears are directly correlated to my proximity to her. It may as well be. I knew Sasuke planned on leaving, knew when he would be leaving down to the very second. I could have told Kakashi or even gone to the Hokage.

The bond slams into my brain, demanding why I hadn't thought to do either of those things before all this. Sasuke was my charge, and I let him run away, right into Orochimaru's clutches. Sasuke is gone, and it's my fault. My fault.

"Hold on, Sakura-chan," Naruto says, speaking quickly as the tears begin to roll down her cheeks. "You met Sasuke before he left?"

Sakura keeps her head low, ashamed. She clenches her teeth and her hands squeeze more tightly together as she hopes to stop herself from shaking with the sobs that are already choking through her lips. "Naruto, I beg you," she says between each gasp of breath, "Please. Please bring Sasuke back."

_Sasuke,_ the bond says, joining in on Sakura's tears. _Sasuke, Sasuke. Hear me. I'm here, I'm right here. I'm always right here. Always, always._

It's incessant cries in addition to Sakura's pleas makes me wobble on my feet. The bond shoves against my head, trying to break through and find a signal, and when it still can't sense Sasuke, it decides to pull energy from other parts of my body. My lungs constrict. My fingers and toes tingle. My vision blurs in and out of focus.

"I couldn't do it. I couldn't stop him," Sakura says, looking at him with her watery eyes, those watery eyes what glance to me for a moment before restraining themselves and keeping from uttering their next sentence. I can see it though, that she means to say, "And Ren. Ren couldn't stop him either."

"The only person," she sniffs, "who can probably save Sasuke-kun now is you, Naruto. Only you."

"Stop," I say, glaring at Sakura, whose head jerks up in surprise. I'm so tired. I'm tired of the bond, griping and blaming me. I'm tired of Sasuke and his goddamn inferiority complex, causing all these people so much trouble. I'm tired of Sakura, moping and crying because Sasuke won't give her the time of day. But most of all, I'm tired of not being able to think straight in the midst of all this because I'm literally exhausted.

"Stop," I say again, and I already feel the words coming up, rash and angry and uncensored in my unstable state. I dig the heel of my hand into my forehead as the bond digs its feet into my brain, ordering a cease and desist on the words that threaten to spill out of my mouth, words that don't speak in Sasuke's favor. But I don't want to condone Sasuke's actions. If he really wanted to be with us, after all, he would have stayed. He wouldn't have even considered running away to Orochimaru, wouldn't have thought abandoning us and leaving us to worry for him even a possibility. Sakura keeps harboring these false images of him in her head, glorifying who he was because he doesn't like what he's become, doesn't want to admit he's the traitor he is. She expects him to go into a retrograde and revert back to who he was, but he's too far gone. He doesn't care.

He doesn't need to be saved. He doesn't need sense talked into him. He needs to be brought back, that much I can agree on. But the last thing he needs is for us to pity him.

My name is said softly, so that I'm probably the only one who hears it. Shikamaru comes closer to me, places a hand on my shoulder, and that simple gesture is enough to anchor my thoughts and bring my anger down. I wish there was always a way for me to calm myself this easily so that I don't speak out of turn and lash out on people like I was about to do to Sakura.

Naruto is saying something, something that makes Sakura hold onto herself and cry harder, something that makes Lee smile kindly upon him and Kiba tease him, and I hear the last of his statement, him saying, "I won't go back on my words! That is my ninja way!"

And the way he says this, the way his voice is so full of vehement sincerity, makes my heart clench with sadness. I want so badly to believe he'll be able to follow through with his promise, but I know better. I know better than to fall for words that, while sincere, will amount to nothing in the long run, because it takes two to make his statement true. He cannot bring Sasuke back without Sasuke relenting first, and there's no way in hell Sasuke will give up. There's no chance of it whatsoever.

This mission will be a waste. My friends, _my friends_—all of them, retuning beaten and bruised and broken, and I helpless to do otherwise.

I turn away from Naruto and Sakura, leaving them to their little moment. They can go on believing all they want that deep down Sasuke is a good guy. I know better.

"Are you all right, Ren?" Shikamaru says, as I rub my achy eyes. My fatigue is overwhelming now. My knees shake as I stand and my brain threatens to shut down where I am and force me to sleep. I think, briefly, to master the art of sleepwalking may be in my future after all.

"Tired," I say, brushing my hair aside. Shikamaru continues to stare at me, seeing that there's more to it than that, and the kindness he emanates only makes my heart hurt more. I can't lose him too.

What have I done?

I step forward and hug Shikamaru. Over his shoulders, I stare at the trees looming outside the village gates. Shikamaru will be out there soon, undoubtedly encountering some of Orochimaru's subordinates. He'll be facing ambushes and people with the sole intention of killing anyone who gets in their way, and I'll be stuck here, left behind yet again.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. His usual musk fills my lungs: freshly cut grass and early morning dew. But underneath that, I smell the sweet scent that brings back memories of when I'd stayed at his house after the massacre—the sweet scent of the awe-inspiring kindness that is Nara Shikamaru and completely, absolutely him—and I wish, not for the first time, that I had been bound to someone like Shikamaru instead.

"Be safe," I say, pulling away from him, and, regarding the other team members, I say, "I mean that to all of you. Please come back alive as you are now. But most importantly: come back."

Shikamaru blinks at me, at a loss for what to say, but then remembers the mission and gripes for a moment about wasted time. Without further ado they leave. I stare after them as they disappear into the horizon, Sakura sniffling behind me still and Lee speaking words of comfort to her.

I leave them there without acknowledging either of them as I go.

I don't know how far I've walked before my chest starts to hurt with every breath I take. My throat closes up and I stagger to the side of the road, leaning against a tree for support. It feels like someone is taking a hammer and nail to my head, and before long I'm sinking to my knees, gasping.

_Sasuke,_ the bond cries and Of course, I think. Sasuke. But he'd severed the bond and—

_I cannot die yet._

"Sasuke," I whisper in my surprise, because that voice was his, and I wonder how it's possible when he's disengaged the bond. Perhaps his orders are still overlooked when he's in peril, because a presence creeps up in the back of my head, faintly buzzing with alarm. The bond grabs frantically onto the small glimmer of hope that Sasuke has returned and hones in on the signal he's produced, but to no avail.

Just as quickly as he'd appeared, he slips out of the bond and I'm alone once more. The bond's subsequent wails reverberate through my head and it's a while before I can get to my feet again.

_I cannot die yet,_ he'd said. What is he talking about, dying? He isn't supposed to be in danger at all. And goddamn him if he dies before I can get my hands around his pretty little neck.

_Go after him,_ the bond demands, and it presses into my mind's eye the image of a forest clearing, indistinguishable from any forest clearing anywhere in the Fire Country. But even more, it gives me the pinpoints of where it had sensed Sasuke. It's the only thing it'd been able to pick up before Sasuke slipped away.

The path is seemingly laid out before me. I can see the turns I'd have to take in order to get to him, feel that if I take myself northeast, I'll be able to find him possibly before Shikamaru and his crew. The bond will fuel me. It'll give me the push I need in order to get to Sasuke and bring him back.

_No._ The same small _no_ as before, from the small but wholly me voice. I won't subject myself to that. And my will holds firm as the bond continues to screech and protest on the way home.


	48. Lost and Found

**Disclaimer:** Same as in previous chapters. Please enjoy, comment, and review. Thank you!

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 48: Lost and Found**

With the bond acting out, it turns my journey home into a blur, so when I wake up on the hardwood floor of my foyer, I'm in a bit of a shock. I don't remember laying down in my foyer to sleep, or even opening my front door or walking up my front porch, all essential steps to getting to where I am. Unfortunately, I do remember Sasuke leaving and Shikamaru leading a team to go after him and Sakura crying her pretty greens red.

I shake my head to clear my thoughts, sitting myself up and going into the living room where I promptly collapse on my couch and try to sleep more. But the lights that sink into my living room makes it hard, and even when I turn my back to the window and press my face into the couch cushions, the light still manages to seep through my eyelids.

The bond has calmed since hearing Sasuke's voice. It's begun to realize that one incident was a fluke, unlikely to happen again, and has settled itself to moping about Sasuke in a reclusive corner of my head.

I think about the days Sasuke had been in a coma and wonder, should we fail in retrieving Sasuke, if I'll be aimlessly wandering the village again, unable to enjoy anything and having no will to hang out with anyone. If that's the case, there'll be nothing left for me here. I may as well leave myself, track down Rei, and help her in breaking the bond, because I can't live like that. I won't.

Just as I start to fall asleep, I hear a soft _thump_. I ignore it, thinking it could be a bird that has flown into my house or some other small animal that is dumb enough to run into my walls. Then, the _thump_ comes again, closer, and again, and then my name is called.

Sakura. "Ren," she says. "Are you home? Your front door was open, so—"

I stay frozen on the couch, hoping she'll think I'm sleeping and leave me alone. Her footsteps continue to encroach, however, and she has a hand on my arm and shakes me out of my fake slumber. I stir, pull myself upright, and glare groggily at the wall as Sakura says, "Sorry to bother you, but I want to talk to you. I brought a peace offering."

I turn to her in time to see her raising a plastic bag onto the table. She rolls it down to reveal multiple containers of takeout, and I can smell the mouthwatering aroma that begins to fill the room. My stomach growls with a hunger I hadn't been aware of before, and I relent, "Fine. Have a seat."

I sink to the floor as she does, pulling myself close to the table. She spreads the containers over the table and distributes the utensils, and before she even starts into whatever she wants to talk about, I'm digging into the first container I can reach. It's rude, but whatever. I don't owe Sakura anything.

"So what do you want?" I say after swallowing a mouthful of noodles.

Sakura remains silent, considering her words, and then says, "Whatever I've done to upset you, I'm sorry. I mean," she adds quickly when I look up at her, "I can imagine why you'd be mad at me, but—I can never really tell with you."

I set my food and chopsticks down carefully, asking, "And why do you think I'm mad at you to begin with?"

Confused, she says, "When we were seeing everyone off. You spoke up and told me to stop and…and then you just stalked off without even looking at me."

"I was tired," I say. "I wanted to go home and sleep. Which I did, as you may recall coming into my house and waking me up."

Irritation flashes across her face. "Then, when I was talking to Naruto," she says. "You told me to stop. What was that all about? And don't make excuses, Ren. I saw how angry you were. I heard it in your voice."

"Yeah?" I retort, deciding that a few parcels of food isn't worth being interrogated in my own home. "If you're so perceptive then, why do _you_ think I snapped at you? Besides the simple fact that I'm mad at you."

She stammers for a response, and I laugh when she can't even gather a few syllables together to form a whole word. I get up from the table and return to my seat on the couch, lying out because Sakura's reason for being here has ruined my appetite.

"Before you come here assuming you know what's wrong with me," I say, "you should consider what's wrong with you first, especially if you think there's a correlation between my unhappiness and being around you. Ask yourself: 'What's gone wrong in the past twenty-four hours that could be bothering Ren?' I think you'll find I have more problems than 'Sakura is keeps showing up unwarranted.'"

"Why do you have to be like this?" she says, sitting straighter and clenching her hands into fists on her knees. "You never tell anyone what's wrong, and then you get defensive whenever someone tries to help you. You're always trying to face everything alone when you don't have to. You and Sasuke have that in common," she says quietly.

I sit up at her accusation, glaring at her. "Don't you dare compare me to that bastard!" I hiss, digging my nails into the seat cushions. "I may never share my problems, but I would never turn my back on this village to solve them."

"And then there's the way you react to Sasuke," she says, jabbing her finger at me as though I've just made a great point. "One minute you're worried sick about him, and the next you hate his guts. Care to explain that? Or maybe you'd rather get angry about it and throw me out of your house."

"Don't tempt me," I say through gritted teeth.

"It doesn't matter to me why you hate him," she says, her hands relaxing in her lap. "I only want to know why you even bother with him if you hate him so much. Why would you risk your life, running headfirst into the mist in the Land of the Waves or barreling into the Forest of Death? And after Sasuke's match in the preliminaries and when he'd gotten himself hurt in Otafuku Gai."

"I don't—"

"Gai-sensei told me," she says with a wave. "In the hospital. He told me that you'd arrived at Sasuke's side in time to heal his injuries before they were too serious."

Goddamn Gai.

"Your mindset doesn't make sense to me, Ren," she says. "If you didn't bother with him as much as you do—"

"I'd be happier?" I finish, smiling bitterly at the idea. "Consider this, though, Sakura. You care about Sasuke and Naruto. You go out of your way to protect them and make sure they're happy. You, understandably, only concern yourself with the happiness of those most dear to your heart while I concern myself with Sasuke, who I obviously don't like that much. But, presently, you don't appear any happier than I am. Which leads me to believe that your mentality is as flawed as mine. In any case," I say, speaking over her as she begins to protest, "if you really want to know why I bother, I'll tell you."

Sakura keeps her gaze steady, but I can tell by the way she leans forward in her seat that she's been waiting to hear what I have to say. The bond shudders, but is otherwise unconcerned. There's no reason for it to throw a fit. Sasuke is gone.

"You and Naruto," I say simply, and in a way that explains everything. Sakura doesn't understand, though, by the way she tilts her head, expecting to hear more. I explain, "You guys care for Sasuke, and, contrary to popular belief, I care about Naruto _and_ you. So I started to look after Sasuke too. And sometimes, Sasuke would be nice and sweet and I would be able to tolerate him, but then he just started on this downward spiral and," I say, taking a deep breath and rubbing the back of my neck, "I don't know. I snapped on him sometimes. I did like him though. I liked him enough to care about him as his own person. But, in the moment, it didn't matter whether I liked him. He made you guys happy, and I wanted you guys to be happy. So I got into some less than ideal situations. I ran after Sasuke and I kept running after him even when I didn't like him because I didn't want to see you or Naruto hurt. Al—oh, no, Sakura," I groan, slapping my hand over my face as her lips warp and her eyes squeeze together with tears. "Please don't start crying again!"

It's too late for that. She hiccups, rubbing her cheeks off with the backs of her hands and saying, "Sor-ry. Sorry. It's—you and Naruto. You've both always looked out for me. And I feel like…I feel like I've never done enough as a part of the team. I'm so—so useless."

I flinch at the word, forced to remember the way Itachi had said it to me nearly a month ago. Useless to protect Sasuke, useless to keep him home. Useless to spare my friends from this kind of sadness.

"Listen," I say, wondering if I should move closer to her and comfort her or something. I decide against it, knowing she probably doesn't expect as much from me. "Sakura, you remember what I said to you in the hospital about not wasting your time with Sasuke. Even if—I mean, _when_," I correct myself when Sakura regards me with wide, panicked eyes. "_When_ Sasuke gets back, he'll want to keep training and getting stronger right? So, I think, if you want to catch his attention, you should get stronger too. Then you can train with him and spend as much time with him as you like."

Sakura wipes away the last of her tears, and says, "Yeah. I see what you're saying." She laughs and shakes her head. "I can't believe that you of all people would be giving me dating advice."

The vein in my forehead twitches and I press a smile to my lips. "Yeah," I say through my teeth. "Funny how that works out."

"But," she says as a realization hits her, "I'm no good at ninjutsu. I don't have a kekkei genkai or even a secret family technique. I don't have any combos or—"

"I'm going to stop you there," I say. "You're talking to the wrong person if you want training advice. I don't have much anything either."

"You have your, er, vibrations, right?" she offers, and it occurs to me I've never directly told Naruto or Sakura about the Genshindou. "Not to mention your medical jutsu. That in itself could be considered a secret family technique."

"Yeah, but anyone can learn medical jutsu," I say, shaking my head. I blink at her, then say again, "Yeah. You know, anyone can learn medical jutsu, as long as they have precise chakra control, which you definitely have. Why don't you try it? Then you'll have even more reason to be around anyone you want. Just claim they have a sickness or an injury and play it cool with your medical knowledge."

She stares at me blankly folding her hands together as though to get a feel of what it would be like to heal someone. "Are you offering to teach me?" she asks, and I can't help but snort and laugh.

"God no," I say, and when she looks offended, I say, "Not because I don't like you. I just think I'd be a terrible teacher. Patience and all that. Not one of my many virtues. I—ah, I know this might be a long shot, but you know our new Hokage? That lady Tsunade who came in to heal Sasuke. She's a legend when it comes to this medical stuff. You should see if she's willing to take on an apprentice. I'd been considering it myself, but I think you would put her teachings to much better uses."

Sakura starts to argue, saying something about how I should take the chance, being that I've been in the field longer and probably want it more, but I'm distracted by a figure coming up the street, straight to my house. A ninja, older than us, and in a hurry by the way he runs. I hear his feet clomping up my porch and go to the door while Sakura is mid-sentence.

"Ren," says the Nin, one of the ones from this morning—Izumo, I think. He doesn't bother knocking because my door is still wide open. He braces himself against my doorframe and says, as I enter my foyer, "Sorry to interrupt, but the Hokage wants to dispatch a squad of Med Nin."

"After the Genin who left?" I prompt as Sakura comes in after me. "Have we received any word of their conditions?"

"None," he says. "She wants to send it as a precaution, given the current circumstances. There's no telling what could have happened by now."

"Right," I say, reaching for my neck to see if I have my headband. It's not there. I don't have my holster or my pouch either, and I wonder if any of it will be necessary if I'm just being sent out with a group of Med Nin. Better safe than sorry, I think, and ask Izumo to wait a moment while I prepare my things.

Sakura trails behind me as I go to my room, asking, "What's going on, Ren? Are you being dispatched too? Has something happened already?"

"Standard procedure," I tell her shortly, pleased to find my holster and pouch packed and ready to go. I clip them on quickly before sweeping my headband up from my nightstand and tying it around my neck. "Don't worry about it until we get back. Stay as long as you want," I say once I'm out in my foyer and Izumo is stepping aside to let me through. "There's not much in the house, so don't worry about locking the door when you leave and I'll see you later, Sakura!"

I turn and hit the road at a run, Izumo at my side. He explains, "Hokage-sama has already sent for reinforcements; I believe a squad from the Sand is running assistance to Shikamaru's team right now. The team you'll be sent out with is a group standard medical personnel as we won't be expecting a fight—they'll be too far away from the village by the time we reach them that any Nin along the way will either already have been defeated or well into the Sound Country. There will, however, be a single tracker Nin among your ranks, just to find the Genin, but you'll be acting squad leader."

"What?" I ask. "What do you mean?"

"I mean exactly what I said."

"But," I say. "But why? She could have sent out any team of Medical Nin without going out of her way to assign me to the mission. It would have been faster."

Izumo grins as we close in on the village gates. I can see a group of agitated Med Ops in pristine white uniforms shifting on their feet, ready to take off. "She heard about your skill in medical jutsu from someone," he tells me, "and it's someone she trusts, I assume. She also mentioned that you were friends with Shikamaru and would be able to assist in any conflict, should it come to that. So she specifically requested you. Besides," he adds, "we have a shortage."

"Yeah," I mumble. "I heard."

Izumo introduces me to the Med Ops quickly, and while I don't establish myself as a leader as well as Shikamaru had, they seem ready to follow my orders, and we leave immediately, the tracker calling out directions. There are five of us all together—one to tend to each of the Genin who have gone on the mission when we find them. I only hope we find them all at once.

I'm not sure what time it is or how long the boys have been pursuing Sasuke, but about a kilo into the forest I sense a disturbance in the vibrations. I suppose 'disturbance' is the wrong way to put it. A _calm_, more like, that is out of place in the wild. There is a clearing where the vibrations hold strangely still, undisturbed by the rustle of leaves or by animals hustling in and out.

A trap of some kind maybe, but if Shikamaru and co. had come this way, they would have already fallen into it. Unless Akamaru had been effective in his role as watchdog and warned the boys about it before they tripped it.

"Hold," I call out to the team, who stops promptly along the edge of the too calm clearing. I caution my team to edge forward slowly, but it doesn't take us long to recognize there's no threat here. There is, however, evidence of a destructive fight. Earth has been dented into craters, and rocks that have been upturned jag from one point of the clearing to the other. Trees have been crushed into splinters, their leaves billowing in the wind that flits past.

I pull the vibrations close, their calm making it easy for me to sense life. The small beat of a bird's wings. The easy clatter of an insect's feet against the rubble. As we delve further into the ruins, the vibrations alert me of a body, too large to be anyone of the Genin I'm looking for. So they had run into enemies after all.

"Ah, Ren," one of the Nin call out, and I can hear the hesitation in his voice as he says my name. He's wondering if he should add an honorific behind it, like I deserve anything of the sort just because I'm temporarily ranked above him. "There's someone—"

"No," I say, raising my hand and swatting away the suggestion. "They're not one of us. And they're dead. Leave them. Maybe the Hokage will send out a scout to pick it up for information later, but they're no use to us."

We move ahead, through the clearing, and the tracker in the group points me in the direction the team had taken. "If there's no one to be found here," I say, climbing over a tree that has been split in half, "we might as well—"

The vibrations flutter feebly, and I freeze. I wonder if they had been pushed by a breeze, but then I feel it again: The staggering strength of the vibrations reverberating against my skin. I give chase to the small ebb of energy, shouting for the Med Nin to follow behind me. I penetrate the outer edge of the forest and am about a meter in when the vibrations give another push, a calling.

_Here,_ it pounds, drawing me farther into the forest. _Here. Here._

"Here," I say, falling through a cluster of bramble. And here is Chouji, slumped against a tree, his chest barely heaving. I kneel beside him, pressing the back of my hand to his cheek and whispering his name over and over to see if I can get a response.

"He's alive," I announce as the Med Nin close in on me. "He's breathing but barely."

"He doesn't appear to have any severe external injuries," says one of the Nin, kneeling beside me and running her hand over Chouji's arms, torso. I pull the vibrations close to him, following her fingers as they push into his joints, searching for injuries. "No internal bleeding or damage taken either, that I can feel. So why is he—"

The vibrations sink into his skin, running through his veins, measuring the chakra flow through his body to make sure they're not clogged. Unexpectedly, the vibrations give a shudder, slowing and then resuming their pace at a faster rate. Once, twice, three times this happens, and I understand.

"This goes well beyond internal and external," I say, "if that makes sense. From what I can assess, it feels like his body is trying to regenerate itself, but before it can fully reach its healing point, the cells break down and die because of the strain of it. I—" I groan in frustration, pushing my hair back. Standing, I move aside and order, "One of you take him back to the village. Get him to the hospital immediately, and call on the Hokage. Dealing with cell damage at this level is beyond my skill level, but I'm sure she knows how to fix it. The rest of you, follow me."

"Roger," says the Med Nin beside me, gathering Chouji onto her back. She's gone within seconds, and I let out a sigh, wondering if I'll be as helpless in this case as with the others we encounter. As I ask the tracker in our group to lead the way to Shikamaru and the rest of his team, I notice, etched into the tree at my eye-level, an arrow, pointing in the direction the tracker says. I lay my hand over the arrow, feeling the ragged edges where a kunai has chipped the wood.

They'd been expecting Chouji to catch up to them.

"Kagiru-san?" one of the Med Nin ventures, tapping my shoulder. I dig my nails into the bark of the tree and turn away, saying, "Sorry. Let's go."

The sun is sinking lower behind us. It's not quite dusk yet, but it's late. These boys had set out around six in the morning, meaning Chouji would have had to sit there for more than half a day, dwelling in his injuries. It's a miracle he's been able to last this long at all. I can only hope he makes it to the hospital in time to be saved.

I berate myself. Of course he'll make it home in time. Of course he'll be healed. Such is the relentless will of fire.

"Oh—up ahead!" the tracker says over his shoulder, snapping me out of my thoughts. "Two people. They don't appear to be moving!"

I leap ahead of him, gritting my teeth. Without hesitating, I take the vibrations and settle them around the two wounded only to find that just one of them is our own. Neji, laying spread eagle on his back, his black hair strewn all about his head. Blood pools into the grass, staining his clothes, and I'm at his side, pressing my hands to the wound that pierces through his shoulder and exposes the grass he lays on.

"Neji," I say, my breathing knocked off kilter by the sight of him so defeated. "Neji, Neji, Neji."

"Kagiru-san, what can we—"

"His other wound," I say sharply, directing one of the Med Nin to the hole in the side of his stomach. The flesh there is twisted as though it has been drilled through. Like the wound I'm working on, it burrows completely through his torso, exposing the stained red grass beneath. "He's loss too much blood, he won't last much longer. Just heal the torn flesh, kill the infection. Neji," I say, lowering my head. I know there's no point in talking to him, but the brain sometimes registers words, conversations, while its conscious is asleep. If I can get some words of encouragement through his head, then maybe, maybe he'll last longer. "Hey, just a little bit more, okay? We're going to heal you up, and in just a little bit more you'll be home. Keep breathing."

"What do we do?" asks a Med Nin behind me. "These wounds are too extensive even for _us_! By the looks of things—"

"He'll be fine," I say, sweeping my hand down Neji's chest. "His organs are intact and his lighter wounds have eased. Once we stop the blood loss—he'll be fine."

"You can't expect us to believe that," says the Nin, and I imagine he has his nose raised in their air and is sneering down at me.

I don't bother dignifying his statement with a response. To the Nin working with me, I say, "Take him back to the village too, and step on it. Ask for reinforcements when you arrive, and should they use the excuse that we have a shortage on our hands, _demand_ for those reinforcements. Showcase Neji's wounds if they need convincing. You two," I say to the others as the Nin beside me nods and begins to lift Neji onto his back. "Come. If this is any indication to how the others will be, we need to move quickly! We have too much distance to cover in too little time."

I help ease Neji's transition from the ground to the Nin's shoulders, and when I take his arm gently, I feel his muscles twitch. I glance at his hand where a white feather sits in his palm, waiting for his fingers to move in the slightest. When nothing happens, I press the feather into his hand, wrapping his fingers around it, and while they don't tighten, I imagine that they do, and that he opens his eyes and smiles and promises that he'll be all right, that he'll stay alive for as long as he can help it.

As soon as the Nin carrying Neji leaps off, I wave the remaining two forward. We're continuing on Shikamaru's trail when I notice the second body I had completely disregarded when I realized it was an enemy. Fear fills my stomach as I recognize the ninja who we leave for dead, and as we jump from tree to tree, I see more evidence—silvery webs that buzz with the last remnants of chakra—that yes, that ninja had been one of the Otonin who had attacked Sasuke weeks ago.

Assuming those four came as a team for this mission, we still have two more catastrophes to face before I reach the last one, the one, hopefully, who will have Sasuke. When it comes down to it, that is still our goal. Get Sasuke. Bring him back. End of story.

And as I think about Sasuke, the bond begins to stir. It makes another weak attempt to find a signal and then gives up. Or so it feels. Until it starts to burn deep in my chest and put more speed into my step, blurring my vision with _Sasuke, Sasuke_.

I grimace, clutching my chest as my lungs set to fire, and come to a stop, wincing when one of the Med Nin ask, "Hey, what's wrong?"

_Sasuke,_ the bond says, and I blink faster as my vision begins to blur and all the breath is sucked out of my lungs. It can't be Sasuke. The bond has been broken.

_Not broken,_ the bond hisses as the Med Nin begin to swarm me and I wave them off. _Never broken._

No, of course not. But Sasuke had done almost the same by suppressing it. I'm supposed to be able to feel this power he emanates, so dark and overwhelming that I'm sure it's the curse mark being released. I can feel it coursing through his body, making him shake because, yes, he's got his power, and if he continues to Orochimaru, he can get more of it. He will have more of it, no matter what anyone says.

And then he's gone.

I groan as the bond slams into my head, wanting to continue the communication with Sasuke. The Med Nin are still around me, asking me questions and trying to take my pulse, but I brush them off, insisting that I'm fine. A temporary lapse of clarity because of my rough night, because of the sore sights I had seen today. They aren't convinced, but when I direct them to continue with the mission, they do as I say and we're off without further disruption.

[+]

I run a hand through my hair, a gesture I've repeated so many times today, I wouldn't be surprised if my hair looked like one giant puff standing on ends. Breathing out slowly, until all the air in my lungs is gone, I examine the forest—or lack thereof, really—in front of us with tired eyes.

"What's happened here?" asks the tracker in my group, and I prod a log of wood by my foot, kicking it aside to find more blocks of wood beneath, like someone is preparing a large fire pit to take down the whole forest. All the trees within a hundred meters of us have been chopped into chunks and layer the ground thickly, as though all the trees decided to crumple like buildings in an earthquake. There are some wiry remains of trees that had just managed to escape whatever misfortune that had befallen them, and I wonder if I'm supposed to be able to find people beneath this rubble. Because while I'll leave the enemy behind to rot in their graves, I will not leave my friends.

I tune into the vibrations, waiting to feel a discrepancy in the waves, the Med Nin following after me. But even before the vibrations alert me, I hear voices and glance around to see who's speaking. The tracker in my group taps my shoulder and says, "Over there, Ren-chan."

I follow the point of his finger and my heart thumps harder. Shikamaru is jumping down from a tree, a girl at his lead. They exchange a few words, and Shikamaru says something that makes her laugh, even though by the looks of his scowl he didn't mean for it.

_He's okay_ is the only thought that registers in my head as I bring my team forward, calling, "Shikamaru!"

The pair look up and I identify the kunoichi with him at once, although, I realize, I should have been able to recognize her by the oversized fan she holds upright beside her. It's Temari, looking a little smug to have reached Shikamaru before me, and says, "Reinforcements? You're a little slow on your feet. Honestly, you Leaf Ninja have no sense of priority."

"For some reason," I say, "I feel like Temari being here explains all this." I wave to the destruction around us and Temari grins, pulling her fan forward affectionately.

"In any case," Shikamaru says, "what are you doing here, Ren?"

"The Hokage sent me out to do some patching up," I say, motioning to the Med Nin behind me. "Quick clean up and retrieval. It doesn't look like you need any help though."

Temari harrumphs, rolling her eyes. "I came last minute and saved this guy's sorry ass," she says. "He was getting a pretty bad beating, and from another girl, no less. It was like a déjà vu from the exams. I half expected him to forfeit."

I laugh and Shikamaru frowns, leaning his head away from us as though he can't stand to hear any more of our talk. I apologize to him meekly, taking his pulse and making sure everything is in order. I notice the awkward slant of his index finger on his left hand and raise it for examination.

"Genjutsu," he explains as a Med Nin hands me a small splint. I straighten his finger and he winces, gasps, and his hand jitters as I take it in both my own. A green glow begins to leak from between my fingers as I heal his broken bone.

"That should keep you comfortable until you get back to the village," I say, wrapping a bandage around his finger in order to keep the splint in place. "Thankfully you only managed to get away with a few cuts and bruises and a broken finger."

"Yeah, things seem to be looking up from here," says one of my men. "With the condition of the first two, I thought—"

I send him a glare that promptly shuts him up, but Shikamaru hasn't missed his words. His hand tightens around my fingers, the splint digging uncomfortably into the crook of my thumb. His eyes are wide, panicked, and he says, breathlessly, "Chouji. What—"

I yank my hand free and, turning to Temari, I ask, "Where are the other two? Kiba and Naruto."

"We were just coming up on these guys when we saw one of the boys fall down a ravine not far from here," Temari says, a new stoic air to her. "He was pursued by what I assume was one of the Otonin. Kankuro went after him, the one who fell, and Gaara went ahead. They've probably caught up with them by now."

Shikamaru clears his throat, but I don't miss the anxiety that clings to his words. "There was another Otonin who came at the last minute and took Sasuke," he says, his eyes flickering over my shoulder, back to the village. "Naruto followed him."

"Well," I say, "if this battle is any sign of how the rest of them are going, they should be fine with the Sand helping them. Thank you, Temari. One of my Med Nin will assist you back to the village, in case some side effects from the genjutsu sets in."

I send the one who had spoken out of turn back with Temari and Shikamaru, and the tracker I send into the ravine, figuring that he'll be able to find Kiba much faster with his ability. I go ahead by myself in the general direction the tracker had pointed me before he left himself.

I feel awful for withholding Chouji's condition from Shikamaru, and acting in a less than reassuring way, but there was a matter of getting to the last of them. Shikamaru can badger my Med Nin all he wants on the way home, but he won't be any more comforted than if I had said nothing at all. Besides, I didn't want to admit that I couldn't help Chouji or Neji, that it could be my incompetence that leads to their deaths.

* * *

**A/N:** The author's note was so long I decided to put it at the end this time so as not to delay your reading pleasure.

So, I have a question: Would you guys mind if one of the time-skip chapters is considerably longer than normal chapters? My main problem with writing such a long chapter is I don't know if what I write is interesting enough to hold your attention for however long it takes to read a chapter and then some with the extra pages. There is, admittedly, a whole chunk of it I could cut, but it's a fight scene. I feel like I haven't shown Ren fighting much; she mostly sits around and whines, so I wonder why anyone would believe she's as talented a medic as people make her out to be or skilled enough to have the Third Hokage allow her to go around the Fire Country on her own. If you guys could give me your opinions on the little bit longer chapter, I would love it so much.

In the meantime, go to deartbeezy dot tumblr dot com if you want to read about what else I have planned for future chapters of BOUND. I have teasers and slight spoilers posted there, most of which are post-time skip. Enjoy!

Thanks to Eryn and Hanan for reviewing BOUND this week. I appreciate your comments and suggestions very much and will definitely take it into consideration as I write the next part of BOUND! And infinite thanks to all of you who continue to read. I appreciate you infinitely too. /endrant


	49. Escape

**Disclaimer:** Same as in previous chapters. Please enjoy, comment, and review. Thank you!

**A/N:** I'd like to thank Artemis1922, Hanan, and Cookie Krisp for reviewing and giving me your feedback! I appreciate it so much and it really means a lot to me. I could gush all day at your kind words, but I'd mostly like to thank you guys for helping me refine future chapters. Also, it seems most people are in favor of a Ren/Sasuke pairing, which I don't even know how to respond to. So I'll leave that there and thank you for reading and consistently returning and I don't know if I've ever told you this but I love you guys so much. Thank you.

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 49: Escape**

Pushing my thoughts away, I fall deeper into the forest. There is evidence of activity everywhere: Broken branches, scuff marks left on the bark. The scars descend, down through the trees, and I follow them closely, careful to keep my chakra low in case there are more of Orochimaru's men hiding out. Obviously, someone is looking out for these Otonin if back-up had come just as the Genin were able to catch up to Sasuke. I can't be caught off guard if I hope to reach him myself.

Ahead, two bodies of chakra garner my attention. They are calm, unthreatening, and I slow. Sasuke and Naruto, I hope, speaking peacefully to each other, with Naruto's words of wisdom finally getting to the other boy. But, no, the chakra aren't familiar enough to be either one of them, though they are familiar, and when I break through the last of the trees, I'm puzzled to find Lee and Gaara, sitting side by side, catching their breath.

"Ah, Ren-chan," Lee greets, at ease. "How is it you're here?"

"I should ask you the same!" I say, jabbing a finger at him. "_You_—you were—"

Lee grins at me, swiping his cheek where a cut burns his skin. "The Hokage is truly amazing! She operated on me this morning, and I was able to leave by late afternoon."

"No," I say, kneeling at his side and pressing my fingers to his cut. In one smooth motion, I heal the cut and wipe the grime from his cheek. "Don't try to fool me. If your operation was just this morning, you're not even supposed to be out of bed. You _sneaked_ out, didn't you?"

There's no trace of shame on his face as I say this. He only sniffs and says, "I have a duty to my comrades—"

"And that duty is to heal completely before exerting yourself!" I berate, knocking him upside the head. "If Gaara hadn't shown up, would you have been able to make it through your fight half-rested?"

"I—"

"In Lee's defense," Gaara interrupts, "he was faring well before I showed up. I merely finished things off." He makes a vague motion with his hand, and I'm drawn to the scene beyond the edge of the clearing. I let out a noise of strangled surprise when I see a field of spikes as white as bone sprouting ten meters into the sky, sharp and jagged.

"Good…good god," I mutter, pressing my forehead into the palm of my hand. "I don't even."

"Anyway, if I hadn't shown up, Naruto-kun wouldn't have been able to go after Sasuke-kun," Lee says, and that's enough for my head to snap up and forget my qualms about Lee's state of health.

"Which way did he go?" I demand, taking Lee's shoulder. He flinches and I ease my grip, allowing small bits of my chakra to seep into his muscles and soothe the swelling I've notice too late.

"Across the field," Lee says, "but, if you plan on following him, it won't be easy for you to get to the other side with the bone yard in the way."

"Bone yard?" I ask. "What do you mean, 'bone yard'?"

Lee explains, describing the battle they'd had with the Otonin, whose kekkei genkai allowed him to pull out the bones of his body without problem and use them as weapons. "Gaara sunk him into a sand pit," Lee says, "and I think the Otonin used all his energy to perform this final mass attack before dying. Those spikes you see out there are his bones."

"Well," I say. "If he's dead, then I think I'll manage. But first, let me do _my_ duty and heal you guys."

Lee massages his shoulder where I grabbed him too hard. He seems surprised that it doesn't hurt as much as it had before and says, "I suppose I was able to get away with minimal damage, thanks to Gaara. I'm all right."

"You okay, then?" I ask, shuffling closer to Gaara.

He pauses, searches my face for something he can't find, and then says, "Yes."

"Of course," I say, wondering why I had even bothered to ask, and I pull my sleeve over my hand and press it to his face, smearing the grime that smudges his pale skin. I need to do something for him, and I suppose it'll keep me occupied for a moment longer before I have to confront Sasuke. "You're sweating like crazy," I say, and he flinches as I clean him, his eyes shifting uncomfortably away. As I dab his forehead, his tattoo becomes apparent. I brush my fingers against it lightly before pulling away.

Love, huh? Lot of good it's done for me lately.

"All right," I say, standing. "You guys both look fine. But if you want to wait here for a moment, some Med Ops will be here to escort you home."

"What about you?" Lee asks. "Ren-chan, I advise you not to go after Naruto-kun and Sasuke-kun. They're on a whole different level than us. And there's something about Sasuke-kun that doesn't feel right. When I came to the field, his chakra was—"

"I know," I say, my hair standing on ends as I remember what had happened as I was making my way over to Shikamaru. "But, like you, I have a duty to my friends. You can understand that, can't you, Lee?"

"But—"

I shake my head, not wanting to hear anymore of his protests. "Naruto and Sakura are my friends," I say. "And whether I like it or not, so is Sasuke. Plus, Naruto and Sakura care about Sasuke with all their hearts. They love him, and I haven't exactly been supportive of all the effort they put into helping him when I should have, because of all the people in the world, I think that…Sasuke needs it more than anyone." I sigh, annoyed that I'm babbling to two near complete strangers. This isn't any of their business, and it's not my place to unload this on them. "Look, I don't have time to explain myself at the moment, but understand I need to do this for myself as much as I need to do it for them."

"You're looking to this as an apology," Gaara says abruptly. "You're looking for forgiveness by doing this. Aren't you? You're looking to make up for everything that you've done. Or haven't done, it seems."

I blink at him, inhaling sharply. An apology for all the things I haven't done. That would take days. But yes, essentially, Gaara is right.

My eyes burn, but I hold onto my breath and hope it'll be enough to stop the tears I feel brimming. I've cried enough this past day, I think, and it hasn't done anyone any good. I hold my head high and say, "Yeah. That's exactly it."

Gaara nods, closing his eyes. "I understand," he says. "If you'd like, I'll help you get over the bone yard. My sand can carry you to the other side."

My breath catches in my throat. I'm so close, and with Gaara's sand I could possibly be going even faster than if I were to try to travel over the bones myself. I open my mouth to accept his offer when I realize: my breath is stuck, as though my lungs have completely shut off in that moment of shock. My body, likewise, has locked up and while I try to move my fingers, nothing happens. My vision sharpens then dulls, like I'm looking through and adjusting a telescope, and it serves to make my head dizzy and ache. The ground sways beneath my feet, and I close my eyes as I try to regain my equilibrium, but no avail.

A sick feeling rises in the pit of my stomach, and I connect it immediately to the bond. Sasuke. Sasuke is in trouble. His chakra is all wrong and his muscles are being strained to their limits. He needs me to calm him. He needs the bond to take some of the stress of his body.

_No,_ I think. _No. You said you didn't want that anymore. You said you wouldn't do that anymore. You've put this on yourself. This is your own fault!_

The bond hushes me, easing his fire into my lungs, sweeping me off my feet and crushing me under the pressure of Sasuke's pain. The grass blurs in and out, smearing between my fingers, and as I clutch onto the blades of grass to keep my head from spinning, my vision goes black.

I blink, hard and fast, dropping my head to the grass that I can still feel gripped in my hands. I can smell it, feel the moistness of the soil on my forehead, but there's no light splitting through the blades. Just darkness, and I wonder what the bond has done to me that I've gone blind. I can't go blind, not now. Not while I need to find Sasuke. He's so close! What is it doing when I'm so close to him?

Hands take my shoulders, lift me up, and lean me against the tree as I rub my eyes, thinking this has to go away. I can't be permanently blinded like this. Not when my friends need me most.

"Ren-chan," Lee says, his voice near, and I reach out. My hand grazes his cheek, mere centimeters in front of me, but not even an outline of him appears.

_Sasuke!_ I think, hoping my voice blasts his head and throws him off, knocking him out of whatever frenzy has put me in such a state. But the pain continues and for a second I see flashes: a waterfall, a mass monument, blood trickling over my hands. And Naruto.

"Naruto," I gasp, jolted by his beaten face, his features that have been heightened by a scarlet chakra. I dig the heel of my hands harder into my eyes, and when I move them away, I see.

Lee crouches next to me, face filled with concern, a hand still on my shoulder. Behind him, Gaara is leaning forward over his knees, seemingly on the rise to come to my aid as well, but I shake Lee off and stand. Despite Lee's protests, I say, "Gaara. If you could please. The sand."

"Ren-chan!" Lee grabs my arm, but I tug out of his hold, saying, "It was nothing! Gaara—the sand, please."

"I may not be a medic," Lee says, frowning and blocking my path, "but whatever happened to you wasn't nothing."

"As if you have any right to talk," I say, wiping the dirt off my pants. "You're the one who got into a life-threatening battle the day bone splinters were removed from your spine. Besides, what just happened—that's exactly why I need to go. And it doesn't matter if I get your help either. I'm going anyway. Please don't stop me."

I shove past him steely, moving as fast as I can and stumbling over tree roots in the process. My foot catches on a thick root and I'm falling so quickly I don't think to throw my hands out to stop myself. But my body slams into a rough patch of dirt and I'm okay, and my feet are heaved up, off the ground, and I'm floating.

I push myself up and look down. Beneath the crater of sand that I'd landed on, the ground is steadily moving farther away. Gaara has done as I've asked of him and created this island for me to get over the bone yard. By the time I think to turn around and thank him, I'm halfway across the field of shining, bright white bones, and on my way to Sasuke.

Sasuke. Sasuke, Sasuke. Every time my heart beats, it's racing for me to get to Sasuke faster, faster faster. Each breath I take sounds like _SasukeSasukeSasuke_. With every blink of my eye, I only see Sasuke. Sasuke. Sasuke.

Sasuke. He's so close. As I jump off the sand on the other side of the bone yard and run through the remainder of the forest splitting us, I can feel the bond growing anxious. What has become of Sasuke in our time away from him? We promised to never be away from him for so long again, and now: What has become of us now?

The vibrations turn into a maelstrom as I close in on Sasuke's location, the mix of chakra in the air so dark and violent that they threaten to split the earth. My arms prickle with the intensity of it, and my entire body burns.

Sasuke. Sasuke, what are you doing? What has become of us now?

[+]

Rain. It starts when I reach the edge of the forest, although the roar of thunder is dampened by the waterfall that splits the canyon and ceaselessly drains into the river below. Carved in the cliffs on either side of river are the monuments of two men, the rumored creators of the chasm through which the river runs. They had clashed here in an epic battle that would determine the foundations of the Fire Country. That's how the story goes.

I jump from the edge of the cliff, bracing myself on the jagged edges that jut out and act as makeshift footholds. I slip when one of them is too slick with water and go plummeting into the river below. When I drop through the surface of the river, the water is so pristine and cold that my head clears. For a second I think to stay there forever, freeze in the iciness of the river with this astounding sense of clarity—

But Sasuke.

He's near.

I break the surface, inhale sharply, and cough up the water that has found its way into my lungs. Dragging myself onto the riverbank, I twist the water from my hair, breathing hard and shaking from the cold that has stiffened my joints. My scramble to my feet is graceless; I tip backward, nearly splashing into the river again, but catch myself by planting my feet to the ground with chakra. It's in that moment of my arms pinwheeling and my gut wrenching from the shock of losing my balance that my eyes catch a ray of sun spotlighting a boy laying on the ground nearby.

Naruto. He's unconscious and soaking to the bone in the rain. I rush to his side, kneeling beside him to check his pulse, his many cuts and bruises and burns. There's a hole torn through his shirt, but no wound to indicate the severity of the attack that had caused the tear, though his skin is bright pink as though it had been rubbed raw.

If Naruto is here, where is Sasuke? I scan the vicinity for any sign of him hanging back in the shadows as he, undoubtedly, sensed me coming. Only, he's not there. He's not anywhere.

Things have gone to hell fast. I can't possibly hope to track him given the current conditions. The vibrations are a mess in the rain. The bond is severed. He's probably expended so much chakra he won't be expelling enough for me to sense him properly.

He's made his escape under the perfect circumstances.

Naruto lets out a small groan of pain, his mouth twisting into a grimace that fades as his pain passes. At least he's safe, I think as I take in his face, weathered and worn. At least he's alive.

I'm healing a cut on his cheek when I notice, beside his head, a second headband being matted by the mud in which it sits. I pick it up, clean it off, my fingers grazing against the carving of the Leaf symbol in the center of the metal plate. And the slash that runs through it, effectively cancelling it out.

Sasuke, I think, gripping the headband. Sasuke.

I have lost everything. Truly, I have lost everything.

I lift my face to the sky to stare at the murky clouds. The rain hits my face and meshes between my lips, kissing my tongue, and it seems to cry harder as I taste its sweetness.

Sasuke.

I replace the headband where I had found it, getting up from the mud that shifts beneath my feet. "I'll be back," I say, as much a reassurance to myself as to Naruto. I always come back. It's in my nature.

The forest on the other side of the river is dense enough that it keeps most of the rain out, but I feel raindrops pelting my head nonetheless, dripping from the leaves and branches like a leaky faucet. I'm not sure I've gone in the same general direction Sasuke has, though. So I bend down, digging my fingers into the mostly dry dirt, concentrating on the vibrations, hoping that I'm doing this right. My father taught me something about tracking with the vibrations once, but I never retained it well because I didn't care. It was the physical stuff I enjoyed, the fighting and then the healing.

But if I remember correctly, the process is rather simple. I gather the vibrations thickly around my fingertips and then send them pulsing outward, into the forest. They rumble through the ground, some of them bouncing back to me as they hit roots and animals, but nothing that remotely interests me. Of course not. That would be too easy. But I don't give up easy either.

I send another pulse of vibrations out, stronger, reaching a wider range. I'm able to make out the shapes of the roots and animals this time, the general hollows of the tunnels ants have burrowed.

Nothing.

I'm about to stand and move deeper into the forest, where I'll be able to send out another wave of vibrations from a new vantage point, when the last streams of vibrations reach me, beating against my fingers with a pattern I recognize.

Footsteps.

I follow the path before I lose it, disregarding the leaves and twigs crinkling beneath my feet and giving away my position. Given how Naruto was, Sasuke is probably in no condition to run from me even if he does feel me coming. If anything, he could use my help.

Sasuke's path is straight and predictable. If I had kept walking from where I had entered the forest, I would have run into him eventually. Even so, I find him faster, limping, clutching onto his left shoulder, his frame considerably stooped. There are two holes in the back of his shirt, right where his shoulder blades shape his skin, which is smeared with dirt and scratches. He's never seemed so small and frail to me before this moment, when his head tips back as he hears me coming and he stops.

He doesn't speak. Doesn't turn to meet my gaze. Like he expected as much for me to come after him. And I guess I knew this would happen, that I would end up going after Sasuke again, because this is my job, because this is in my blood, but mostly because there's the nagging voice in the back of my head that reminds me: Naruto. Sakura. Shikamaru and Chouji and Neji and Kiba. All these people who have sacrificed so much for this single boy who doesn't even care.

I want to beat the living hell out of him.

As though he hears this thought, he turns, his pretty blank and defeated face as attractive as I remember it during our Academy days, when he was as innocent as he seemed. It makes me hate him even more.

He flinches in pain, not noticing the ice in my stare, and babies his left arm. He looks down at it and back at me, seemingly wondering why I'm not at his side currently and healing him. And I comply.

The bond cheers as I walk to him, and I take his arm carefully, rolling up his sleeve. He is drier than I am, and much warmer, probably because he managed to escape into the dense forest and avoid the rain before it started to really pour. He grimaces again as I brush my fingers against his skin and takes my wrist to hold me off for a moment. His grip is loose. I could slip out of it easily. But he's so frail.

"Sasuke," I say slowly. "I'm only trying to heal you. Let. Go."

He doesn't. "What," he asks instead, "are you really trying to do?"

His question makes me angry, but the bond keeps me grounded. So even in my anger, I go through the motions of unclasping his hand from my wrist and healing his shoulder—all very gently. Though I don't heal it all the way through. He doesn't deserve that much of me.

"That should do you well for the rest of the journey," I say, wiping off his blood which has smeared on my fingers in the rain. "Unless there's anything else you want me to check. The bond is broken, so I can't tell—"

"I'm not going home," he says, reaching up for his shoulder again as though I haven't done anything for it. He kneads his fingers into the injury, massaging it like that'll help, and I take a deep breath, running a hand through my hair.

I know he's not going to come home. The thing is, Sakura and Naruto want him home and still believe there's a chance he'll return. Their hopefulness borders on hopelessness, and I just want them to be happy. I will do everything I can to make sure they're happy. At least, I'll try.

"Take me with you," I blurt, and his head jerks up despite his injuries. "What I mean is, you're hurt, Sasuke. If I'm with you, I can make sure that you stay alive. And then whatever you want to do after we reach Orochimaru is up to you. I'm not going to stop you," I say, when he shakes his head, "but I'm not going to let you do this alone either. We grew up together, we went through the massacre together, and we even went through a period of loneliness together afterward, when I left. I realize that, not being with you then, that's what messed us up. If we stay together, if you restart the bond, think of what we could do! Sasuke. Think about it. With the bond, we could become a legendary shinobi team. We could go down in history books. We could—"

"You don't mean any of this," he says, meeting my eyes at last. "Whether or not this is a ploy for you to return me to the village somehow, you don't want to go to Orochimaru with me. You don't want to help me with my revenge. You don't care."

"You're forgetting that Itachi killed _my_ family too," I say, stepping closer to him, but he turns on his heels and continues deeper into the forest, to the Sound Village where Orochimaru will make him an underling and give him unbelievable, dark power.

Sasuke walks straighter, his shoulders pressed back and his head held high, like my begging to go with him has strengthened his belief that this will be for the best. Sure enough, he says, "Like I told Sakura: From this point forward, we're on different paths. None of us are getting anywhere remaining the way we are. This break will be what's best for all of us."

"Wait," I say, hurrying to catch up to him. "Sasuke, I don't think—"

"Stop," he orders, and my muscles stiffen and my feet dig into the soggy earth despite the fact that I'm telling my body to keep moving forward. The bond is supposed to be broken, yet this feels remarkably like the bond's doing.

"The bond has only been severed on your end," Sasuke explains, halting for a moment to fill me in. "I can still feel what you feel and sense what you're thinking. That's how I know you don't want to come with me. What you say might be the truth, but you resent it because you're only doing this to please Naruto and Sakura. You've lost yourself in your friendship with them, Ren, and I won't let that happen to me. Go home and become a tool for that peace-loving village. You don't have anything left."

I clench my fists, and while my feet won't move forward, I know my words will, so I shout after him. "As much as I hate to admit it," I say, "I always knew we were alike, Sasuke. We were both self-satisfied, independent shinobi who strove to become stronger through our pain, by the loneliness we endured as kids. We both figured that, so long as we had ourselves, we would always be on top of our game. Other people just got in our way because they could never compare to us. In spite of that, being on a team with Sakura and Naruto, we were happy. So I want to ask: What happened to that happiness? Didn't it feel better than all this, than knowing that you'll get your revenge sure enough, but you won't even be happy when it follows through because we've lost everything?"

Sasuke doesn't speak, but I've managed to draw him to a stop again. He allows me a glance over his shoulder, although it's blank and unaffected by my speech. He says, "We lured ourselves into that contentment. We settled for the next best thing because neither of us could immediately achieve our goals. But now we're free. I can get my revenge, and you can just as easily run away and break the bond."

He's right. This deep into the forest, I could make my escape without leaving much evidence behind. The rain would wash away my scent and the night could cover me. The twigs on the ground are soaked enough by the rain water that seeps in from outside that they'll bend under my weight, allowing me to get away without a single broken branch to indicate the direction in which I flee.

I could go. I could go so easily. Except.

"Trust me, Ren," Rei said over the roar of the crowd from inside the stadium, where I was missing Naruto and Neji compete for the title of Chuunin. "This is stuff you want to stick around for. You don't want to miss this."

"It's your choice to stay or go," Sasuke says, and he's gone farther into the shadows of the forest, nearly disappearing completely from my sight. "But you will not follow after me, no matter what you think you want. That's an order."

So I watch him go, helpless to stop him and soaking to the bone in the rain. I wipe the raindrops from my cheeks, but they're unrelenting and my face ends up in the same state it had been before. With a few steps, he's gone, and I'm alone, and that's it. I've lost.

I backtrack through the forest, back to the valley where I'd left Naruto, and I think. I'd offered Sasuke everything I had. I told him I would stop trying to break the bond. I told him I would help him with his revenge. I told him I would forget about everyone else and focus solely on him if he would stay. I did all the things my mother had warned me against, and still he didn't stay.

I really should have known better.

There's someone with Naruto when I return. Kakashi, hair flattened by the rain, stands looking up at the monument, Naruto cradled in his arms. His head tilts when he hears me approach, but he doesn't turn. He's listening for a specific sound—a pair of footsteps, not a single one—and I can imagine the severe disappointment he feels when he doesn't hear it.

"I couldn't catch him," is all I say before taking off ahead of Kakashi, sending bursts of chakra to my feet so that I tear through the forest so quickly the trees blur together and the wind pulls tears from my eyes and whistles in my ears. Running this fast, this unhinged and unrestrained, brings about a numbness I welcome gladly, bulldozing straight into it in order to ignore the fact that Sasuke is gone, and I fell right into his trap.

I thought I was selfish. I thought I had managed to find a way around the bond. By caring for him, I would essentially be doing Naruto and Sakura a favor, and thus be pleasing myself. I would be smoothing our relationship over for better times ahead in regards to my bonds with the others. Or so I had thought.

The bond had taken those relationships and made them its own. It twisted everything so that all paths led back to Sasuke. It had consumed me.

I remember my mother, speaking with insane clarity in those last moments before her death. This bond will consume you, Ren. It will take every relationship you've created with your closest friends, and it will tear them apart. Your life will become nothing but a toy for Sasuke, who is so ridden with revenge and guilt he will disregard everyone to get what he wants. You will be trapped in a life you can't control, where your sole purpose is to live for someone you don't even care about because you haven't chosen them. This is what the bond does.

It's killed your entire family, Ren. Don't let it ruin you as well.

Break the bond. You must break the bond, Ren, break the bond before the bond breaks you.

I wholly intended to. But it seems I was too late.

[+]

When I reach the village, I'm flocked by a number of personnel who are waiting for Naruto and Kakashi and, they had hoped, Sasuke. I brush them away as they urge me to get to the hospital myself, so they can examine me and allow me to rest, until I realize the hospital is where they would have taken the others. I think about Chouji, how his body had been failing him, and Neji, how he had been pierced through and through and bleeding profusely. How I had been unable to help them.

Breathing hard, I race to the hospital, the guards at the gate hollering after me and telling me to take it easy, although I don't know why. I hadn't done anything remotely useful during that mission.

When I reach the hospital, I ask the receptionist where everyone is being kept. She explains to me that Chouji and Neji are in critical condition and being operated upon by the Hokage and her self-appointed medical teams; Kiba had been found, is doing well, and currently having a private family consultation. Shikamaru has been discharged with a minor injury, and last she's heard, he's gone to wait out Chouji's operation.

She relays the directions to Chouji's operating room and I hurry to the designated hallway. It doesn't take me long to find them. I notice Shikamaru's father standing at the end of a corridor and nod to him. He returns the gesture and jerks his thumb over his shoulder.

"He's there," Shikaku says when I near him. "But for the sake of his pride, I think you should wait here for a moment."

I'm about to ask what he means when someone speaks up—a girl, by the sound of her voice, who is experienced and slightly irritated by the current situation. I recognize her tenor and identify her as Temari, although I don't understand why she's still hanging around Shikamaru at a time like this when her duties have been finished.

"There's no use in fidgeting," she says, matter-of-fact. "Sacrifice is an inevitable part of missions. Didn't you receive any emotional training?"

Shikamaru is quick to retort in his agitated state. "Training and actual combat are different," he says sharply. He's usually so lax that it's out of place, hearing Shikamaru take up such an edge. Given the circumstances, I can see he has reason to be harsh, but that doesn't mean I have to like the way he's being. "In a mission, you don't know what's going to happen. I thought I knew the life of a shinobi was like this, and I—I was a team leader for the first time on this mission and this is how it ended. Because of that, I understand that I'm…not cut out to be a shinobi."

I twist my fingers together, retreating slowly in my alarm at Shikamaru's words. He can't mean what he says. Considering he had stepped up in the first place, he's done more than I ever have in my lifetime. Shikamaru believed in everyone, trusted them to follow through, and reciprocated where he could. And he always could. He may be lazy, but he isn't unreliable in the least. Everything he'd done up to this moment demonstrated as much. Based on that alone, he meets all the requirements to be a shinobi. I, on the other hand, should be the one renouncing my ways.

A hand presses to my back. Shikaku, sensing my anxiety, keeps me from retreating. In retaliation, I take a step backward, only to trip over my own foot and stumble out into the open, where Shikamaru and Temari notice me right away. They sit on opposite benches, Temari calm and cool with her legs crossed neatly, and Shikamaru hunched forward, twiddling his fingers.

Temari taps her knee, keeping her gaze on me like I understand how it is as she mumbles, "Unexpected fragility. Men are strange."

Shikamaru sighs, heaving himself to his feet. "I shouldn't have been the team leader this time," he says. "I just trusted everyone else. I was laid-back. I didn't have enough strength. It's all my fault."

It's one thing to take the fault, I think, wishing I could find a way out of the hospital, but it's another thing to blame yourself for everything. Shikamaru did as much as he could; couldn't he see that at least?

Temari narrows her eyes at his back, asking, "Are you afraid of being hurt?"

Shikamaru stays quiet. He pivots on his heels and comes my way. Like the fool that I am, though, I can't think of anything to say. Shikamaru has almost lost everything, and that's enough to make him reconsider his path, as I had when my clan had been wiped out in the massacre. Words are generally useless at a time like this. Naturally, my ineptitude serves to make me fidgety. There's so much I could do, but not enough feeling to convey it all.

Shikaku frowns as his son passes him, glances at me for a moment, as though he'd been expecting me to speak up, and says, "Shikamaru. You're being talked down by a girl and walking away?"

Shikamaru stops a few steps in front of me, peering over his shoulder to speak to his father. "I don't want to have a troublesome argument," he answers, "because I'm not a girl."

Shikaku tips his head forward in thought. He says, agreeably, "Yes. But you're not a man either. You're a regular coward."

His word stings even on my ears. I begin to retreat again, only to be caught by Shikamaru's gaze, which freezes me in place. He wants me to wait a moment, so he'll have some company that isn't so critical of his actions. I do fully understand where he's coming from when he says he wants to retire, but I don't believe it's the right decision for him. Despite what he says and what he hopes for in giving up the shinobi path, he will never be able to lead the easy life he wants, the one he'd told me about a month ago where everything plays out the way it should.

Like he says: He's tried too hard to stay alive and it's caused people to have expectations of him. And no one expects for him to give up.

"Even if you quit being a shinobi," his father says, "missions will occur. Someone will carry them out. Your friends will go out with a new leader. So then, maybe your friends will die."

Shikamaru doesn't seem affected by his father's words. He keeps his eyes trained on the ground where he has lowered them, and I think to take a few more steps away, wondering if maybe I could escape while he's distracted. There's nothing left for me to do here. Shikaku has found the words to get through to his son, and now I'm in the way.

I shouldn't have come here. I should have stayed away.

"But if you're their leader," Shikaku continues, "your friends may not reach that end. If you look at this time as an experience and learn from it, maybe you'll be able to carry out your missions with fewer problems. And if your friends are really that important to you, before you run away, consider that you may become a great shinobi for the sake of your friends. That's what it means to be a real friend, you coward."

I flinch, knotting my fingers more tightly, and find that Shikaku's speech applies to me as much as it does to Shikamaru. Except I only hear one phrase: _Run away, you coward. Run away._

I'm about to do as much when the light above the operating room dings off and the door slides open. Tsunade steps out, an easy smile on her lips.

"It's all right," she says, and Shikamaru twitches, his ears perking. Tsunade lets out a breath of relief as she sits down on the bench Shikamaru has vacated, saying, "The continuous cell destruction that's one of the effects of the pills was stopped by an antidote I put together. This time, he was saved. It was a success," she reiterates, more brightly this time, looking at Shikaku. "I used a special drug-mixing manual from the Nara clan. Having to write something like that up must have been hard work—the result of continual study, I'd guess."

Shikaku smiles, begins to answer the Hokage, but is cut off by a cry of, "Tsunade-sama!"

A woman comes running up the hall from behind me, drenched in sweat and beaming. "Hyuuga Neji," she starts, wiping her face. "His condition has been stabilized! Also, I have some information. Hatake Kakashi, Uzumaki Naruto, and Kagiru Ren have returned. Although he was seriously injured, Naruto's life is in no danger."

Tsunade hums something under her breath, her golden eyes flickering to me, noticing me for the first time. "So," she says. "Even you."

I push my hair behind my ear, wavering under her gaze, and I realize why she had sent me out with that medical team, why she had made me the 'acting squad leader'. She had expected me to have some kind of influence over Sasuke and bring him back. I know what she means to say. _Even you couldn't stop him_.But outsiders have this common misconception that the terms of the bond goes both ways. As evident in how Sasuke has cut me off, though, the Uchiha are and will always remain the masters.

I don't say this aloud. Instead, I say, quietly, "Yes. Even me."

Tsunade sighs, her eyes refocusing on Shikamaru's back. "Shikamaru," she says. "It seems your mission was a failure. But everyone's alive. That's more important than anything."

Yes. The important thing is that everyone is alive. Even if Sasuke is lost, I have my friends. I have Naruto and Sakura and Kakashi, and I have Shikamaru. Shikamaru, who stands before me, his shoulders shaking and his head bent low as he cries to the floor.

My heart swells at the sight of him so dismantled. Never in my life have I seen Shikamaru cry, nor have I ever imagined a situation that would illicit this sort of reaction from him. Granted, he's never been the epitome of manliness, but he'd always been strong. Dependable. Calm, cool, collected. Likely the one I would cry to, I think, not the one I see cry.

The scene that plays out before me awakens something in me. In the dingy light of the hospital, the buzz of the vibrations become louder. My eyes sharpen and focus, and I feel, for the first time, that I can truly see everything that I have found here, in spite of what I have lost.

Stepping closer to Shikamaru, I pull him into a hug. His shoulders are broader and he's taller than I remember, my chin barely grazing the top of his shoulder, and I can't begin to comprehend how long it's been since we've hung out or why we've been out of sync. I've been too caught up in Sasuke, but that is no excuse to ignore my best friend. I will correct this mistake. Starting now, I will correct all my mistakes.

"You did good, Shikamaru," I say, closing my eyes. "This time, you delivered well."

Quietly, Shikamaru answers, "Next time. Next time, definitely, I'll show that I can do it flawlessly."

_Next time._ Then there'll be a next time. And next time, I will not fail either.

I will do as I intended. I will break this bond.

No matter the cost.


	50. Retrograde

**A/N:** Fifty chapters! I can't believe I made it this far, and I'm so overwhelmed by everything. Thanks to you guys for sticking around for so long, enjoying this series, and giving me your invaluable feedback. I hope you enjoy this one and future chapters to come.

Only one more chapter until the time skip!

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 50: Retrograde**

Once Shikamaru has wiped his face clean, Tsunade offers to show us to Naruto's room for visitation. He takes her up on it, but I decline, claiming that I need time alone to think about a few things.

It's not a lie: I do want to mull over the events of the past weeks and collect my thoughts, which are so muddled I find I can't concentrate on where I'm walking. I bump into a few chairs and gurneys as I wander the hospital before losing my way. Eventually, I wind up on the rooftop simply because my knees ache from running into chairs and I started getting odd looks from the hospital staff. Hopefully, the clean air would help clear my head too.

I shouldn't be as conflicted as I am. Sasuke is gone and, despite our best efforts, we can't be able to bring him home, not until he gets his revenge. Even then he might be so far gone in Orochimaru's power, our only option could be to leave him until he makes an aggressive move toward the Leaf or hunt him down and eliminate him, not that Naruto and Sakura would even allow that to be an option.

On the rooftop, I discover the hospital has taken to trying to fix the water towers Naruto and Sasuke had destroyed half a month ago. The scraps of metal hanging off the tower have been clipped, and wooden planks board the holes until something more permanent can be settled. Seeing them makes me wince, so I shut the door to the rooftop and retreat down the stairwell, back into the dingy corridors of the hospital.

So much for fresh air.

I suppose the real reason I've taken to wandering aimlessly around the hospital is I don't want to face Naruto. Kakashi is the only one who knows I saw Sasuke, after all, and the most he knows is I couldn't persuade Sasuke to return. Seeing Naruto will remind me of what I'd said, how I, compelled by the bond, offered to go with Sasuke, offered to sacrifice everything I had to keep him here.

I know I had done as much not for his sake, but for Sakura's and Naruto's, but it has me thinking: When did I become so selfless? Maybe that's why I haven't made any leeway with the bond, why I'd hardly even minded it unless it became debilitating. I remember when the mere thought of it would be enough to keep me alive with barely a drop of water as I trekked through the Wind Country. I remember when simply thinking about how much I wanted to break it was enough for me to resort to stealing and killing wild hare as I roamed through the forests of the Fire Country. Thinking about the bond now only makes me tired. When did I start losing hope? When did it all change?

"Ren? What are you doing?"

I startle at the voice and turn to find Shikaku approaching me from the other end of the corridor, his hands shoved in his pockets. His easy stature is hauntingly similar to his son's, though I guess I could have expected as much, and the way he frowns reminds me about how I had told Shikamaru I would catch up with him and Naruto.

Shikaku seems to be thinking the same thing, as he says, "I thought you would have gone to Naruto's room by now."

"Yeah," I say, ruffling my hair. "I got a little lost on my way back."

"Did you manage to clear your head?" he asks. "I could tell something was on your mind back there."

I smile at Shikaku, the familiarity with which he speaks to me, the way he's just as perceptive as Shikamaru. The only difference is Shikamaru isn't as vocal or straightforward as his father. Shikamaru trusts you'll be able to figure things out on your own and only resorts to prodding when he realizes you aren't going to help yourself. And I can definitely always help myself.

At least, so I think.

"Sometimes," Shikaku says, "it helps to talk to somebody about your troubles."

Laughing, I say, "Are you offering to listen?"

"Only if you're willing to share," Shikaku says easily, "but I think I can guess what's bothering you."

I don't particularly want to discuss this with Shikaku. I'm sure he could provide me with sage advice but—I don't know. I want to do something on my own for once. Lately, it seems, I've been handing my issues off to everyone else. Rei has the bond covered, Shikamaru has been worried about me, Naruto has been entrusted with the duty of bringing Sasuke back. No matter what I try to do, I'm overshadowed or pushed aside by someone else. I need something that is mine, solely mine and absolutely no one else's, and I need to hold onto it and prove I can manage it myself.

So I say, shrugging, "Same thing that's bothering everyone else: The state of the other Genin. Sasuke. How we're going to go on from here."

Shikaku eyes me carefully, and then adds, "I don't think that's all, but if you say so."

"I do," I say, moving around him. "I'll see you later, Shikaku-san. It was nice speaking with you again."

"There's one thing I want to tell you before you go," Shikaku says, stopping me mid-stride. "You and Shikamaru spend so much time together, I'm not surprised by how much you've rubbed off on each other. You're both alike in your maturity, although I wish some of your keenness to get things done had caught onto Shikamaru. Nevertheless, you're both talented kids with bright futures, but no matter how much you two try to play it cool, you get too wrapped up in your failures to recognize when you've done well."

Shikaku rubs the back of his neck, eyes consulting the ceiling for his next words. He says, "To say the least: It's arbitrary whose fault it is for the failure of this mission. So long as we learn from the mistakes and grow from them, we will have been successful."

Shikaku takes my shoulder tightly, genially, and says, "Don't forget that, Ren. As you don't believe Shikamaru should have blamed himself for the failure of this mission, neither should you. I think Shikamaru would agree. Wish Naruto well for me," Shikaku adds, leaving. "And make sure you get some rest yourself."

I'm flustered by Shikaku's lecture, wondering how he and Shikamaru always seem to be right on target when it comes to reading me. At least now I know where Shikamaru gets his sharpness from, although I suppose it's never been a question, considering how much he takes from his father.

Briefly, I wonder if I'm anything like my mother, only to figure she had more sense than I did when it came to the bond. She seemed to have it down to a science. But she didn't have to deal with it as I do.

I'm halfway down the hallway to Naruto's room when my name is called again. Sakura waves me down, slightly out of breath but smiling.

"You're safe!" she says, clapping her hands together. "I'm so glad. Are you going to see Naruto too?"

I nod, but she doesn't wait long enough to see me answer. She thinks my return means Sasuke has come back too, I realize as she walks ahead of me in her anticipation. She readies her hand on the door and then pauses, hearing voices on the other side. She leans in closer, listening to the conversation, and when I reach her, I hear the last thing Sakura had been expecting.

"Yeah," Naruto is saying, his voice muffled through the walls, but loud and clear when he announces, "Sasuke got away."

Sakura freezes, her eyes growing wide. Her hand slips from the door and her shoulders sag as the words sink in, and I fear she'll burst into tears again. I consider dismissing myself from this meeting, falling back on the excuse that I'm tired and want to go home in order to get away, but before I can act on any of it, another voice breaks my train of thought.

It's Tsunade, her eyebrows furrowed together in concern. "What's wrong?" she asks, cocking her head to the side before she recognizes us. "Ah—Ren, I see you've finally caught up. And Haruno Sakura, right? Word has spread quickly, then. Anyway, you're teammates of Naruto, aren't you? Why don't you go in? No sense hanging out here."

Sakura makes a strangled noise of agreement and pushes the door open. Tsunade waves us in first and follows after, her gait easy as she enters the room, whereas Sakura's feet clomp one after another, clumsy and uncoordinated in her stupor.

Naruto is sitting up in his bed, his body wrapped so much so that I can barely see the tips of his fingers and the only parts on his head that are uncovered are the immediate areas around his nose and eyes and hair. At the sight of us, Naruto stiffens and looks away quickly, downcast.

"I heard you were severely injured," Tsunade says, all business as though she can't sense the tension in the air. "But you should be all right."

I shift on my feet before deciding to move father into the room to Naruto's bedside where Shikamaru sits, lips pursed. I'm about to ask them how they're feeling when I notice, in Naruto's lap, a headband with a mark splintering the leaf symbol in the center.

_Sasuke's,_ I think, and reach for it, covering it with my hand and saying, "You shouldn't have this."

I pull the headband from his lap, gripping it so tightly that the metal cuts into my palm and I can feel the carving of the leaf, the scratch that runs through it, imprinting into my skin. He doesn't need this to remind him of what's happened. I'll keep it. It's my burden to bear.

Naruto's brow pulls together. "I'm sorry," he says, and then, more loudly, "I'm sorry, Sakura-chan."

"Why are you apologizing?" Sakura asks, the forced cheerfulness evident in the odd pitch of her voice. "You know, you look funny, all wrapped up like that," she continues when Naruto doesn't answer. She makes way for the windows, throwing open the curtains. "You're like a mummy, aren't you?"

Naruto closes his eyes, repeats, "I'm sorry. I—"

"Listen," Sakura goes on, focusing on the scenery outside, "the weather's really good today. I opened the curtains, so—"

Naruto's head jerks up, and the vitality he's so well known for burns brightly in his eyes. "Sakura-chan! I'll definitely keep my promise. I said that I would. It's a lifelong promise, and I won't go back on my word."

Sakura doesn't look at him, doesn't flinch. "Naruto," she says softly. "It's all right."

"Sakura," Shikamaru interjects. "He's trying to—"

I flick his head, shutting him up, and when Shikamaru turns to scowl at me, I scowl right back. It's not his place to get involved at the present. This is between Sakura and Naruto, and it doesn't matter what Shikamaru says or even what I say. This is something they need to settle between themselves, and it's long overdue.

"I won't go back on my word," Naruto repeats, lifting his head and grinning brilliantly at us. "That's my ninja way!"

Sasuke's headband is heavy in my grasp. I hold it close to my stomach, running my thumb over the scratch cancelling out the leaf. Run away, you coward. Run away.

Sakura crosses the room without looking at Naruto. Before she reaches the door, she lifts her head and takes a deep breath that opens her shoulders. "I'm sorry, Naruto," she says, glancing at him and showing the spark of a smile. "I had to make you wait a while, but—next time, we'll bring Sasuke back. Together."

Next time. Sure enough, there will be a next time, and just as sure they will be as unsuccessful as they were this time. Nothing they say will convince me otherwise.

"Ren, where are you going?" Shikamaru asks as I walk right past Sakura and Tsunade. I keep my head high, waving to them over my shoulder a goodbye as much as a dismissal. I refuse to look back because I know if I do, I'll only see all the things I regret.

My head is on the verge of bursting with each conflicting thought that rushes through my head and tries to get me to take action. Stay in Konoha. Find Sasuke. Follow Rei. Break the bond. Break all the bonds. Live to help your friends. Live for only yourself.

I need to stay in Konoha. Sakura and Naruto could use my help in regards to Sasuke. If I ever feel anything from his end of the bond, I could tell them right away, never mind that, in order to do so, I need to tell them about the bond first. Or, better yet, I could stay in Konoha and convince them to give up on Sasuke. He left us, after all, and even in the case that he manages to follow through with his revenge and kill Itachi, he can't be trusted after betraying us so wholly.

On the other hand, if I go after Sasuke, I could help him attain his revenge and get him back to the village in record time. All the while, the bond would be satisfied and, although I would have to face the initial guilt of abandoning my friends, once I got to Sasuke, what would it matter? The bond would make me more than happy with him. I wouldn't miss any of this for a second.

There is the issue, however, of the bond being severed on my end, which means I can't track him. Sure, I could head in the general direction of the Sound Village, where Orochimaru is undoubtedly stationed given the nature of his shinobi, and, worst case scenario, I would be wandering around, wasting time until I found Sasuke. Best case scenario, I run into Rei while in the Sound Country and am able to assist in finding a cure for this curse.

But my friends.

But my freedom.

But my happiness.

No matter the cost, I remind myself. No matter the cost, I will break this bond.

I decide: I shouldn't have returned. I should have gone rogue, found Rei, broken the bond, and then lived for only myself. Then, I would never have to see all their faces, all their disappointment, which is a hundred thousand times worse than the anger they would feel if I had just abandoned them. I can handle hate, but I can't handle disappointment because then that would mean they still cared about me enough to have expected more from me.

I'm no good. It's evident in the way I'm pulling further and further away from everyone, despite my intentions to make them happy. I can't support them, though, when what they think is best for them is what I think is the worst possible thing they could do. I can't fool myself with this hopeless hopefulness like they can. I know a lost cause when I see one.

My palms grow sweaty around Sasuke's headband. I rub the fabric between my fingers, wondering where I'll put this now that I have it. Maybe I'll keep it with me always, a reminder as to what I've lost, what I hope to have lost forever, because nothing good can come from associating myself with such a person. I can use it as a means of encouragement to keep me on my path of isolation, of achieving my happiness based on the grounds of my happiness alone. No more of this "what makes my friends happy makes me happy" bullshit. No more of these bonds. This time I really am done.

Maybe this is what the Hokage had been keeping from me when he had forbidden me from leaving the village. After all, being outside on your own, you really have no one to live for but yourself. Your priorities change. Maybe he didn't want me to revert back to my isolationist ways. But he's not here to prevent me from doing as much anymore, and I doubt it'll be much harder to get past Tsunade and her regime. Sasuke had done it, and if it hadn't been for Sakura, no one would have known about his disappearance until he was long gone. It'll be the same for me. Except no one will notice when I'm gone.

[+]

I'm assuming too much when I say this, however. When I arrive home, my front door sits ajar, shaking in the breeze that blows past. I wonder if Sakura had been inconsiderate enough to just up and leave my door open. Granted, I had told her that there was nothing of value in the place, but still. What about the bugs and animals that could have wormed their way into my house, through my things, destroying my stuff?

I grumble under my breath, closing the door behind me and kicking my shoes off in my foyer. Heading to the living room with plans to crash on the couch and sleep until I can think of a better plan to get out of the village, I hope I can lay still without having some kind of rodent crawling up my legs. Until then, I'm going to assume that there is nothing in my house that could harm, infect, or otherwise injury me so I can sleep off this guilt.

I'm halfway in my living room when I hear a distinct _clink_ from a distant part in my house. I stop midstride and quirk my head back. When the sound comes again, it's louder, longer, purposeful, like the creature messing with my dishes wants me to go kill it immediately.

With pleasure.

I slip back into the foyer, to the kitchen hall, where I wait until the movement in the kitchen has stopped. Slowly, I push the door to the kitchen open, peering in through the crack to see what kind of rodent I'm dealing with. I see a small swish of a tail, dark brown and curly, and try to associate this trait with the animals in Konoha, when a voice says, "I know you're there, Ren-chan. Why don't you come in instead of spying on me like a weirdo?"

That voice—it makes me breathless, alarmed. I shove the door open completely, and, yes, there in my kitchen is a girl dressed up in tribal necklaces and face paint, her unruly mahogany hair tied up into a ponytail and swinging back and forth as she tiptoes to restack my dishes on a cupboard shelf.

"Don't act so surprised," she says, scowling at me over her shoulder. "I may have lived in an impoverished village, but I wasn't raised by barbarians. I'm just as domesticated as any Konoha housewife."

"That's not—Rei," I say, watching as she moves between my sink and the cupboards, stacking the newly washed dishes onto the shelves. I close the door tightly behind me like it will help in keeping her contained in my house. The others can't find out she's here. It would raise too many questions I don't have answers to, and undoubtedly I'll have to fess up about the bond, especially if Rei is here to tell me what she's found out about it, and—god, I can't do that. Not yet. "I don't. What. How are you here?"

Rei scoffs, apparently irritated by my presence, like this is her house and I've overstayed my welcome. "The spirits," she answers, and I say, "Oh, of course," and she says, "They know more than you think, Ren. The spirits are woven into every aspect of our lives—mine and yours and that old man who lives down the street—whether you believe in them or know they're there. Anyway," she sighs, apparently tired of her own spiel. "I felt a disturbance, so I decided to come by and visit, and rightly so. From the looks of things around here, you haven't been taking care of yourself. I can see Sasuke's left."

I stiffen, drawing myself up in defense. I say, "You shouldn't be here, Rei. We don't have authorization to cross the country borders without an official event. And I don't think Konoha's negotiated a peace agreement with the Sound since the exams. If anyone finds you here and reports you, you'll be captured and interrogated, do you understand that?"

"Oh, but hey, check it out," she says, and reaches into her hip pouch. I flinch, taking a step back, and she scoffs, saying, "Relax, girlie. I'm not going to hurt you. Intentionally." She holds her hand out, revealing her headband, and flashes it at me. An indelible mark slashes through the music note engraved on the metal plate.

"My aunts," Rei says, and I hear a feeble attempt at her usual cheery indifference, but it's strained. "Apparently, the spirits told them what I'd done, agreeing to help you break the bond and all, so they kicked me out. Beat me up pretty badly too. Lucky for me, Hiro-kun and Nao were there, so I got away with minimal injuries. Those guys," she sighs, her eyes glazing over as she runs her thumb over the scratch. "I don't know what I did to deserve them, but I'd do it over a million times to have more people like them around me. In any case."

She pockets her headband and leans against the counter. "Sasuke's gone," she says again matter-of-factly.

"You—you shouldn't _be_ here," I say, closing the cupboards she'd left open. "I could get into a lot of trouble, considering your allegiance—"

"_Former_ allegiance," she corrects.

"_Former_ allegiance," I say, "but whatever. Like, seriously, Rei, you _cannot be here_."

"Sasuke's gone," she repeats, and I swing a cupboard door closed too quickly. It slams, shaking the dishes on the inside, and Rei tsks. "Touchy, touchy," she says, quirking her head back and I glare at her. "What? If you had answered me earlier, I wouldn't have to keep prodding you. You've done this to yourself, Ren dear."

I bite my tongue and count to ten. Twenty. Forty-five. Rei sits quietly the entire time, drumming her fingers on her arm and humming a familiar tune I can't place. Her face lacks the annoying good humor with which she usually approaches things, though, and from what I can tell, she's only half paying me mind. I figure, if I tell her what she wants to hear, she'll tell me what she has to say about the bond, and we'll all be on our merry way.

And hopefully I'll be able to convince Rei to take me with her when she leaves.

"Yes," I say after minutes of silence. "Sasuke is gone. So what?"

She lets out a heavy sigh, pushing off the counter and moving to the kitchen table. She takes a seat, slumping in the chair, and kicks her feet onto the table. She's still wearing her shoes.

"The spirits are in a tizzy," she says, pressing her fingers to her head. "If I seem out of it, that's why. They're not happy about Sasuke leaving either; he's seriously messed with the balance of things abandoning Konoha and joining forces with Orochimaru."

"You don't need to tell me," I grumble, sliding to the ground. I cross my legs, bracing my back against the cabinets, and say, "Naruto and Sakura are all bent out of shape because he's gone. I can't handle it."

Rei looks at me, smiles mockingly. "I see what you did there. Comparing the spirits' unrest with human unrest. Clever," she says, but shakes her head. "I'm not trying to win a game of 'Who Has It Worse?' though. I'm only here to tell you that you need to be careful. Things are unstable at the moment. Don't do anything to further upset the balance of things. Don't go to Orochimaru. Don't go after Sasuke."

"I'm not going to go after Sasuke," I snap, my fingers digging into my knees. "He doesn't need me anymore. He said as much when he cut me off."

Rei's eyes narrow, and she leans forward in her seat, touching her toes. "I see," she says, nearly folding in half. She lets out another sigh, says again, "I see."

When she straightens up, she's dazed, staring out the window. She doesn't look at me when she speaks. "So I guess you're covered then."

I cock my head to the side, confused as to what she could mean. When I ask, she explains, "The bond. If he's severed it, you're good to go. You don't need me to keep looking for a way to break it anymore, right?"

"Wha—_no_," I protest, scrambling to my feet, although I can't figure out how standing will help convince her. "Sasuke's cut me off, but he hasn't broken the bond. If it were that easy, he would have done it years ago, I'm sure, considering the way I left him."

"Maybe he didn't know," she says, shrugging. "Maybe he figured, like you, that the bond couldn't be broken so easily, so he never bothered, but now that it's done, it's _done_."

"No," I repeat, shaking my head. "Trust me: I know, I can feel it. I can't explain it," I snap when Rei's eyebrows rise high on her forehead. "But I know it's there. He can probably reawaken it any time he wants."

Rei drops her feet to the ground, anchored by the burden. "Okay," she says, the fatigue obvious in her voice. "I'll keep looking for a way to break it. My productivity levels may be dangerously low, now I know it's no longer a super priority, but I'll keep looking nonetheless. You can look forward to that deadline I gave you of two and a half years, though, especially if things continue the way they are presently."

I've never believed Rei could be so defeated before, never figured she would be the type to ever run out of stamina. In my head, she'd always been on level with Naruto so far as enthusiasm goes. Although she's infinitely more aggravating and enigmatic. Her current state will serve in my favor, though, and that's what matters to me.

"If you need help," I say, and she looks at me, her eyes narrowed to slits as she anticipates what I'm about to say. "Take me with you. I don't have anything left here with Sasuke gone."

"No thank you," she says, getting to her feet. "I have Hiro-kun and Nao, and they're all I need. Besides, remember what I said about you needing to stay here? I stand by that still, one hundred and ten percent, if not more so, especially after what I saw today in your house. It's a mess and it's pathetic, and I don't understand why you haven't fixed that goddamn floorboard yet. I tripped over it at least ten times trying to clean your kitchen."

"I didn't ask you to do it," I say, glaring at her.

"That's not the point," she says. "Sasuke wasn't the only thing keeping you here, Ren. If I had told you that during the exams, you would have agreed with me. You would have said something about Naruto and Sakura and undoubtedly mentioned that darling friend Shikamaru of yours. You would have told me these new bonds you had created—"

"Things are different," I interrupt, and she groans, falling back into her seat. "Naruto and Sakura have their minds set on returning Sasuke home somehow. It's unrealistic, and I can't put up with that for however long it takes for us to bring him back. What if we never do? What if, by the time we reach him, he's so far gone that my friends die at his hand and I'm helpless to do otherwise because the bond is still over my head? I can't let that happen." I take a deep breath, lower my voice as Rei props her chin on her fist, frowning. "They don't have the same goals as I do," I say. "They don't want the same things. They will never want the same things. That's why I need to get out of here, break the bond, and then live only for myself."

Rei doesn't falter. She stares me down until I'm so unnerved that I have to look away. She says, "You know who you sound like." It isn't a question, and I know exactly what she means.

"You can do whatever you like," she says, pushing away from the table and standing again. "Leave, never come back, find Sasuke—whatever. It's not my problem. But you're not coming with me. If you even try to, I'll report to your Hokage, despite the repercussions of my confronting the leader of the village my village has betrayed. I'll tell her that you were brainwashed by Sasuke before he left and that you intend to join with Orochimaru and give him inside information about the Leaf Village in order to destroy it. Best case scenario, you're put on house-arrest. Worst case, you're taken in, interrogated until your brain turns to mush, and then placed into solitary confinement. Then you'll never have to see your friends again, I'll be freed of this obligation, and we can go about our merry ways."

She laughs, a malicious, twisted laugh that shakes me to the core. "Come to think of it," she says, twirling her ponytail. "That actually sounds like the best possible thing that could happen to me. I change my mind. Come with me so I can do all that."

Rei rubs her eyes, and while I'm deliberating on whether to be livid or shocked by her words, she says, "Sorry. I don't mean that. The spirits put me on edge when they get this way."

She reaches into a nearby cupboard, pulling out a cup and asking, "Mind if I have a drink?"

I shake my head.

Pouring herself a glass of water, she says, "If Hiro-kun were here, he'd be able to keep me in line. I really should have thought to bring him along at least, for your sake."

"Where _are_ Hiro and Nao?" I ask to keep her sedated. She grins at me, seeing through my pleasantries, and takes a swing of her drink. "Did they stay in the Sound Village?"

"Nope," she says. "For helping me, they were banished too. We came here as soon as I started to feel the spirits acting up, and we were running on a tight schedule, so I made them rush here without rest for a few days. We made camp a kilo or two outside your village gates and I slipped away after they crashed. Also, I might have drugged them. Anyway, they're fine. I set up protective barriers and stuff around them before I left. I'm not completely heartless."

Although she may be completely crazy.

"That's why I came to see you," she says, downing a third glass. "Because I care about your wellbeing and all that. Seriously though."

She sets down her glass and comes over to me. She stands right in front of me, takes me by the shoulders, and leans down so that we're at eye-level, despite the fact that she's only two or three centimeters taller than me.

"I know what's going through your head, Ren," she says, her thumbs pressing into my collarbone. "Your aura is muddled and you think that running away to break this bond is what's going to work best for you, but trust me when I say it's not. You need these people—Naruto, Sakura, Shikamaru. They'll distract you from the bond in the meantime. Which isn't exactly a bad thing," she says over me as I begin to argue. "You said the bond is on a sort of hiatus, right? Forget about it then. It's not going to help you to mope over something that isn't even there. Like I said during the exams: Leave it to me. Enjoy your time here while you can."

Rei reaches back, plucks the feather from her hair, and tucks it behind my ear. "Stay here. Enjoy your freedom while you can, however unrealistic or fleeting it is. Leave the bond to me. Trust me, you don't want to keep pushing these people away."

Her eyes slink over her shoulder and she grins, aware of something I have yet to catch on to. "Especially," she says, bowing her head slightly, "since they seem so set on keeping you around."

There's a knock on my front door that causes me to jump. Rei, amused, watches me as I lean over the sink to glance out the window and see who the visitor could be. A swish of pink swings just outside the window frame. I curse.

"Sakura," I say, pushing Rei away from the window. "What is she—"

"Don't worry," Rei says conspiratorially, slipping out my kitchen door before I can stop her. "I'm already gone."

"Wait!" I hiss, snatching her wrist before she can get any further.

"I got this," she says, and yanks free. "I'll slip out the back, crawl through the mass expanse of forest that covers this entire village, and I'll be home-free with Hiro-kun and Nao. Well, camp-free, seeing as I don't have a home anymore. What's the issue?"

"I don't want to be left in the dark," I say, swatting at the feather, which pokes out and flops into my face. "In regards to the bond, I mean. While you're out there, conducting your search, I want to know where you're going and what kinds of leads you have, otherwise I'll always want to make a run for it. If you can manage a way to update me on your progress, I promise I'll stay here."

The request is impractical. Considering where her search may lead her, there's no way she could possibly send me frequent and informative reports. She merely giggles, readjusts the feather in my hair and says, "Done deal."

She laughs again when I stare at her blankly. Rei points to the feather and says, "That's no ordinary artifact you have there. It helps channel the spirits and their message more easily; I used it during the Chuunin exams in order to past that first information gathering test. Anyway, this feather is specially bound to _my_ spirit in particular. Messages I may want to relay to you will be passed through it. You need simply attempt to write something with it, and if your handwriting looks different from what it usually does, then you can know it's me talking to you."

It sounds ludicrous, but I'm cut short from saying as much when Sakura knocks again, growing impatient. She calls my name and says, "I know you're in there! Stop hiding."

Rei stifles a laugh as I glare at her. "How will I know when you have news to pass to me?" I ask, glancing over my shoulder toward the foyer.

Rei takes my face in her hands, pulls me close, and kisses my forehead. "The spirits, tonakai," she says, winking, and I frown at her, pushing her away. "You'll feel them. Meditation is a good way to grow closer to the spirits, and an effective method of training those unruly vibrations of yours too."

With that she slips into the main hallway, waving to me over her shoulder. "Remember what I said: Don't leave," she repeats. "For your own safety and sake, and for the sakes of your friends. They don't deserve that."


	51. Moving On

**A/N:** I'm a bit reluctant to upload this chapter because I feel like my writing has been off lately. I feel like I need to take a break and do some reading and studying up, and polishing my chapters and writing in general. We'll see. Thank you for reading.

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 51: Moving On**

"Yes?" I say, answering the door the fourth time Sakura knocks. I'm more annoyed than impressed by her persistence. I don't have much going for me at the moment, but the last thing I want to do is talk to her.

She looks as displeased as I feel and props her hands on her waist. "I thought you were avoiding me," she says. She doesn't know how right she is. She wrinkles her brow, squinting at me, and asks," What's that in your hair?"

I reach up, my fingers grazing the feather Rei had given me. I tuck it under my hair, hiding it away, and say, "Nothing. Just trying something new."

Sakura remains skeptical, but when I don't continue, she says, "Can I come in?"

I glance over my shoulder, pause. Rei has had more than enough time to escape through the back door, so I say, "Yeah. Come on in."

I lead Sakura into my kitchen where a few clean dishes still lay out on the counter. I start shelving them under the pretense that I'd been doing this the entire time, as Sakura sits down at the seat Rei had occupied only moments before, twiddling her fingers.

"What do you want?" I ask when she continues to sit silently in her seat.

Sakura clears her throat, straightens her posture. She builds herself up like this, but it still takes her a moment to gather her words, as though she hadn't anticipated talking to me when she got here. When she speaks, she sounds as surprised as I am by her words.

"Train with me," she says, squeezing her hands together so tightly the whites of her knuckles shine against her skin. "I'm going to ask Tsunade—that is, Hokage-sama for an apprenticeship, like you told me to. But I want you to come with me. I'm sure, given your medical background, she'd be more willing to take you than me, but even in the case that she can only take one of us, I think—"

"Hold," I say, raising a hand to stop her. I cross my arms and scrutinize her, wondering what's possessed her to say all these things that don't match up. An apprenticeship, under Tsunade—both of us?

"It doesn't work like that," I say, shaking my head in answer to my own question. "Listen, Sakura, I know I told you to take the apprenticeship instead of me, but I didn't mean for you to think I would want a dual apprenticeship with you. That's not the way an apprenticeship works. At least, not in my eyes. When a master takes an apprentice, she only has one. If we were to go to Tsunade and ask for an apprenticeship and, for some reason, she agrees to take both of us, I wouldn't want that. If I'm going to train, I'm going to want to be the best. I don't want to have to compete with anyone, and I don't want my sensei splitting time between pupils. It's not like when we were in cells anymore, under a Jounin," I say, and Sakura lowers her eyes. "It can't be that way with the paths we're taking."

At this, her head jerks up and her eyes go wide. I don't know what I've said that's triggered this alarm in her, but she clenches her hands into fists and leans forward in her seat, apparently ready to lunge at me and pin me down to make me see.

"At least come with me to ask for this apprenticeship," she says. "We'll tell her that she can take her pick, and if it comes down to it, we could—we could fight for it to prove who deserves it more. I'm serious!" she snaps when I laugh. "Ren, you can't expect to sit idly by because Sasuke is gone."

"Oh, believe me," I say quietly. "I don't intend to. Sakura, I'm glad you're taking initiative, and I'm happy you asked me to do this with you, but—this isn't the way it was meant to be. As much as I want to learn from a medical genius, I know the only way for me to move past all of this is to find my own method. I'll train my own way," I say, "on my own, if that's what it comes down to."

At this point, Sakura has noticeably blanched. Her eyes, though wide with panic as they are, stare past me, unfocused over my shoulder. She folds her eyelids shut with her fingers, letting out a sigh that deflates her lungs.

"Ren," she says. "You and Sasuke are so similar. I've noticed before, but it's become even clearer. Considering how close the two of you seemed, I'm not surprised you're so alike. I mean, you're so distant from everyone, and you keep to yourself no matter how hard others try to help you out. You're both so headstrong," she says with a small, defeated laugh. "And talented. And I think that's the most destructive combination."

Sakura stands before I can defend myself and sees herself out. At the kitchen door, she says, "You don't have to come with me to ask for the apprenticeship. But at least promise me you'll put some time aside to train with me. When I've become a better kunoichi, Ren, you're one of the ones I want to fight."

"I…all right then," I agree. "Okay."

She smiles at me, a sad, desperately hopeful smile that makes me wonder what I've been doing to deserve that kind of pained expression. As she leaves, I sigh, shaking my head at the thought of us fighting each other, duking it out like she and Ino had during the exams. What a scenario. If she means to improve as much as she's implying, though, I can't imagine who would come out the winner, despite my confidence in my own abilities. At the rate I'm going, I may not be able to hone my skills at all. I don't even have an idea of how I would begin my training. Sakura, at least, has a mentor in mind, beside the fact that I had given her the idea in the first place.

I sigh and lean against the counter, listening as the door closes behind her. I think about how odd it is that, in the same day, I've been compared to Shikamaru and Sasuke, the two most dissimilar people in my life. I understand being likened to Sasuke—like Sakura said: we're headstrong, talented enough, and although she hadn't mentioned it, I know she'd wanted to say that Sasuke and I tie for most self-centered person in the universe—but Shikamaru?

I don't deserve to be put on the same level as Shikamaru. I could never be as good as him.

Besides, if Shikaku believes the characteristics I share with Shikamaru stem from us spending so much time together, then surely the bond makes it so that Sasuke and I are nearly one and the same.

[+]

I leave my house before anyone else decides to pay me a visit. I end up wandering through the village, observing those unaffected by the recent events that have transpired. They prattle about the mundane, giggle, and gossip. The children, especially, staying close to their parents or running around with their friends, carefree as ever.

I wish I were one of them.

Simply wishing I could run away from my problems won't make it happen. That's no way for a shinobi to think besides. I need to train. I need to take initiative like Sakura and Naruto are, pledge myself to my cause as much as they're dedicating themselves to Sasuke. I can't let his absence turn me into the sloth I was when Sasuke was in that coma.

At least, this time around, the bond is wholly out of sync with him. No matter how much it frets about Sasuke's wellbeing, it receives nothing, and I can only think that this will work to my advantage. Already I can feel the bond fading, and if I do as Rei says and forget about the bond, who knows? Maybe it'll fade completely into nonexistence. That would be for the best. Then I'd be able to focus on what really matters.

I'm walking through one of the busier streets in Konoha when I see a splotch of red hair splintering the masses up ahead. I watch as it bobs along at a leisurely pace, apparently knowing where it's going, and I wonder how long it's been since we returned to the village from our mission. A day, maybe, give or take a few hours. He and his team should be homebound already. Curious, I squeeze past the shoppers and their children, and before long I've caught Gaara by the arm.

"Hey," I say, as he blinks at me in muted surprise. "You're still here?"

He nods after a brief pause, looking around us to see if I don't mean to talk to someone else nearby. "Your Hokage requested my siblings and I stay here for a while to help your village recoup," he says, scooting to the side of the road to avoid becoming trampled. I follow suit, ducking into the shade of a nearby shop. "Considering all we've done to your village and how lightly she's let off the Sand, we were obliged to say yes."

I'm slightly embarrassed at the fact that our condition has gotten to the point where we need to ask outsiders for help, and say, "Er, yeah, you could say we're in short supp—wait," I say, furrowing my brow. "Your siblings? Who are—"

"Kankuro and Temari," he deadpans at the same moment it clicks in my head.

"Ah. Of course," I say, and change the subject quickly as he lowers his eyes. "Anyway, I want to thank you for helping me earlier—you know, taking me over that bone yard. I wasn't very, er, kind in my request, but you still did it for me and—thank you for understanding."

He cocks his head to the side as though it had only made sense to help me cross the field. He says, "No thanks necessary. You were fulfilling your duties as a shinobi and I was doing mine."

"Yes," I agree, although there was much more to it than that, "but so far as I'm concerned, I owe you one."

Gaara blinks at me, confused as to why I feel so indebted to him. "We'll call it even," he compromises, and when I mirror his confusion, he says, "After my—fight with Naruto, you tried to help me. Despite what I'd done to your village, to you and your friends, you still wanted to make sure I was all right. That kind of compassion has never occurred to me before you and Naruto."

"Oh. I—uh," I stutter. Gaara isn't affected by my discomfort. His gaze stays steady as I try to come up with something to say.

"You're a lot like him, too," he says, stopping me mid-stutter, and I stiffen. Just what I need. Another person to live up to, another burden to bear. "You have a lot of courage. You stand up for what you believe in, whether or not it causes dissent. I admire that."

"Yeah, well," I say, sweeping my hair to the side. "Wish I could be more of myself sometimes, but it seems people wouldn't like me at all if that were the case."

The irritation in my voice doesn't go without his notice. He raises a brow. The gesture is so slight it might as well have been an involuntary twitch.

"Is…something wrong?" he asks.

"Yes. No. I—sorry," I say. "It's that, lately, I've been compared to other people and I'm getting sick of it. It's like, you go around making this name for yourself, right? But then all people can see when they look at you is people you remind them of. I want to be myself, so I don't have all these expectations to live up to or have to feel bad when I'm not as good as the people I'm being compared to. Or feel even worse when I remind people of the one person who ruins everything. Sorry," I say again when I notice that I've made him uncomfortable. "I don't mean to drop this all on you. Today's been rough for me."

"It's all right," he says, and then, after a brief moment of silence, "There is something I would like to say though."

I raise my brow and sidestep a woman who loses her balance when her kid yanks her in the opposite direction. "Go ahead," I say.

"I think," he says, keeping his head low as he speaks, like I'm a child he needs to be gentle with or, rather, like he doesn't know how to go about speaking so openly or at length with someone else. "Those comparisons people are making about you says something about the nature of our being. As…_humans_, we long for companionship and live as we do because we can't exist on our own. Since that's the case, we can only find ourselves in the selves of other people, and verify that we're our own person through the existence of others. That's why we long for companionship. That's why we see in others what we could only hope to see in ourselves. I think you misunderstand," he says as I blink at him dully. "Being compared to others doesn't mean you're not…_you_. It means you've created something. You have grown into _you_ through the extension of others."

Just like before, when we were with Lee, sitting beside the bone yard as Naruto chased after Sasuke, his speech leaves me stunned. He no longer seems like a boy who could have ever wanted to kill anyone for the sake of feeling whole, especially when he is here, telling me we see in others what we could only hope to see in ourselves, and it makes sense. When he says it like that, I could do worse than being compared to the likes of Naruto and Shikamaru. And there is, I think, a little bit of Sasuke in all of us. That darkness, the inherent selfishness Sasuke let run its course and get the better of him—we are all susceptible to it too. It's evident in the way I keep to myself, evident in the way Sakura and Naruto so steadfastly pursue him and dedicate themselves to bringing him back. It's evident in the way shinobi will do whatever they can to protect their villages.

Gaara has been able to mature this much since the exams, where as I—

"If it's any consolation," he says, snapping me out of my thoughts, "the way you are, you don't make people wonder if the ones around you are your friends, your siblings. Everyone can see the bonds you've nurtured and work hard to maintain. I can only hope I become that way in the future."

I smile halfheartedly at his compliment and say, "Looks to me like you're well on your way."

Gaara inhales sharply, and there's the same muted surprise on his face. He returns my smile curtly, one that quickly disappears when a voice breaks the soft buzzing from the crowd of people around us.

"Hey, Gaara!" someone calls, and Gaara and I glance down the street to see a person dressed in all black with something strapped to his back waving Gaara down. Kankuro stops the moment he sees he has our attention and shouts over the considerable distance still between us, "What have you been doing all this time? You were supposed to meet us at the Academy."

"At the Academy?" I ask, as Gaara turns back to me to say his goodbyes. "What business do you guys have there?"

"We're teaching a few classes," he says, "so that the Chuunin are free to take on what missions have piled up since the attack on your village."

"Is that right?" I say, crossing my arms. "It sounds like you may be here a while then. If that's the case, I might have to stand in for one of your lessons. Maybe we can train together sometime too."

Gaara eyes me, raises his hand to touch the gourd slung over his back. "You want," he says slowly, "to train with me."

"Of course," I say. "We're friends now, aren't we?"

He starts at the word _friends_, lowering his eyes as though he doesn't believe me. Abruptly, he turns on his heels, heading toward his brother, who has grown even more impatient during our conversation. "I think you would do well to stop by the Academy sometime," he says as sinks into the crowd. "Teaching could help ease your mind."

Maybe if I had the patience. I snort at the thought of me teaching some bratty children, even temporarily. I can't see Gaara, Kankuro, or Temari doing it very well either, although I guess Temari would just scare the children into submission. I imagine the amusing scene in my head, watching his back grow smaller as he retreats.

"Hey," I call, and Gaara turns slightly to look at me over his shoulder. I can barely see him through the people who zip by, and I wonder if it's possible that this many people have always lived in the village. It never seemed that way before, but maybe I'm just taking the time to notice it. "We're even," I say with a small wave. "Thank you."

He pauses for a moment, like he has something to add, but only gives me a polite nod, and then, in the wash of people, he disappears.

[+]

In the following days, everything picks up again. Chouji and Neji have been stabilized and are awake and responsive, although they stay in the hospital for a brief observation period. Kiba and Akamaru recover quickly, having sustain the least amount of damage after Shikamaru. Naruto is set to leave with Jiraiya as soon as he's recovered. Sakura secures her apprenticeship.

I hear all this through Shikamaru after I go to his house to apologize for walking out on him in the hospital. He'd merely frowned and said, "I'm not the one you should be apologizing to. Naruto and Sakura—they're the ones who need to hear this. They've been worried about you."

I mirrored his expression at the mention of them and said, "I'll see to doing that when they have some free time. They're busy with their apprenticeships, or preparing for their apprenticeships, I'm sure."

I left the conversation at that, and Shikamaru remained displeased at my noncommittal remark. He hasn't brought it up since, so I assume he's not going to force me to meet with Naruto and Sakura, which I won't if I can help it. Before long, they'll be so occupied with their respective apprenticeships I won't be able to get in touch with them anyway.

I don't see a point in apologizing and trying to affirm our friendship. With Sasuke gone, we have nothing in common. And Sasuke is undoubtedly gone. I can barely feel the bond anymore; no matter how much I think about it, it doesn't stir or flare up like it used to. True to his word, he has cut me off. Still, after what went on while he was being chased, whatever happened during his battle with Naruto, I know I can expect short bursts of his pain whenever things become too much for him to bear. Until the bond is broken absolutely, I think I can always look forward to bits and pieces of Sasuke seeping through to me.

That being the case, the higher-ups think I'm an important asset to the recovery of Sasuke and the outing of Orochimaru, but I can already tell that what signals _do_ seep through won't be significant enough for me to get a lead on his location. Though I've told Tsunade as much when I was summoned to her office a few days after my run-in with Gaara, I know when she tells the village council, they won't believe her. She has a hard time believing me herself, given the way she looked at me when I gave her the bad news, her eyebrows raised, eyes narrowed, lips pressed into a tight line of displeasure.

They can think what they want about me being in cahoots with Sasuke. All I know is he's gone and, like Rei said, I need to make the most of it. For the moment, I am free. And I will keep tricking myself into thinking this bond is really broken and see how happy that makes me because this is what I've wanted all along.

I don't have solid plans for training. I start to meditate in most of my free time, like Rei suggested. I don't know if I'm supposed to be able to feel the spirits growing stronger around me, but it does help me tune into the vibrations more. Mostly, I start going to the fields to meditate and expand the range of my vibrations, and its during one of the meditations that I come up with a plan.

My plan requires I go to see a certain someone, so I make the time to visit him two weeks after he's discharged from the hospital. I figure two weeks is more than enough time for him rest before it's safe for him to exert chakra and train with me.

His family estate is nearly as large as I remember the Uchiha's estate was. When I enter, there isn't anyone around for me to ask for him. I know my place, though, and don't go poking my nose around, looking for him—that would take too long anyway, considering the size of the place—but I don't have to wait for someone to come by because I feel someone approaching me from behind and whirl around to find Hinata, startled and flushing pink as though _she's_ the one who's been caught roaming where she shouldn't be.

"Hinata!" I say, and she winces at the shrillness of my voice. I tone down my eagerness and say, "Hi. Sorry to be intruding on your estate, but I was wondering if Neji is around."

"Ah, yes," she says, tapping her fingers together and keeping her eyes diverted. "If you wait here, I'll go get him for you."

I thank her and she goes off, disappearing for a few minutes and leaving me to check out the estate. The house itself is obscenely large, and I can imagine how grand it must be on the inside. The courtyard is nothing but dirt and a solemn luscious tree, but it's well kept, swept with precision to keep the earth even.

It's nothing compared to the Uchiha compound, but that's because the Uchiha had their estate and then owned most every shop around the estate. The Hyuuga estate is as prestigious and as full of history as the Uchiha's had been, though, I'm sure. The only difference is the Uchiha compound is completely abandoned now.

I wonder if I should loot the compound again to see if I can find the bond. Or at least anything that might help me. My house is full of useless junk as it is, but having the Uchiha estate to go back to if I'm in need of any supplies would be good on my wallet.

I decide against it. Going back to that place won't do me good, no matter what I think.

The vibrations rumble as something rolls out from the house, and I look up in surprise. Hinata pushes Neji out on a wheelchair, which he looks slightly irritated to be in, but it's replaced with surprise when he sees me.

"Hey," I greet, coming up to the very edge of the porch. Under his collar I can see the bandages that cover his wound. "I'm glad to see you're doing well. How's your shoulder?"

"Good," he says, shifting in his seat. "It's lucky we have such a talented Hokage. I don't think I would have made it without her skill."

"Yes," I say, and think about the opportunity I've lost to work under such talent. I clip my hair behind my ear and my fingers brush Rei's feather, which I've woven into my hair to prevent it from falling out. I remember why I'm here. There's no time for me to mope. "Speaking of skill, Neji, I was wondering if you would help me improve mine. That is, I have a kekkei genkai, too," I say when he regards me curiously. "It's called the Genshindou, and it allows me to feel and manipulate the vibrations, like those Sound Nin in the Forest of Death, minus the weird physical enhancements. My Genshindou is grossly underdeveloped, though, because—of my familial situation. I've been able to work with it a little on my own, but the progress isn't much. But today when I remembered your Byakugan, I had an idea."

He raises his eyebrows, sits back in his seat, and asks, "What is it?"

"You can use the Byakugan to see around you completely," I say, making vague gestures with my hands to indicate as much. "Essentially, my vibrations should allow me to do the same. Except, instead of _seeing_, I should _feel_ my surroundings. I've been meditating lately to become more in tune with the vibrations, but my reach isn't very far. So I was wondering if you would train with me and, well, help me see better. Otherwise I won't know what's coming at me. Also," I add, suddenly remembering, "as I medic, I was hoping you would be able to help me feel out the keirakukei, and the tenketsu along it. I know," I say when he regards me with uncertainty, "it varies from person to person, but I believe there are certain patterns to it that, with the vibrations, I may be able to sense. It might be a long shot, but I don't think it would hurt to try."

Neji stares at me for a moment, and his gaze makes me uncomfortable. I'm almost sure he'll shoot down my request, but then he takes a deep breath and, with a great effort, he pushes himself out of his chair. Automatically, I step forward, ready to catch him if he falls, and Hinata gasps, "Neji-niisan, you shouldn't—"

He waves her away, saying, "I don't need that thing. They only want me in it to keep my heart rate down, but walking as slowly as I do, there's no difference if I sit. Right?" he asks me, smiling.

"Well," I start, "yes, but—"

"See?" he says, motioning to me as Hinata presses her hands together and bites her lip. "This coming from the medic who helped stabilize you. And me."

Neji takes a deep breath, as though sitting in the wheelchair had prevented him from breathing properly. He looks out over the walls of the Hyuuga estate, blinking in the brilliant blue sky, and closes his eyes, taking another slower, deeper breath that opens his shoulders. He winces and grunts, his hand going to his injury, and Hinata and I lean closer to him again.

He says, with a weak smile as he straightens up, "I'm okay. I just need to remember to take smaller steps." He massages his shoulder a moment before he meets my gaze and says, "I don't think I've recovered enough to start using the Byakugan yet, but I'd be happy to help you when I'm ready. In the meantime, I'm sure Hinata will be able to help you just as well."

Hinata startles at being volunteered and then looks between me and Neji in panic when we turn to her. "Oh, no," she says, waving her hands in front of her to dismiss the notion. "I don't think—"

"It won't be anything strenuous," I say. "We'll be sitting around in a field—or here, if you like—and I'll focus on the vibrations and you'll survey the area with your Byakugan and I'll try to name off animals or whatever I feel and you tell me whether I'm right or wrong. Please, Hinata," I say when she still refuses. "I would really appreciate it if you did this for me. I'm not a bad student, I promise."

Hinata remains unsure, but then she nods and says, "I suppose…I owe you as much, Ren-san, for helping me during the exams."

I blink at her in surprise, in part due to the honorific she's added to the end of my name, but also that she thinks I managed to help her in any way during the preliminaries. I'd merely assessed her quickly and passed her off to the medical ninja since there wasn't much I could do in the moment.

I laugh and shake my head, saying, "You don't owe me, Hinata. Think of it as a favor between friends. If anything, I'm indebted to _you_. Thank you both," I say, bowing to them. "I have a few things to clear up before I start training, so do you think we could start next week?"

They agree and we plan to meet in the village's largest park where there'll be plenty of activity for me to sense. I wave to them over my shoulder as I leave the Hyuuga estate, accomplished. One step closer, I think, clasping my hands behind my head and letting out a breath of relief. Now I need to find a way to improve my medical skills. Sakura had offered me the chance to sit in on her sessions with Tsunade, but I'll only resort to doing that when I really find no viable alternative. I won't be with Sakura if I can help it. And I can always help it. I've managed it for the past month and a half, and I don't plan on stopping.

I'm halfway home when I see, ahead, a man leaning up against the side of the road, his nose stuck in a bright orange book. I don't need to look at him for long before I recognize who it is—that stature, that lopsided hair that's too lazy to stand up straight: it's Kakashi, and he isn't here for no reason.

I swerve, ready to turn down the next street before he sees me, but it's futile. He hears me approaching and looks up, offers me a cheery smile.

"Funny running into you here," he says. "I haven't seen you in—how long has it been—a month, a month and a half maybe?"

"Kakashi," I say, feigning surprise poorly as I try to come up with an excuse to avoid him. "Yeah. Good to see you. Listen, I have to be somewhere—"

"No way," he says. In one swift motion, he puts his book away and cinches his hand around my wrist, pulling me forward. "I'm taking you out to lunch! My treat. Come on."

He turns me around and ushers me down the street, back into the center of the village. I drag my feet and slow my pace so that we make almost no progress. This doesn't deter him. He keeps a firm hand on my shoulder, his fingers pressing tightly into my collar as he steers me along.

"So," he says, "how have you been lately, Ren?"

"Good," I say curtly. My terse response is met with silence, like he expects me to be polite and return his question. When I don't, he lets out a sigh and says, "I understand what you've been through these past months, but that's no reason to avoid your teammates."

"_Former_ teammates," I correct, and almost want to laugh at how much I sound like Rei. "I haven't really been a part of Team 7 since the beginning of the Chuunin exams, remember?"

"Ren," Kakashi says, admonishing almost, except he sounds too tired. "You know exactly why things happened the way they did."

"Yeah," I say with a shrug. "And, like, no hard feelings or anything on my part, but, while you believe there isn't a reason for me to be avoiding Naruto and Sakura, I don't think there _is_ reason for me to see them anymore, especially with—Sasuke gone."

Kakashi hums. And then he asks, like the news is new to him when the truth is he's undoubtedly already been filled in, "So. The bond…?"

"I can't feel him anymore," I say quietly, putting my hands in my pockets. "There's nothing there when I think about it. He's really gone, Kakashi."

I'm standing on his left so I can't see his good eye, but I know he's looking at me, eyebrows raised, half-disbelieving, half-disappointed. I can hear it when he says, "I'm sure that's for the best."

I scoff, keeping my gaze locked on the road. "You're just saying that," I retort, crossing my arms. "Everyone would rather the bond be still intact. Then I would be able to track him down, find him, wouldn't I? It would all be very convenient for the village and my job as a tool to service my village as such."

Kakashi doesn't answer, and I realize we've somehow made it to one of the quieter parts of town, where there are no shops or restaurants, and it's easy for me to sense two people who shift on their feet nearby, nervous and suspicious and wholly out of place.

"Where are we going to eat, exactly?" I say, slowing to a stop.

"Hmm? Oh," Kakashi says, as though he's only remembered what we were supposed to be doing. "Lunch. That's right. That's going to have to wait for another time. I don't have any money on me, you see."

I'm about to call him out on it when the two people I had sensed emerge from around the corner, and I freeze. It's Naruto and Sakura, their eyes set in determination as they see me.

"What's this?" I ask as Kakashi falls back, nodding to Sakura and Naruto. "Is this some kind of intervention?"

"Something along those lines," Kakashi says. "Think of it more as a last get-together before Naruto leaves on his journey. He won't be home for a while, you know. You'll miss him when he's gone."

I have to bite my tongue to prevent myself from issuing a remark about how I don't miss him _now_ and would actually rather not be around him at all when Kakashi leans into my ear, says, "I'll tell the Hokage about the recent developments regarding your situation. Coming from me, they'll leave you alone. For the most part." Then, leaning back, he plops a hand on my shoulder and says, "It's all you," to Sakura and Naruto, who stare at him, curious to know what he's whispered to me, and disappears.

Sakura is the first to disregard what Kakashi might have said. She steps forward and takes my arm, guiding me to the bench before I can get away. She presses me into the seat and she and Naruto hover over me, trapping me in.

"What's this about, truly?" I ask, looking between the two, although I could probably guess.

"We want to know," Sakura says, "what's been going on with you lately. You've managed to avoid Naruto and me for the past two months, while you've been seeing everyone else—Shikamaru's team, even Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro while they're at the Academy. So what's the deal?"

I exhale through pursed lips, looking between Naruto and Sakura, unable to ignore how cleverly they have me trapped. They won't let me leave until they hear an answer. And I won't be left alone unless I give them one.

"We have different goals," I say offhandedly, and Sakura scoffs.

"So what's the difference?" Naruto says, frowning.

They know how I'm going to answer to that. They just want me to admit to it. And so I do.

"I have a hard time believing we'll be able to bring Sasuke back," I say, running my hand through my hair. "No matter what we do, we have to consider that he's chosen this path for himself. I mean, how likely are you to stray from your own nindo, Naruto? And, Sakura, how likely are you to stray from loving Sasuke unconditionally?"

Both of them open their mouths to retort, but come up with nothing. They exchange glances, lower their eyes, and my point has been proven. I shake my head, sigh.

"Exactly. So how do you plan on convincing Sasuke to return to us?" I ask. "I don't see it happening, and I don't want to be around you in the meantime because, so far as I can tell, being around people who only have Sasuke in mind isn't going to get me anywhere."

Naruto considers the sky, the way the clouds move overhead, before he speaks. "You know, Jiraiya said the same thing to me that day in the hospital," he says. "He told me to stop following after Sasuke, that I would be a fool for doing it, because he'd chosen his path to abandon us, to hurt us. He wouldn't change and I would be wasting my time."

I raise an eyebrow. "Have you bet against yourself in this argument then?" I ask. "It doesn't sound like you're trying to win."

Naruto grins at me, his eyes crinkling at the corners, the white of his teeth contrasting against the blonde of his hair and making him glow. "But that's it," he says. "It's not a matter of winning or who's right or who's wrong. The point is, Ren, people change. Something will make him realize," Naruto says, his voice growing more firm when I sigh. "Something will make Sasuke see that this is where he belongs and that this is where he'll always belong. But if we abandon him, then he may never realize how much he needs to come back. That's why we need to keep believing that he'll return. That's why we need to keep trying our best to bring him home."

This doesn't make sense to me, but I don't say as much. If they want to keep believing, like hell if I'm going to take that away from them. The world could always use more optimism, no matter how foolish it is.

"So will you help us?" Sakura says, the words bursting on her lips. She looks panicked after she says it, like she hadn't wanted to ask me yet because she can see I'm not convinced.

I scowl, ruffling my hair, and say, "Help you with what?"

Sakura's face falls, which doesn't go without notice from Naruto, whose frown deepens to match mine.

"Sasuke-kun," she says quietly. "Will you help us bring him back?"

I consider it. After all, the worst that could happen is he doesn't come back and we're forced to kill him ourselves, and even then that's a pretty good deal. Best case scenario, he comes back, we act as though none of this had ever happened, I find a way to either break the bond or live with it, and we're all happy.

That's too much wishful thinking.

"I don't know," I say at last, and Sakura looks away.

Naruto bristles, sitting straighter. He starts, "But I thought you said—" and then promptly cuts off and deflates, like he knows he shouldn't finish his sentence.

"Thought I said what?" I say when he doesn't continue. He shifts in his seat, uncomfortable, and then meets my eyes.

"Something's been bothering me for a while, Ren," Naruto says, holding my gaze. "After our fight with Itachi in Otafuku Gai, you said something when you were trying to heal Sasuke. Do you remember?"

I bite my lip, thinking back. I had said a lot of things during that time, not all of them very coherent, and my memory of it comes fuzzy because I can only remember my fear and panic at Sasuke's beaten state. I shake my head, pushing my hair out of my eyes, and say, "To tell you the truth, I don't."

Sakura watches me closely, her eyes flickering to Naruto for moment as though they've already discussed this, the way the conversation is going to go.

"You said it was your job to protect Sasuke," he says slowly, his eyebrows furrowed together, "that you were trained for it. What did you mean when you said that your clan was—"

He stops when I close my eyes and drop my face into my hands. I can feel them watching me, feel them scrutinizing and trying to figure it out by my reaction. And while they may be able to put bits and pieces together, they will never get the full story unless I tell them.

So I tell them: "That's something to discuss another time. After I've figured out what to do about Sasuke."

Naruto and Sakura exchange looks, but nod and allow me to leave without protest when I dismiss myself.

I sprint the way home.

Naruto has reminded me: Protecting Sasuke, watching over him—it had been my sole purpose, the only reason I was spared in the massacre. It had been everything I lived for, whether I admitted it or not. Anything else I said would have been me foolishly denying it all to comfort myself.

And I am a fool.

This is why I didn't want to talk to Naruto or Sakura. They would just remind me of Sasuke, look at me and think _Sasuke_, because to them I was nothing else but a gateway to their precious. I have a feeling that's all I'll ever be to them now, especially that Sasuke is gone and they want so badly to find him in every part of their lives.

I won't allow myself to be a part of that.

At home, I rummage through all the things my parents had left behind. I spill over every box, dig through moth eaten clothes, tear apart every book I find. I hope to discover the bond nestled tightly in a box or sewn into the threads of clothes or bound into the spine of an ancient, useless medical book.

There is nothing of the sort and I want to scream.

My parents' room is piled high with junk after I'm done. Mountains of ragged clothes, piles of decimated books ready for burning. A fire, I think, fumbling through a dingy cashbox where I had sworn I saw a lighter. A fire to burn all this up in smoke. Destroy every bit of my past until there is nothing left, and then I can pretend that my family never existed, forget about this shit bond like Rei had suggested. Once this is all gone, I'll be gone with it. Nothing but ashes and smoke. Nothing but fire and the sweet nihility of losing your childhood home and everything inside. My parents, the Kagiru, their legacy—it can all disappear so easily.

_But where would you stay? Once it's all gone, you will have nothing._

The concern is a footnote in my mind, but even when I'm forced to confront it, I don't care. Shikamaru and his family will always welcome me with open arms. If, for some reason, they decide to reject me, then I can fall back on running away. To Rei or—or Sasuke. It doesn't matter anymore. I am nothing if not his.

I lost everything the moment I was born into this family.

My chest grows tight and I'm gasping for air. The atmosphere becomes thick, sticky and unsatisfying, heavy on my lungs, and I'm clawing my way over the mountains of regret and resentment and the bittersweet-ness of having nothing to lose.

I'm crying before I'm outside my parents' room. I cling onto the doorframe for support, but even then my fingers give out and my knees give out, and I'm curled up in a ball, crying.

I hate this, hate this weakness. Hate how Sasuke makes me feel whenever I think about him. Hate that, even through all this shit, a part of me still wants him here. Before, I was never alone. And now—truly, truly, I have nothing, and so long as he remains away, I will always have nothing.

[+]

The most effective way of treating a malady is to attack the cause. That is, if there is something cancerous growing within a patient's body, the most logical and effective course of action would be to remove the cancerous cells; if someone is suffering from an infection, the best thing to do would be to treat and heal the infection.

This seems like a given, but most of the time it's hard to pinpoint the cause, and what medics end up doing is treating the symptoms until they're able to figure out what's wrong. Sometimes, medics mistake a major symptom as a cause of something greater, and then their efforts are wasted treating that instead of the bigger picture.

This is what I have done. I'd tried to treat my loneliness by growing closer to Sasuke, growing closer to Naruto and Sakura, who shared the common interest of keeping their friends safe. I'd tried to treat my fear of being left behind by overshooting the expectations of my peers, by trying to come off as wise and well-learned in the ways of life so people would find me a comforting source. But those weren't the reasons I was unhappy. It was Sasuke.

If it weren't for Sasuke, I wouldn't have been spared by Itachi. If it weren't for Sasuke, my friends wouldn't be so disillusioned. If it weren't for Sasuke, my life wouldn't be in the state it is.

It was Sasuke. It was always Sasuke.

I spent years and years fretting over the bond because I believed that it caused this aching loneliness, this irrational fear of being left behind. I dedicated five years of my life solely to finding a way to break the bond, isolating myself, severing ties with home. But in doing so, I was only treating the symptoms. What I needed to do, what I should have been doing this whole time, was distancing myself from Sasuke and his cohorts, everyone who believed that, deep down, he is a good guy, with a good heart, who will change if you show things to him in a certain slant of light.

That's how he likes to play, though. He wants you to convince him because in doing so you will convince yourself. He wants you to twist things until they make him happy, which will make you happy, but not with the way things will have become. Because you'll have to keep twisting things, keep lying to yourself that what you want is what he wants. And then you're caught in his web and illusion and then nothing is yours and everything is his.

Sasuke was the first cancerous cell that infected the body of people around me: Sakura, Naruto, even Orochimaru. Now that he's been extracted, the others must also be eradicated. Orochimaru is gone with him, and soon Naruto will have gone on his journey, naturally phasing out of my system. That only leaves me to treat Sakura, and I can think of no better way than to forcibly cut her off from me.

All that will be left for me to do then is to treat the side effects and remaining symptoms: Loneliness, resentment, bitterness, and the sweetness of having nothing and, consequently, being able to have everything.

**END PART II**


	52. Intermission pt 1 Sinking

**A/N:** The time skip officially starts now. There is a slight lull as Ren settles into life without Team 7, but I don't think I could have expected any more from the time skip. BOUND will return to its regular programming after a few commercial interruptions. Thank you for sticking around.

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 52: Intermission pt. 1—Sinking**

**One Month Later—January**

After nearly three months in our village, Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro leave. I go to see them off with Shikamaru, who has in the meantime become a sort of unofficial ambassador to the Sand, while I've trained with them a number of times since they've been here. Gaara's sand is surprisingly susceptible to my vibrations, and Kankuro's puppeteer techniques help me develop my vibrations in a similar way. Temari's winds are the only thing I can't find a way to combat, but I'm working on that.

"It was nice having you around," I say, grinning as I offer my hand. "Thank you for all you've done. Take care."

Gaara stares at me for a moment, as though the gesture is so alien to him that he needs me to explain what I want him to do. I laugh, step forward, and take his hand, lifting it and cupping it in both my own.

"Thank you," I say again, keeping my gaze level with his. "I'm much obliged to you guys for taking such good care of my friends."

Gaara's fingers tighten around mine briefly, and he bows his head. Shikamaru and I wish them a safe trip home once more, and with that they're off, back to the Sand Village. While it's a relief to have a sense of order back to the village, with the Chuunin teaching at the Academy again and our shinobi forces replenishing, it'll be odd to not see the Sand Trio every day.

"Hey!" Temari calls over her shoulder at the last minute. "If anything happens again, we'll help out. Is that okay, cry baby?"

I laugh, and Shikamaru manages a small smirk. Temari grins, salutes us, and jogs to catch up with her brothers, before they disappear completely into the horizon. I sigh, pushing my hand through my hair, and nudge Shikamaru through the village gates.

Now things go back to normal. Well, as normal as we can be, considering the circumstances. I don't say so as Shikamaru starts on his way into the village while I stay on the edge of the village gates, watching the trees shudder in the breeze blowing by. The air outside feels different in my lungs, and for a second I want to step outside and feel it more completely when Shikamaru calls me.

"Something wrong?" he asks, and I turn away from the outside, shut in the village once more.

"Nothing," I say with an easy smile. "Just thinking about how nice it is today."

He eyes me suspiciously, and says, "You've been distracted lately. Even the Sand guys noticed as much when you were training with them, you know."

"Talking behind my back, are you? What kind of best friend does that?"

He scowls as I catch up to him and says, "That's not it."

I roll my eyes, dismissing exactly what _it_ could be, and reach up to touch the feather in my hair. So far, I haven't felt anything from it like Rei had said I would. Then again, I could have felt something a long time ago and missed it because I didn't know what _it_ was supposed to feel like. Being that I haven't felt _compelled_ to unwind it from my hair since Rei left, I take it that she hasn't found anything yet. It's only been a few months, anyway. It would take a miracle for her to find something about the bond in that time.

The bond still lingers in the back of my mind. It doesn't make attempts to contact Sasuke. It knows to do so would be useless. But it remains in the back of my head, moping and wishing Sasuke were here. Sometimes, when I'm alone, doing something utterly mundane, it flares up and causes my stomach to drop in sadness and my throat to close up.

I've managed to fight off the urge to cry since my last breakdown, though. So there's that.

I've avoided Naruto and Sakura to the best of my ability these past months, seeing them only in passing, and even then I don't acknowledge them, although I've become good friends with the other Genin through training. Hinata sometimes brings Kiba and Shino along to train with me, and Ino sits in for my keirakukei lessons with Neji, despite the fact that she isn't able to grasp the idea behind figuring out how to pinpoint the tenketsu. Chouji comes to hang out with Shikamaru and me sometimes, and other times we train with him and Asuma.

In short, things have been good since I distanced myself from Naruto and Sakura. None of the other Genin understand why I did as much. They think I'm being irrational. After all, Sasuke was my friend too. There should be a common interest between Naruto, Sakura, and I to bring him back. But I refuse.

They've stopped hounding me about why I've chosen to sever ties with Sakura and Naruto, but I have a feeling that's more because Shikamaru said something to them than because they realized I'm not going to tell them anything, given the way he narrows his eyes at anyone who mentions Sakura or Naruto. It doesn't matter to me that the others don't understand, anyway.

I side-glance at Shikamaru who walks leisurely at my side, his hands stuffed in his pockets. He doesn't know why I'm pushing Sakura and Naruto away either, yet he vouched for me. I suppose, if anyone should know why I'm being this way, I would prefer it to be Shikamaru. I _did_ promise to tell him everything.

"There _is_ something I'd like to tell you, Shikamaru," I say, stopping where I am and forcing him to stop too. "I've been meaning to bring it up but—the time never seemed right."

He catches onto the severity of the conversation and gives me his undivided attention. And then something about the way he looks at me makes my lungs constrict and turns me into a coward. I back out, shake my head and, taking his injured hand, I raise it to put his broken finger on display.

"See how handsomely dressed your finger is," I say, making a show of examining it. It's nearly fully recovered, but I make him keep the splint on for good measure, and because I'm a medic, he listens to me, although not without his fair share of complaints. "_This_, I believe, is how you dress a wound. Not like that shoddy job you did for me in the Forest."

I laugh as Shikamaru takes his hand back and frowns at me for misleading him. He cradles his hand awhile, prods the splint without wincing, before dropping his arms to his side as my laugh dies and I say, "Although, I suppose the Forest was all pretty tame compared to what's happened to you when you were running after Sasuke."

Shikamaru stares at me a moment. His whole face seems to sag in his exhaustion at the mention of the chase and I regret bringing it up instantly. His eyes focus on something beyond me as he thinks, and then, abruptly, he says, "Flute."

I blink at him, confused. "What?"

He shakes his head, a small grin working its way over his mouth. "The girl I fought on the mission, when we were going after Sasuke," he explains. "She played a flute to control her summons, which were these ethereal beasts that moved right through you and ate your chakra. Each melody she played would get them to move somehow. She said no one had ever lived to tell the tale." He shrugs, walking away as though it's no big deal. "I thought I'd be the first."

.

**Two Months Later**

Not everything is as good as it seems. At home alone, always alone, I sit on the floor at the table in my living room. I'm hunched over white papers that I've filled to the edges with black ink. My penmanship has gone awry from my hand cramping up, but it doesn't matter because I only end up throwing these papers away.

I have not slept well for the past six weeks.

I finish filling up the sheet I'm working on. Placing my pencil down, I pick the sheet up read it over once. Twice. Three times.

I proceed to crumple it up and toss it away, over my shoulder, where it promptly ricochets off my couch and bounces to the ground. I grab a new piece of paper from the stack I have beside me and work toward filling that with more elaborate, ridiculous, and absolutely illogical plans. Escapes.

I can't stay here any longer and be torn apart and mistreated by these bonds I'm creating, these reminders that tell me how useless I am. I have set myself up for self-destruction staying here as long as I have. But I find I can't leave, no matter how strongly I feel about this idea, the thought of getting out of here. I find, as long as there are people here to whom I am tied down, I can't bring myself to leave.

Once again: I cannot leave and I cannot stay.

So I settle with spending all my free time imaging decorative and ludicrous acts that are better in theory than they are in practice, and the rest of my time sleeping with my eyes wide open.

.

**Four Months Later**

I'm going over medical books at the library, studying the webs of keirakukei and how they twine over the vital organs. I haven't made much progress with my training with Neji, although I've been able to discern some points of the tenketsu. I think it was mostly by accident, though, so I'm trying to see if I can recognize a pattern in the way the chakra moves through the keirakukei instead of trying to find the pathway itself.

The birds outside keep distracting me with their incessant chirping, and when I look out and consider throwing something sharp at them to make them shut up, I only end up picturing myself jumping out the window, hopping onto the branches of the trees and running off toward the village gates. I see myself taking off into the forest that surrounds Konoha, Leaf Nin hot on my trail, and getting caught before I can get too far. Another failed simulation.

I hate that, not only am I physically unable to leave this place, I'm can't even _imagine_ myself getting out of this place successfully.

Reaching up, I pluck the feather out of my hair and twirl it between my fingers. I tap the end of it against my fingertip, tracing the small birthmark that stains my skin there. And then I dip the quill into my inkpot, press it to the paper in front of me, and begin sketching.

I'm useless at it. I can draw a human body well enough for medical diagrams, but to try to capture someone's likeness is beyond me. So I find myself drawing endless loops along the edge of my paper, and when I reach the point from which I'd started, I stop and roll my eyes, thinking about how carelessly I'm wasting my break. I jab the feather back in my hair and frown at the loop marks—

I freeze, squint, and hold the paper closer to my face, tracing the loop marks over and over until, yes, it's unmistakable. Along one of the edges, the word _patience_ is written in loopy cursive, almost blending in with the marks I'd drawn. It's much neater than anything I'd ever be able to manage in cursive, and it takes a great deal of convincing for me to tell myself that it isn't Rei, that I had subconsciously been letting out steam when I drew those loops. Besides, what kind of message is _patience_, anyway?

Braiding the feather back into my hair, I shake my head to clear my mind and focus on my book when I notice a shadow looming over me. I look up and am surprised to find Sakura, books piled high in her hands, mirroring my expression.

"Sorry," she says quickly, adjusting the books so she can free a hand and push her hair out of her eyes. "I didn't mean to bother you. I . . . wasn't expecting to see you here."

I haven't seen her in so long that I don't know what to say to her. I stare at her until she becomes uncomfortable, before I say, "Uh, yeah. We normally don't—cross paths anymore." Because I go out of my way to make sure of that.

"Do you mind if I . . . ?" she asks, making to move her books onto my table.

Yes. "No, not at all," I say, pulling my things closer to me. She grins, like my gesture is a step to us becoming friends again, until I say, "I was about to leave, anyway. I have training to do, and I'm going to be late—"

"Wait," she says, clasping her hand over mine as I reach for one of my papers and pinning me to the table. "I'm having a birthday dinner tonight, and I've invited everyone along—Ino, Chouji, Shikamaru, and Hinata and her team too. Have you heard? I asked them to pass the information along to you."

"Ah, maybe," I say, ruffling my hair. "I've been busy lately. If they've said something, it must have slipped my mind. Sorry."

Sakura's grip falters and I pull free, collecting my papers and shoving them into my book. "Well, it's tonight," she says, "and I would really like it if you came."

I blink at her, at the hopefulness in her voice, like she thinks the time we've spent apart is more than enough time for me to get over our differences. And it has been a long time. The last time we talked was back in November, when she approached me about a dual apprenticeship. Then, I hadn't even gone with her to see Naruto off when he left the next month, even though Kakashi told me exactly when he would be going, down to the very hour.

She's changed considerably since I saw her and really looked at her: She's taller and she's grown into her big forehead; she doesn't need her headband to keep back her hair, which she's allowed to grow out a bit, and she stands confidently despite the pause that's drawing out between us. If her training is going as well as mine seems to be, I wouldn't be surprised if she could handle me in a fight now.

I glance at the books she's set on the table to see what stage she's at in her training, but the first book I lay eyes on, tucked deep beneath the other hefty medical books, is one whose title is _Curse Marks and_—but that's all I need to read to be reminded of why I stopped hanging out with her.

"Maybe," I say, walking past her. "I'm really busy. See you around, Sakura."

[+]

I end up being guilted into going by Shikamaru, and when I show up, Sakura beams and hugs me and welcomes me as though nothing has happened to make things awkward between us. Of course, she wouldn't have acted like that if nothing really had happened between us. But it doesn't matter, because I'm surrounded by my friends and Sakura makes an effort to talk to me and I end up having a good time. I don't know if that changes things, but I have a feeling it's a start.

.

**Seven Months Later**

" . . . here, here, and here," I say, dotting Neji's arm with a marker above his wrist, to the right of the crook of his elbow, and under the muscle of his forearm. I wait patiently for his verdict as he skims his arm with his Byakugan. Hinata and Kiba hover behind him, as though, if they look hard enough, they'll be able to see the tenketsu points, too.

Kiba is the first to lose his patience. "Hey, come on, Neji," he says, scowling. "What's it look like? We're losing daylight here."

Neji glares at Kiba and says, "Would you like to have a look for yourself? It sounds as though you think you can do this better."

As Neji returns to his observation, Kiba reels his arm back and makes like he's going to punch the older shinobi. I laugh as Akamaru, who has grown sizably over the past year, bites the elbow of his master's coat and tugs him away, and Neji says, "You got them all, right on target."

Hinata claps her hands together and I pump my fist into the air, falling onto my back when I lose my balance in my excitement. I lie, spread eagle, in the courtyard of the Hyuuga estate, staring up at the clouds passing overhead, and say, "This training really took longer than I thought it would have."

"How'd you finally manage to do it?" Kiba asks, examining his own arm and pressing the points I had marked on Neji's arm to see if he can feel anything. Akamaru follows lead and sniffs Kiba's arm, only to be pushed away.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. "Since I started my vibration training with Hinata, things have been making more sense. Like, I can _feel_ everything a lot better, if I think about it. I can give you your heart rate without even laying a hand on you and I can tell that Akamaru has a bug crawling on him."

"A bug?" Kiba asks, and whirls toward his best friend, sifting through Akamaru's creamy-white fur. "That had better not be one of Shino's bugs! I've told him how much you hate his little parasites, Akamaru."

I push myself up, crossing my legs, as Akamaru whines and I say, "So, before, when I tried to find the keirakukei, I thought, 'Follow the flow of chakra, feel the way it disturbs the vibrations'. But it turns out that chakra doesn't _disturb_ the vibrations. It's the vibrations that follow the chakra. It was all backwards, and when I realized that, I focused on the vibrations instead of the chakra, and—it worked. Because the vibrations are thinner, thread-like, you know? So it's easier to sense the way chakra moves with them than by focusing solely on the chakra itself and I've lost you, haven't I?" I say, grinning as Kiba leans against Akamaru with this blank expression.

"I stopped listening around the time you first mentioned your vibrations," he says. "Doesn't matter, anyway, because I'm not a medic. I don't need to know these things. But, man, Ren. I can't believe you've been holding out on this vibration stuff for this long."

I shrug, rolling my fingers through the air and feeling as the vibrations swirl around my fingertips. My training with the Hyuuga has been working out well for me. The range at which I can feel the vibrations has grown substantially, and watching them train has helped me develop a shaky style modeled after the Gentle Fist. I can successfully map out anyone's keirakukei, and if I'm given conditions where I can focus, I can also feel out their tenketsu. Although I haven't developed any new medical techniques, my newly attained abilities will come in handy when I'm faced with real medical dilemma. Now to _find_ medical dilemmas.

I stand up, brushing the dirt off my pants, and say, "Thanks for helping me out this long, Neji, Hinata. I know it must have been a pain."

"It-it hasn't been so bad," Hinata says, smiling. "I've enjoyed training with you, Ren-san. It was—relaxing."

I laugh, pulling my hair onto a bun at the top of my head. I haven't cut it though I've been meaning to since the Chuunin exams, and I've been so focused on my training lately that it hasn't mattered to me. I'm a shinobi after all. I pin my hair together, say, "And to think you hadn't wanted to train with me when I asked initially."

"What are you going to do now?" Hinata asks, and I consider her question by looking to the sky for answers. The clouds drag pass easily, like a slow but steady current.

"I'm going to sleep," I say, propping my hands on my hips and letting out an exaggerated sigh. "More seriously, though, there are the Chuunin exams coming up. I think I'm as prepared for that as I can be, but I'll keep training in the meantime. You guys will help me out, right?"

Neji and Kiba smirk, Akamaru lets out a hearty woof, and Hinata looks flustered, all of which I take as, "Yes."

"Why don't we train now, in fact?" I ask, stretching my legs which are stiff from sitting for so long. "Who's up first?"

Kiba jumps at the opportunity to fight, and before long we're showing off our new techniques and sweating and laughing and my muscles get a good burn from the workout. I wonder how things could have ever gone wrong with these kinds of people around me, and wish things could have always been like this. But I guess in order for things to happen this way, regrettable things needed to happen, like Sasuke leaving and me keeping my distance from Sakura and Naruto. Slowly, I'm regaining all the things I'd thought I'd lost, but I'm still alone, and that's the part that bothers me most.

.

**Nine Months Later**

I, along with the remaining Konoha 12, pass this year's Chuunin exams with flying colors. Over a celebratory dinner, we all agree that the exams were much easier than the year before, but we don't dwell on that for too long. Too many bad memories and all that.

I'm excited. Being promoted to Chuunin means I get to leave the village on high-risk missions. I'll be able to apply what I've learned from Neji and Hinata to dire situations. I'll be able to exercise my vibrations.

Most importantly, I'll be able to get out.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to run away or anything. But it's been almost a year since I've talked to Rei, and still nothing comes from her feather. I've taken it out of my hair and played around with it once or twice, but I don't get any kind of feeling that what I write is what Rei is trying to tell me. I started to think Rei had given me this feather to pacify me, but I've received evidence to the contrary.

It happened once, when I was training with Kiba, and Akamaru had pinned me to the ground with one of his monstrous paws while the other one squashed my hair. I managed to throw him off of me, untangling the dirt from my hair, and when I looked down, I found the feather had fallen free and split down the center.

It didn't halve completely, but there was a considerably large tear in it. I cradled it in my hands as Akamaru recovered from my assault and shoved it in my hip pouch as he made to double-team me with Kiba. I would see what I could do about fixing it later. When I'd gotten home and examined it, the feather was in perfect condition: No tear, no unsightly dent marks. The feather was as smooth and beautiful as though I'd just plucked it off the bird from which it came. After that ordeal, I wholeheartedly believe the feather is connected to the spirit realm somehow, but it's only made me grow impatient waiting for answers from Rei.

I've found ways to distract myself: I've started volunteering at the hospital and have taken up a part-time position at the Academy following Gaara's advice that I start teaching. These two side projects have done me well, but it will be nothing compared to breathing in new air.

.

**A Year Later**

They're not letting me out of the village. Not very far outside of the village, at least. At first, I thought it was bad luck that I was still being stuck on the same mundane missions: escorting nobodies, being sent as a medical examiner to an impoverished town, nursing the kittens of the daimyo's wife's cat even though that's not my area of expertise. But it keeps happening, again and again, and when I put in for reassignment, I get something equally nonessential if not more so.

When I ask my friends how their missions are going, they respond with enthusiasm: Shikamaru is escorting the daimyo to and from the village for talks with Tsunade; Ino is the chief Med Nin on missions that take her to countries I only remember existed when she mentions them; Chouji is attacking beasts that threaten the whole existence of a village on the outskirts of the Fire Country. It's just me who's being left behind.

I see right through their plan. The village elders are purposely keeping me here because they fear I'll betray them. They fear I'll break from my team and go rogue, running after Sasuke, because they don't believe the bond is really truly broken as I said it is. Kakashi may have been able to keep them from calling me in and hounding me on whether or not I've felt a ping from Sasuke, but he hasn't stopped them from being suspicious of me.

But that's fine. I have my own plans.

.

**A Year and One Month Later**

When I bring up my unglamorous missions to Shikamaru, he says, "You're reading too much into it. Has it occurred to you that maybe these missions are easier because you've been improving your techniques this past year?"

"No way," I say. "These aren't those kinds of missions where the difficulty is relative. All I'm asking, Shikamaru, is that you put in a good word for me. The Hokage's warmed up to you and she'll trust what you have to say."

"I don't have that kind of leverage," he grumbles, rubbing the back of his neck as I groan and fall back into the grass. "This is something you're going to have to take up with her yourself."

I frown at the clouds, frowning so deeply that I'm sure it hangs off the edge of my face. "I just figured," I murmur, "that when I was promoted, I would finally get to go on B- and A-ranks that would let me go places. It would be nice to get out of the village every once in a while."

Shikamaru eyes me as I say this, and I return his look more sharply. "What?" I ask, and he shakes his head.

"Of all our friends," he relents after more prodding, "you're the only one who ever seems excited about leaving the village. It's . . . curious, I think."

I scoff, clasping my hands behind my head. "It doesn't suit anyone to be cooped up in a place for too long," I say offhandedly. "I think I would know, considering how much of a hermit I was after all those times—"

_Sasuke left._ To train with Kakashi. When he fell into a coma. When he finally ran away to Orochimaru.

Shikamaru hums vaguely, like he knows where I had been going with the conversation and knows better than to continue it that way. He says, "I was offered a job with the daimyo."

This effectively distracts me. I gape at Shikamaru, sitting up so I can more clearly see his face and make sure he's not lying. "What? When?"

He lets out a tragic sigh as he goes over the months in his head. "Not too long ago," he says. "A few weeks after the exams. Remember how Godaime sent me on that mission with Asuma to escort the daimyo here for a meeting? We were ambushed on the way back, and when I came home and told you about it, you said something about it being a set up, and I didn't believe you."

"So it _was_ a set up," I say, and he nods. I flick his shoulder, frown, and say, "I _told_ you as much! The old hag is trying to sell you off to the daimyo. Good god, Shikamaru! I would be more impressed if I weren't so ticked off that she's trying to take you away from me. Like, isn't it enough to keep me chained to the village? Do I have to be alone too?"

Shikamaru rolls his eyes at my dramatics and says, "You don't need to worry about that. I didn't take it."

I stare at him as he lowers himself to the grass, folding his arms into a makeshift pillow. I ask, "Why not?"

"It wasn't my type of thing," he says. "Always standing stiffly, keeping constant vigilance—being in that stuffy position doesn't interest me. I wouldn't have time to do anything I like. Besides, once I'm gone, who's to keep you from shutting yourself in your house all the time?"

At this, I glare at him and pound his stomach with my fist, eliciting a grunt from him. "I'm not so dependent on you."

He rubs his injury as he sits up, says, "Right, right. Sorry. All I'm saying is I'd rather stay in the village. Remember how, after we came back from my first mission as a Chuunin, I wanted to quit as a shinobi, but my dad told me all that stuff about how, even without me, things would go on? You guys would go on missions under other people, and those people may not have the same respect for you as I do. They could abandon you, complete their missions successfully, but leave you for dead. Working for the daimyo, I'd have to stay wherever he stays, travel wherever he travels. My responsibility would be to keep him safe, while I have no idea what's going on here. And here is where everything matters—my family, our friends."

Shikamaru winces and then starts to gripe about how I might have splintered his stomach. I don't listen to him, half because now _he's_ being overdramatic, but mostly because I wonder, for the hundredth time, how I could ever be friends with someone as kind and caring as him.

Of course, I'm glorifying Shikamaru's attributes. He may be kind and caring, but he can also be lazy and sour and he complains too much. He puts up quiet the ruse to get out of doing things he doesn't want to, which may very well be everything, but at his heart he is well-intentioned. The best intentioned. And I glorify this because I want to be like that. I can only wish I were more like that.

Like Gaara said: You see in others what you can only hope to see in yourself. But that doesn't get me very far, otherwise I would be a rising star within the village, the Hokage's apprentice, and trusted enough to leave Konoha every once in a while.

Shikamaru waves his hand in front of my face and says, "Ren? What's wrong?"

"I—" I stop, squinting at him when I notice something is off. I turn his head to the side. The small hoop earrings he used to wear have been replaced by more serious silver studs. I blink, ask, "Did you get new earrings?"

I wonder why I hadn't noticed earlier as he says, pushing my hand away, "Yeah. Asuma got them for our team. A gift for having all passed the Chuunin exams. Ino and Chouji have a pair, too."

My chest stirs. This little change signifies something big, I think. Because these little changes I don't notice until too late will start to add up until I don't recognize my friends at all. And, given, I have changed considerably over the past year and a half, too—my hair has grown out, my wardrobe switched, my face, body, and abilities matured—but I'm still short of something important. Something little, like Shikamaru's earrings, that signify something big. That I really am truly changing.

I don't know what my little change could be that would make me feel as though I'm improving as much as my friends, but I'm determined to find out. I've wasted too much time.

"I just remembered," I say, standing up. "I have some papers I need to fill out for the Academy. They want me to help assemble the graduating teams this year. Goes to show how much time I've been teaching those classes."

Shikamaru smiles, seemingly impressed, and says, "That's great. Maybe that's why you haven't been sent out on many missions. They want to keep you around to teach the upcoming Genin."

I scoff, brushing off what grass blades have stuck to my pants. "Yeah, brilliant," I say. "Doesn't compare to being recruited by the daimyo, but still impressive."

I shake my head, nudging him with my foot as I say goodbye. He waves me off and I'm off, making a beeline for my house where the Academy papers are. But those aren't due until next week, so I sit down at my living room table, flipping through the papers I had filled with elaborate plans for escape and trying to figure out which one would be the most likely to succeed should I try to pull it off.

I'm not going to pull them off, obviously. I'm just going to experiment with them. See how far they get me. And if one of them manages to break me out of here, well, that's another matter all together, isn't it?


	53. Intermission pt 2 Rock Bottom

**A/N:** Today marks two years of BOUND. In honor of that, I'm posting an extra chapter this week. Wish I had something cooler, but I hope you guys enjoy anyway. You can check my profile for previews of the next chapter and other extras whenever I feel like posting such. Thank you for two years. Wouldn't have made it this far without you.

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 53: Intermission pt. 2—Rock Bottom**

**A Year and Three Months Later**

I have been jittery today. It's a side effect from having all these plans for escape under my belt and not being able to go through with them that make me this way, I think as I pace my kitchen, careful to step over the loose floorboard every time I pass it. But soon. Soon, I will do everything I've planned.

Soon doesn't feel fast enough, though, and I feel an odd dizziness overwhelming me, so much so that I have to stop, leaning against my counter for support.

And then it happens.

My breath catches in my throat, darkness pulling me under, and I grit my teeth against the pain of not being able to breathe. I clutch at my chest, willing air to circulate through my lungs, trying to inhale and inhale and inhale. It doesn't work.

I can feel myself suffocating. I grip the kitchen counter, but my clammy hands slip. I gasp, clawing for support and, finally, my hand is able to grip the edge of the sink.

Oxygen suddenly slams back into my lungs, acid burning the back of my throat. I vomit into the sink. Coughing wildly, I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and shove the water on, washing my lunch down the pipes. As the coughing subsides, I rinse my hands with soap and turn off the water, then trudge to the bathroom to brush my teeth of the grime and my breath of the smell.

I push the bathroom door open with a slam, thinking of what has just happened. I don't know the cause of it. I'm sure I'm in perfect health. And these symptoms aren't of any sickness that I know of, but something tells me that it isn't an illness that caused the fit.

It was the bond.

I've been away from Sasuke for a year and a half and that obviously goes against the rules of the oath. I was to be with him and forever by his side, and at the moment, I'm the furthest thing from that.

My search and destroy plan for the oath is becoming more urgent, but I don't have any leads left. It isn't at my house. It isn't in Sasuke's house. And I haven't heard a goddamn thing from Rei. It's like the thing doesn't even exist, despite damning evidence of the contrary.

In the window, my face is pale, my hair matted with sweat. My lips are chapped and my breathing still comes out ragged. I close my eyes, hoping that I'm not looking as bad as my reflection suggested, though I know that I am.

The only thing I can do is deny.

.

**A Year and Four Months Later**

Neither my work at the Academy or my volunteer work at the hospital have been rigorous, but lately I've been coming home tired beyond comprehension and have had to takes sick days because my migraines have gotten so bad.

I can guess what's wrong with me.

With every step I take as I come home from the hospital early, the vibrations reverberate up my body and slam into my brain. My feet clomp against the cobblestoned streets before becoming shabby dirt paths as I cut into the area where my house is. It hurts to breathe, though I doubt that it's because of my lungs. By the time I reach my door, I'm gulping for air. Any oxygen I'm able to inhale just brings more pain. It makes me not want to breathe at all. Like my body knows what I'm thinking, I can feel my throat swelling up, blocking off my airways all together.

I fumble with the key to my house, wishing, for once, that someone lived with me so that I didn't have to bother with keys and locks. Hell, why did I bother with keys and locks at all? It isn't as though I have anything valuable to me in here.

When I'm finally able to get my door open, I burst in with a flourish. The door slams shut behind me as I kick off my sandals, a habit that I can't ignore, even at a time like this. My lungs are on the verge of collapsing. I don't think I can stand another minute without breathing.

My foot is still partly inside my sandals, so when I try to step forward, I trip. My skin slaps against the floorboards with a nasty sound. It's too cold, I think, but I'm burning up. I roll myself over so that I'm staring at the blank ceiling above me. My hair irritates the back of my neck. I'm gagging on each breath that enters my mouth and choking on every breath that tries to escape.

I squeeze my eyes shut, my head lolling to the side. I curls into fetal position, a knife twisting its way through my temple now. A quiet moan manages to squirm through my lips.

The clock on my wall ticks. Tick. Tick. Ticks.

[+]

Next month. I will absolutely try one of my plans next month. There is nothing else for me to do.

.

**A Year and Five Months Later**

I've been admittedly slow about going through with my escapades, but I realized I can't be irrational about this. Too many mistakes at once will result in my capture and I'll be sentenced to house arrest, and there's no way I'll be able to stand that again.

Over the course of the past month, I've been observing the perimeter of the village, taking note of when and where I might be able to slide through the village defenses easily. I talk about my plans offhandedly with Shikamaru, offering them as hypothetical situations, and take notes when he gives his opinion on them. When he asks me what these plans are about, I tell him it's a boy in my class who has an overactive imagination and I want to be able to give him insightful feedback the next day. I don't know if Shikamaru believes this, but he's willing enough to help me, and my plans end up sounding better than ever. I can only be grateful some of Shikamaru's common sense has rubbed off on me as I rewrite the plans to suit my techniques.

Mostly, I try to keep up the pretense that I am content with my life in Konoha, and that there is nothing I would like more than to stay here. In itself, that statement is true, but when I start to consider the conditions of my being here, my contentment evaporates quickly.

Today I start my first trial. I don't expect dissent from the village—mostly because they will be caught unawares, which will work to my advantage. In fact, this may end up being my only attempt. I've been complacent around the village; they can't be expecting anything like this from me.

At least, this is what I'm thinking as I'm being chased by a few Chuunin I recognize from hanging around the Academy too much.

I grit my teeth and glance over my shoulder to see if they're gaining on me, but it looks as though they're keeping their distance. I press on through the trees outside the village, cursing when the branches whap me in the face before I can push past them. I drop down the trees, trying my luck on the ground as the Nin soar past me overhead.

I give myself a moment to laugh before taking off to the West while the Nin continue momentarily onto the Northeast. I know what they think of me because of my affiliation. They expect me to go to the Sound Village, track down Sasuke and join up with him and Orochimaru. But I've told them once if I've told them a million times—I have no interest in aligning myself with such people.

There is a chance Rei has headed that way in an attempt to find a way to break the bond, but when I broke out of the village, I brushed the feather in my hair and something in my head just . . . clicked. _Go West,_ it said. _To the Sand._ And so I, with my newfound trust in these spirits Rei held in such high regard, went West.

My feet kick up dust as I sprint through the trees, skidding turns and leaping over the roots what jut out from the ground. I hear the faint sounds of people calling my name and wonder if I shouldn't slow down so as to travel inconspicuously, but I know, given the resources the Leaf has access to, staying quiet won't help me lose the Nin on my trail.

I'm about to break through a thinning of trees when the pair of Nin who had been following me drop from above and cut me off. I lose speed for a second, groaning as it occurs to me that surrendering may be my only choice at this point. I laugh at my insecurity, wondering how a ninja could ever make it in this life when she doubts herself like that, so I barrel forward, regaining the speed and confidence I had lost when I saw them.

The Nin tense and I feel a slight pang of alarm when I see the weapons they hold in their hands. And then I feint to the left, make like I'm going to try to run around them. Their bodies are quick to respond to my movements, but wholly mistaken because at the last possible moment I jump, grabbing onto the lowest branch and swinging myself up, and then I'm running on the branches, right over their heads.

"Ren!" one of the Nin calls after me, and for a second I think I recognize his voice. Then I realize it doesn't matter because once I pass into the Wind Country, they will be unable to follow. That is, if they don't lose steam first. It's a three day trek to Sunagakure alone, after all. I've prepared for this trip with a few soldier pills, but I doubt these Nin considered the chase would go this far.

My breath hitches in my throat and I remember the pains from the month before. I can't let this go on. I'm tired as it is, and the sooner I'm alone, the better.

I shut my eyes, concentrating my chakra for a few moments, and upon opening my eyes, my vision is blurred by silky strings of vibrations that tighten and dance around each other. They nestle against me, slowly easing the air from my lungs until I send out a surge of chakra. The vibrations start to move in a flurry, eating up the chakra I'm releasing until they cluster around my body. I turn around, my feet digging into the branch below me and bringing me to a stop. It catches the approaching Nin off guard and they stop too, hands wrapped tightly around knives.

"Giving up?" one of them asks.

"As if," I scoff, whirling a string of vibrations around my fingers and sharpening them. They buzz against my skin, numbing my extremities, and when the man in front of me lunges, I jerk quickly to the side, avoiding his diving kunai and knocking him to the ground with a kick to his back.

His partner comes at me, unsheathing her short sword and slashing at me with extreme speed, finally cornering me against the trunk of the tree. Without wasting a moment, she makes to incapacitate me, bringing her blade straight across to injure my arm, but I bring up my vibrations and use it to counter the blade.

The vibrations slip right through the metal, and the girl is smirking until her attack follows through, but it quickly falters when I'm still uninjured. She stares, wide-eyed at her severed blade, half of which rests in my hand, and is stunned enough to give me an opening.

I swing up my foot, landing a hit right in her jaw and sending her flying back toward her partner, who is on his feet again and catches her easily. They don't waver; he tosses her back my way and she has new weapons in her hands: two thick batons that I doubt my vibrations will be able to cut through.

I drop out of the tree and she flies over my head. Her partner anticipates my movements though and is there to meet me with a flying kunai to which an explosive is attached. I tsk in annoyance, tossing the blade half I'd taken from the girl and tossing it at the kunai to knock it off course. It whirls into the nearby bushes and I'm too distracted blocking my eyes from the fire that plumes from the explosion to notice the girl come up behind me and tackle me to the ground.

She has her arms around my neck in seconds, and I'm struggling against her, rolling onto my back and slamming my head into hers to knock her off of me, but she's surprisingly durable. I resort to plunging my teeth into her forearm, an undignified move for a shinobi, but one that gets me free and I'm up on my feet and running—

Straight into the chest of the other Nin who'd been following me.

He grabs me, pinning my arms to my sides, and lets out a booming, haughty laugh. "Got you, Ren-chan," he says, his breath causing me to gag. "You know we can't let you get away, given the information you have for us."

"What are you _talking_ about?" I groan, fidgeting in his grip. He squeezes me tighter and I gasp as my lungs seem to fold in on themselves.

"Kakashi says you insist your bond with the Uchiha has been severed ever since Sasuke left," he says, looking down his nose at me. "Your actions today seem to suggest otherwise, though. You're lying about still be connected to the Uchiha," he sneers, narrowing his eyes at me when I give him a clueless look, "aren't you? That's why you ran today. Can't stand being away from your lord for so long, can you?"

I am stunned by this man's idiocy. I get pass that quickly though and say, "Go to hell," before kicking up my feet, aiming right for his tender spot, and hitting dead on. He grunts, doubles over, and drops me on my back, where I roll to standing and jump back into the trees as his partner makes to apprehend me.

But she's clever this time and doesn't try to close the distance between us, instead throwing a shuriken at my ankles and tripping me up with a wire that's tied to it. I fall out of the tree gracelessly, landing on my face and sputtering out the dirt that gets in my mouth. I groan and shake my head to clear the dizziness that sets in, although that only seems to make it worse. Rubbing my temples, I wonder if I could be concussed, when a shadow looms over me and I freeze. Literally.

I groan again, and if I could hang my head I would. Instead, Shikamaru kneels down in front of me, scowling as he takes up the same stance as me. He cocks his head to the side and I'm compelled to do the same as he says, "What are you doing, Ren?"

"Just . . . exercising," I say with a sheepish grin, trying my hardest to fight Shikamaru's hold on me even though I know it's useless since _I'm_ the one he trained with to make his shadow's grip this strong. "What's up with you, Shika?"

Shikamaru is not amused by my answer, instead heaving us up to our feet as the two Nin who had been chasing me flank him, their frowns so heavy that, when the next breeze comes by, I'm sure their faces will be stuck like that.

"Sorry to bother you, Shikamaru-kun," the man says, patting Shikamaru so roughly on the shoulder that Shikamaru, for a second, looks more put off by the man's presence than mine. The man clears his throat, shifting on his feet and wincing, which serves to make me smirk.

Shikamaru gives me a pointed look as the man rambles on about having an attack planned to take me down before he showed up. Shikamaru interrupts, "You guys can go on ahead if you want. I'll take care of this."

The man scowls at Shikamaru as though he can't stand losing credit for this capture. His partner nudges him and motions for them to do as Shikamaru says, and reluctantly the man bounds off behind his partner without a word, leaving Shikamaru and me alone. Shikamaru, in the meantime, doesn't lose his hold on me, either with his shadow or with his gaze. It's unnerving, but being that I'm stuck in his shadow capture, I can't avoid it.

"So," I start. "How's it going?"

"Don't," he says, massaging his brow, and I mimic. Incidentally, we also release heavy sighs at the same time. I almost laugh at the gesture, but then Shikamaru glares at me like I did it on purpose, and I end up stuttering to deny it instead.

"What are you doing out here?" Shikamaru asks after my sputtering dies down. "I'm on an herb run for my dad and next thing I know I'm suddenly barraged by two Nin who say they're in pursuit of a Nin gone rogue by the name of _Kagiru Ren_."

"They were dramatizing it," I say. "You saw how offended that guy got when you took his trophy from him—not saying that I am an object to be won, but. Anyway, what's your dad need the herbs for? Is he developing—"

I'm silenced by the look Shikamaru shoots me, and I sigh again. "Yikes," I say, and if I could have, I would have reached up to brush the feather in my hair to see if it had some smart ideas to get me out of this mess. "Sorry. If it makes you feel any better, I was going to go back. Things just got messy when I tried to explain to the guards I wanted to go on a walk. I ended up having to go to some extreme measures to get out, and that's it, all right?"

Shikamaru purses his lips as he scrutinizes me, and before long I feel my muscles easing up. His shadow shrinks back, and we are wholly our own person once again, but for a moment I wish he would have kept me under his influence. Then maybe I wouldn't have to resort to these measures. I'd have all his liberties while retaining none of my own, and losing all my freedoms—or lack thereof—has never sounded better.

"You couldn't have gone for a walk _inside_ the village?" he says, and I shrug.

"It was one of those things," I say. "You know. Just had to do it. Or maybe you have no idea," I say when he quirks his brow. "But you'll know it one day, Shikamaru. That impulsive, no-one-is-going-to-go-with-a-thing-I-say-but-I-know-this-is-right-and-I-know-this-is-going-to-get-me-somewhere-or-get-me-what-I-want-slash-need feeling that is so inexplicable that you're just going to do it because you'll know it's right. Trust me. Everyone feels it at some point."

Like Naruto and Sakura's attitude toward Sasuke and bringing him home, and Sasuke's attitude toward getting his power and his vengeance at the cost of everything and anything. Like my incessant desire to run away even though I know the bond is being taken care of for me and I could have every happiness if I stayed in Konoha. Kind of like that.

"Whatever," Shikamaru says, scowling still. "Let's get you back to the village before those guys come back and things become more troublesome. We'll see then what this impulse has done to further ruin your reputation with the Council."

I grimace at the realization of what repercussions this impulse will in fact have on my already terrible relationship with the village elders and Tsunade. I drag my hand down my face, grumbling obscenities under my breath as Shikamaru takes my elbow and guides me back to the village at an easy pace.

[+]

My first impression of the High Council: They are a bunch of snobbish old men who have let their ranks get to their heads and eat away their rationality like parasites. They make me speak for my actions and explain why, if the bond really is severed, I had tried to run after Sasuke today.

"I'm telling you," I say, exasperated. "_I wasn't going to Sasuke._ Why would I after this long? If I really wanted to be with him, I would have left at the same time he did, if not later, when I went to retrieve Naruto along with the Med Corps I'd been sent out with. For the village High Council, you're all very—"

I cut off when Shikaku gives me a cautionary glance and clear my throat. I'd forgotten he's on the council, but I'm glad he is because he saves me from making my situation worse and defends me, saying, "While Ren has somewhat of an attitude problem, she's loyal. My son has been best friends with her for years; I've seen how Ren is, how she can truly be, and behind her . . . abrasive exterior, she is kind-hearted. She cares for this village as much as any of us."

One of the other council members scoffs, and says, "Listen, I don't know why we're being called on to talk about this in the first place. We're the village High Council. We have more important matters to deal with than some brat who doesn't have any regard for her village's safety. She's a _child_. It can't and didn't take much to apprehend her, from what the shinobi pursuing her said."

I scoff, wondering what tale that stupid guardsmen had made to glorify himself. My scoff is mistaken for one of indignation however and the council collectively glares at me.

The man continues, "I say we lock her up, have someone assigned to watch her every move, and leave it at that. Case dismissed?"

"You want to have her arrested after one infraction?" Shikaku asks. "That seems unreasonable."

"Consider the circumstances," the man argues, pounding his fist on the table. "Today, she demonstrated that she is a flight risk. Given her relationship with the Uchiha, and the Uchiha's relationship with both Akatsuki and Orochimaru, who's to say she won't join right up with them if she manages to get out of this village?"

"What would happen, anyway, if I joined up with either?" I retort, and Shikaku lets out a heavy sigh, a subtle hint that I shouldn't be talking hypothetically about these particular subjects, but whatever. I'm already out of the council's favor.

"I don't know any village secrets," I say. "I haven't been let around any, even since I've been promoted. In fact, it's a wonder you allowed me to be promoted at all! But I digress. Before you consider my relationship with the Uchiha and, consequently, Orochimaru and Akatsuki, you should consider my relationship with the people here. _I hold the people and shinobi of Konoha in very high regard_," I say, meeting the eyes of each council member to make my point clear. "They have shown me every possible kindness, and they have never abandoned me once, no matter what kind of adversity we faced. Why would I turn my back on people like that in favor of the Uchiha, one who massacred my family and the other who broke the hearts of and then almost killed my best friends!"

The glares of the Council waver, but the man who had been arguing against me remains adamant. He grumbles under his breath, something about "disrespectful child" who "doesn't understand the severity of the matter", and I throw up my hands in deference and say, "Do whatever you like. I don't care. Throw me into prison or lock me up in my house—if that's what it takes to show you that I'm loyal to this village, fine. _Fine._ But d'you ever hear those stories about teenagers who are abhorrently suppressed in their childhood and then start rebelling and causing a mass amount of mayhem? Keep that in mind when you think of me."

That's a poorly concealed threat on my part, but I don't give a damn. I'll continue to do what I like until I get some concessions, which, by the looks of things, won't be happening soon. So I walk out on them.

[+]

The Council lets me off easy. It doesn't much matter to me why or if they recognized how dedicated I am to the village. So far as I can tell, they've abandoned me as badly as Sasuke had. I am a shinobi without a village without even having to defect. What a wonder.

I go home and plan.


	54. Intermission pt 3 Looking Up

**A/N:** The last of the time skip. Please enjoy!

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 54: Intermission pt. 3—Looking Up **

**Two Years and One Month Later**

I lay low for the next few months after my meeting with the Council. And then I lash back, infinitely more determined than before to get out of the village where I will be free to do as I please. My plans that follow aren't any more successful than the first one and the man who had been on my tail during my first escape—Sato—has made it his personal goal to capture me and bring me home every time. More often than not, though, Shikamaru somehow ends up getting involved and being the one to bring me back.

Today, I manage to make it out of the village without detection. It's the first time I haven't been called out by a too perceptive shinobi guard, and I think: This is it. This is the moment I'm finally going to get out.

But I can't get ahead of myself. I keep the vibrations close to me and brush my fingers against the feather in my hair to feel the spirits every once in a while and make sure I'm not being followed. There are small trembles of movement, but they're not substantial enough for me to be anxious.

If the village does send shinobi after me, they should know exactly where I want to go, so I make the tracking part difficult for them. I use the vibrations to keep the amount of noise I make to a minimum and suppress my chakra as much as I can as I move around the forests surrounding Konoha. My best bet at the moment is to stay off the main path until I can possibly help it because, while scrambling through the forest raises the chances of me leaving a trail of broken twigs and scuff marks, there are more scents here to throw off my own in case anyone thinks to track me with shinobi canine. Not to mention they'll have to scour the entire forest before they're able to find a trail of any kind, whereas the pathway leaves me wide open for attack.

I backtrack a few times and loop around trees in order to throw off my scent even more. Although this puts me behind schedule, by the afternoon, I'm halfway to the Wind Country border. I give myself a chance to rest at this point, but choose only to down a single soldier pill and meditate. The feather Rei gave me heightens my sense of the spirits, but I doubt it's as acute as hers is. Meditation, she told me, would help with that.

Right, so, I meditate. It's hard to clear my mind at first as I consider all the things that could go wrong as I let my guard down, but once my head is clear, an ethereal calm spreads over me and I'm reminded, meditating like this, getting in touch with the spirits and vibrations all around me, my guard could never be truly down.

I feel the pitter-pattering of the animals, the way the leaves brush the air, feel the way the spirits come in touch with earth as it changes with the seasons. I feel the spirits fluttering around me, bridging the gap between the spirit realm and the human world as the energy from the feather draws them in and—

Someone's coming.

My eyes snap open and I jump to my feet, scooping up my bag and hightailing it, careful to avoid the roots jutting out from the earth and attempting to trip me, only to slam into a tree nearby when I lose my footing anyway. Breaking out of meditation as abruptly as I did has thrown me off, I think, as I push away from the tree.

Whichever the case, my left side hurts from ramming into the tree and I've lost track of whoever had been approaching me. I sweep my hair over my ear, sliding over the roots and up into the branches of the trees where I'll more easily be able to take cover while I tap into the vibrations. Training with the Hyuuga has improved the sight of my vibrations, but my technique still has one fatal flaw—I can only extend my vibrations a sizable distance when I'm not moving. Otherwise it's too complicated to follow the vibrations while I'm jumbling them around by running through them.

Pushing my chakra into the air around me—a dangerous move if whoever is nearby is close enough to sense my chakra—I clasp my hands together in the snake seal and focus as the vibrations begin to press against my skin. They shake and then calm to a still to let me feel movement in my surroundings.

Nothing in the immediate area. The vibrations shudder forward, covering more ground until I sense them—three hundred meters from the northeast, the direction of the village.

I curse, reeling the vibrations back in and stifling my chakra. I decide it's best, as much as I hate it, to travel through the treetops. I'll be able to move faster and leave minimal trace, which is my highest priority now I know someone is on my tail.

Then again, it could be some random shinobi out on a mission and in no way involved in tracking me. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

As I sprint through the remainder of the forest, though, I can feel the energy maintaining its distance from me when it should be dropping off my radar, and when I pause for a moment it spurts forward, lightning fast, and that's when I know: They are definitely after me.

I abandon my carefulness in favor of recklessness, charging each footstep with chakra in order to fly through the trees. Sure enough, my pursuer speeds up too, keeping pace with me easily, and I think this time it can't be Sato. In the first place, he's tactless, attacking straight-forward instead of resorting to sneak-tactics like this. Secondly, he's never been able to catch up to me so gracefully, without stumbling or faltering once.

The village must see I'm more serious about making my escape this time, being that I was more stealthy in my initial escape. Gone through the village gates and security without detection and five hours outside of the village without interruption. Yes, I am dead serious this time.

Hopefully, I'll be able to make it to the border of the Wind Country without confrontation. But maybe this is hoping for too much because as soon as I think it, I'm grabbed around my waist and tackled mid-jump.

How someone's managed to sneak up on me without my noticing goes beyond my level of comprehension. As we slam into the ground from our height, my attacker loses their grip on me and I roll across the forest floor, roots jabbing into my spine and scratching my face before I come to a stop inside a tangle of brush. I hear my attacker groan, hurt in their foolhardiness, while I scramble to my feet, breaking through the wiry branches of the bush I've been caught in.

Before I steady myself, a Nin is already coming at me, swinging a short sword in my face that I barely dodge. The Nin, a young girl a few years older than me who I don't recognize, slices off a considerable chunk of my hair, but I don't have time to lament. I duck to avoid her next attack, swinging my fist into her abdomen and releasing a blast of chakra at the perfect moment to send her flying into the tree behind her. The force of the impact is enough to render her unconscious, and the relative ease with which I was able to incapacitate her confuses me for a second. Shouldn't these shinobi have more endurance than that? Or maybe I'm a lot stronger than I know.

The vibrations flare and I spin around in time to catch a boy's foot before it hits my face. Gripping his sandal firmly in my hands, I twist his leg, forcibly turning the boy around and swinging him into another Nin that comes at me from the side. They crash together, but one boy braces himself in time to leap back to his feet and charge at me again.

I fall to the left, dodging his hook, and flip through hand seals quickly, activating the vibrations, as he drops with his missed hit and digs his fingers into the earth. As I pulse the vibrations at him, stretching some into a lower frequency than the others, he yanks his arms upward, and the earth comes with him.

A thick layer of earth rises and comes at me, rolling like waves, and knocks me in the face, sending me sprawling backward. I groan at the pain of the attack, annoyed I hadn't sensed what he was going to do earlier; I could have easily countered that attack with my vibrations instead of hitting him with them directly. Even so, I've been able to incapacitate him. His eyes have glazed over with a dreamy look as the genjutsu set off by my vibrations tends to his every subconscious desire. I allow myself a moment of swelling pride at the success of my new technique before I make a run for it, fueled by triumph and euphoria.

I've escape with a few bumps and bruises, nothing that will deter me in the long run. If those guys had all come at me together, I think they would have been able to do some real damage. And just like that I'm taken back to when Kakashi held our first training session, when no one would team up with me, where it turned out that the moral of the lesson was teamwork and caring for each other.

We've seen how well that worked out for us.

I break through the last of the trees in the forest and wind up in the main path to the Wind Country. I can't be too far from its border; traveling on the main road shouldn't cause me trouble, so long as I sprint the rest of the way. I have the energy for it after taking the soldier pill.

The vibrations shudder, and I turn around, expecting to see the Nin running after me, but it's something else. A massive body, moving on four spindly legs, chases me, weaving snake-like across the path. I stumble backward as it swipes at me, its claws grabbing for my ankles as I use my vibrations to pulse it backward. When I send a decisive blast of sound waves at it that will surely blow it away, it swerves out of the way of my attack and comes up behind me, spreading its arms and legs wide and lunging at my back.

Arms and legs squeeze me together, and chills run up my spine as I imagine my captor to be like a giant spider, ready to encase me in a slick web before devouring me for lunch. I let out a strangled groan of disgust, struggling to break out of my captor's hold when I hear, "Hey, wait a second."

I'm too creeped out by whatever has its grip on me to turn toward the voice, despite how familiar it is. I pull the vibrations close to my body, charging them up with my chakra until they're a maelstrom of buzzing. Once they're strong enough, I release them. They pulse out into the surrounding area, denting the ground on which I stand, shaking the trees nearby so forcibly that they lose their leaves, sending my hair flurrying around my face and, subsequently, the bug that had been holding me shattering apart.

I hear someone protest as I rub myself down, making sure I don't have any nasty slime on myself before whirling to face my attacker who hasn't made another move against me in the time it took me to make sure I'm all clear of goo. When my eyes register who it is, though, I'm less intimidated.

"Kankuro," I say, meeting his scowl with surprise. And behind him are Gaara and Temari. Temari looks amused by her brother, who sighs as he picks up the pieces of his puppet I'd destroyed. Gaara regards me with the same blankness from two years ago, although this time it's from under a large diamond hat with the symbol for 'Wind' on the front point.

I blink at it, stunned, then stutter, "G-Gaara, you—_ahhh_."

Temari scoffs at my inability to speak and says, "That's _Kazekage-sama_ to you now. I always knew the Leaf were a little slow, but, yeesh, you'd think after this long they'd have caught up."

I'm about to retort when someone behind me shouts, "Kazekage-sama!" I don't bother looking to see who it is like the Sand trio does. Instead, I curse, and say, "Excuse me, guys." But then Gaara's sand wraps around my feet and Temari reaches back for her fan, and I look between them incredulously and wonder what in the hell they could be doing.

"Kazekage-sama," says, I know without even looking, one of the Nin who had attacked me earlier. "Thank you—that is, sorry for getting you involved, we—"

Gaara waves it off as Kankuro finishes collecting the pieces of his puppet, sealing it back into a scroll and muttering about having gone through so much work to put it together. I take my vibrations, threading them through Gaara's sand in my attempt to get away, but he reinforces them, continually building them up until they wrap up to my knees. I won't be able to break out of them in time.

"What are you doing?" I demand, scowling as the boy calls his friends forward. They stagger out of the forest, looking relieved either to have me caught or to not have to deal with me. "Kage shouldn't leave their villages unless something absolutely urgent is going on."

"Your Hokage called us up for a conference," Temari says. "I think you might want to stick around for it too. Come on," she says, taking my arm tightly. I wince. "We'll escort you home."

[+]

The conference room is much too big for three people to be speaking, but the void is filled quickly by either Kage's respective bodyguards—or aides in the case of Tsunade, who has Shizune and Sakura at her side. The Kage take their seats at either end of the table while I sit along the length of the table, centered between them.

Tsunade skips the pleasantries when she speaks, and says, "Do you have anything to say for yourself this time, Ren?"

"Nope," I say. I notice Sakura bite her lip, like she's wondering how I could have fallen so far downhill. I wish she weren't standing in for this meeting, and I wonder if Tsunade brought her in to spite me. "I'm only wondering why I've been drawn into a meeting with the Kazekage."

"It's more like," Tsunade says, "the Kazekage has been drawn into this meeting because of you."

To this I don't know what to say but, "What?"

"You seem to have a fondness for the Wind Country," Tsunade says, leaning back in her seat, "given your flight patterns. At first, we believed you were running west to throw our shinobi off your tail, after which you would start—northeast."

She gives me a pointed look, expecting me to react to her statement. When I don't, she presses her lips into a tight line, opens a manila folder, and says, "However, it doesn't look like you ever meant to go in that direction. You were, it seems, determined to get to the Wind Country each and every time without fail."

"I've told you," I say, "I have no intention of aligning myself with Orochimaru or Sasuke and that—that there's no way I could get in touch with them," I say carefully, making sure to avoid Sakura's gaze as she eyes me, "even if I wanted to."

"Yes, well," Tsunade says, pushing the papers together. "You can understand why the council has a hard time believing that, especially after what has transpired. The fact of the matter is, we no longer have the resources to spend on such trivial pursuits. On the other hand, we can't simply let you walk away from us either. Which is why I've asked the Kazekage to take you under his wing and he has so graciously accepted, even volunteering to escort you back to the Wind Country himself. That is what you want, isn't it?" she asks when I startle, looking to Gaara who doesn't betray any emotion, as usual. "To go to the Wind Country?"

"I—you're just going to—to _hand_ me off?" I demand, sitting forward in my seat.

"You're a menace," Shizune says plainly. "Like Hokage-sama said, our talented shinobi are wasted bringing you home every time you try to run away. But what would it look like for us as a shinobi village to just let one of our own escape?"

I scoff because what Shizune really means is, what would it look like for the village if they were to let someone with connections to Akatsuki and Orochimaru escape? If I were anybody else with no real purpose, they probably wouldn't even acknowledge the fact I was gone. I suppose I should take pride in the fact that I'm of significance to the village, but I don't.

"Sixth months ago," Tsuande says, flipping through the papers—papers, I realize, which must document my every little move since I started my hobby, "you told the village council that you held the people of Konoha in high regard, but we don't see that. If this is what it takes to get you reformed, it is the least we can do."

"We understand the difficulty of your situation," Shizune says, sounding no more sympathetic despite her 'understanding', "but it's no reason for you to act out so childishly. Why don't you take the same measures as Sakura and Naruto—"

"_Because I don't want him back,"_ I say, glaring at her. "I don't want to _bring_ him back. Not anymore, not after all he's done. He's an arrogant, self-absorbed brat who doesn't deserve any such kindness!"

My outburst effectively stuns everyone into silence as I massage my brow and take deep breathes to calm down. Then I say, "I know you guys think I'm going to leave and go after him, and that's why I've been trying to break out of the village. You think, if I do get out, if I do find him, he'll be able to control me and turn me into a spy for him, or maybe that I'm already a spy for him now. But no matter how many times I say I'm not, you won't believe me. And, you know, when I think about it, I can't even be sure myself."

I laugh bitterly then and Tsunade tenses and Gaara quirks his brow. I shake my head, crossing my arms, and say, "I just want to break—every connection I have with him," I finish carefully, remembering my place as Sakura watches me, miserable. "I'll go with Gaara—Kazekage-sama, I mean. Leaving the village Sasuke's from is another way to break away from him, I guess. And that's fine by me."

[+]

So I go home, but I don't pack. There isn't much I want to take with me. My shinobi supplies will be enough. Even when I was running through the trials, I never brought anything with me. Too much baggage. Too many things I didn't need.

I sit on my porch, watching the sun as it goes down, my mind thoroughly blank despite what's happened. I haven't talked to Shikamaru about my new way out of the village yet because he isn't happy with me. My attempts to run away have been especially annoying for him, given that he has the Chuunin exams to oversee but he has, so far, been the only one capable of bringing me home, so he's always called upon when I get loose. This time, though, he won't be able to keep me in the village.

I think I may not tell anyone. It'll be easier this way. A clean sever on my part. No looking at my friends and thinking about what it would be like if I stayed. No seeing their confusion and having to explain how I've lost favor with the village so much that I've been exiled. Besides, Sakura was there. She could tell everyone what happened for all I care. That would take a burden off my shoulders.

I quirk my head to the path leading up to my house when I feel the vibrations shift. Someone approaches at an easy pace, the earth sifting oddly as he moves his feet. Before he even comes into my view, I know it's Gaara, and I stand to receive him.

"What brings you to these parts, Kazekage-sama?" I ask, bowing my head. "Come to tell me when we'll be leaving?"

He sees through my pretense and doesn't answer, only motions for me to sit. I do, scooting over so he can sit beside me, and then we're watching the sun set together. I wonder if he has actual Kage duties to be fulfilling and why Temari or Kankuro aren't with him, but then he's a Kage, and rules don't apply to them sometimes. I knew as much from my experience with the Third.

"I talked to your Hokage," he says, hands clasped in his lap. "I convinced her to let you stay. Although I have no reign over what concessions she has to give you, she has agreed that there is a way to reform you at home."

"Is that so?" I answer. "What if I _do_ want to leave?"

Gaara turns to me. "Then you're still welcome to," he says as though he can't understand why I would want to. "I'm not here to tell you what's right and what's wrong for you. I'm only here to remind you of your options."

"And why would you be so kind?"

Gaara drums his fingers against my porch as he considers his words.

"I know about the bond," he says, and I close my eyes and draw my hands over my face, so exhausted I wish I could fall asleep and dream forever instead of living like this. "Your Hokage sent your file to me when she asked me to take you to the Sand Village. I know about how the Third Hokage let you leave and how, upon your return, he put you into Team 7 in an attempt to have you rekindle your bonds, and how, even afterward, you expressed your—aversion toward creating new bonds. To tell you the truth, I don't understand your mindset, so perhaps I can't say this, but."

He sits back, straighter, and says, "In the conference room, I thought about how the villagers of the Sand used to treat me. It reminded me of the things Naruto said and did to convince me that—I'm not as alone as I believed I was. That I never have to face anything by myself, no matter the adversity."

He takes a deep breath and gets to his feet, offering me his hand. "You think the bonds you share," he says as he helps me up, "not only with Sasuke but with everyone else, are burdens, annoyances in their own rights. That's why you run away: because you're scared that these things will get in your way, and you won't become anything because you'll be lost in them. But to be able to share things with other people—sadness, hate, happiness—to be able to share _bonds_, that is one thing that cannot be so easily traded for something else. Not even freedom."

Again, I am stunned by Gaara's wisdom. This coming from a boy who three years ago had threatened to kill us out of his bitterness and regret. I wonder how he managed to become better than me when I had always had what he didn't, and I wonder if it was the sole power of Naruto that had changed him like this.

Momentarily I wish Naruto were here now to guide me.

"You should rethink the way you see the bonds you have with the people around you," Gaara says as he leaves. "Sinking into oblivion isn't the only way to find yourself."

.

**Two Years and Two Months Later**

Today, I'm waiting with Shikamaru at the fountain in the town square where the sun beats down on us mercilessly and nine year olds run by, playing ninja. We're waiting for our friends to show up so we can all go out to eat for another one of Ino's get-togethers. She's been in a planning frenzy lately, putting together dinner parties or friendly outings at the worst possible times, and I have been forced by Shikamaru to go to each one.

I never in any mood to be hanging out and having fun with the others. Ever since the close call last month where I was almost sent to the Sand Village, I've been rethinking . . . things. Too many things. It hurts my head. Not to mention, the bond has been on overdrive for some reason this past week, so I've been crippled by migraines that make me want to bash my head in.

Even with that, though, I still haven't felt anything from Sasuke since he'd left, or gotten a single word from Rei through her goddamn feather.

I'm lying on the thick rim of the fountain's basin, an arm thrown over my eyes to block the sun. Shikamaru is sitting on the ground, leaning up against the fountain. Occasionally, he tilts his head back to observe the virtually cloudless sky and sigh.

Shikamaru leans his head back now, his hair threading through my shirt and causing my skin to prickle. I listen as the sand groans beneath him as he gets up.

"I thought," he starts, "showing up early was supposed to be less troublesome than showing up late and being nagged by Ino."

"It was supposed to be," I agree, unmoving. "But I think what she did was tell us the wrong time, a time that would be a half hour before the others would meet, since that's usually how late we are, so we would show up on time when we were actually late for the time that she gave us."

I move my arm from my eyes to my forehead and watch as Shikamaru scowls and beats the dirt from his clothes. "Do you really think she would do that?" he asks me. "Sounds troublesome."

"Yes, I really think she would do that," I say, sitting up myself. "You know how sensitive Ino gets about these meetings. Maybe this is karma getting back at us for not trying harder to be on time."

Shikamaru's frown deepens and he sighs, sitting down beside me when he realizes we still have a long time to wait.

"It's not your fault, Shikamaru," I say, cocking my head to the side. "I have a feeling it's more on my part than anything. Our friends don't trust me like they used to. Case in point." I make a gesture to summarize our current state of affairs. "After all, I'm the one who makes us late." And the one who was almost banished from the village.

"That's not it," Shikamaru says without hesitation.

I regard him warily. The way he says it insinuates he knows exactly why our friends are giving us the wrong time, aside from our avid tardiness, which is, again, mostly on my part. So I ask, "What is it, then?"

He rubs the back of his neck, exhaling sharply through pursed lips. A nervous tick of his, I note. It's a silly one. It gives him away on a large scale: his tiredness, his irritation, his thoughtfulness; it all spills over in one simple gesture. I want to call him out on it, but then he speaks.

"You haven't been the same since Sasuke left," he says, and my fingers tighten around the edge of the fountain. "Granted, none of us have, but _you_ especially. Ino and Sakura are making efforts to help you out, but you're not giving them any length. You keep . . . _pushing_ everyone away, Ren, especially with the antics you've been pulling, and we don't want that. So they organize these monthly meetings and give you wrong times and have me go pick you up to make sure you're all right."

To make sure I'm all right. How altruistic.

"They think they're losing you. But I know," he says, "you may always be late, but you always show up eventually. You're not the type to give up or be given up on so quickly." He scowls and adds, "I tell them that, but for some reason, they never listen to me."

He doesn't flush red as he says this, doesn't look reluctant to admit it, doesn't look irritated to have to tell me as much. His eyes stay trained on me, sincere and firm.

I blink at him, his steady eyes, a warm brow that turns amber in the sunlight. His kindness fills me up, and that last part tips me over the edge. God, I love him so much. I love that he's my best friend, love that he always knows just what to say to make me feel better, and I think about something Rei had said once: I don't know what I did to deserve him, but I would do it a million times over to have more people like him in my life.

And yes. I suppose nothing compares to being able to have these bonds, and no amount of loneliness and independence could make me as happy as Shikamaru does.

I lean into him, and he stiffens, caught off guard by my sudden movement. I only press my forehead to his and breathe. The sweet smell of him—of the grass, the dew, the kindness, the memories—makes my head buzz. I can't even begin to fathom how I could ever repay him for his friendship.

For now, I settle with saying, "Thank you. _Thank you_."

[+]

A few days after that, I tell Shikamaru about the bond. Then, a few days after that, I leave for the Sand.

Shikamaru took the news of the bond considerably well. He was puzzled at first, disbelieving. But then I looked at him and said, "In a world where you can manipulate shadows and I can control the vibrations and Ino can walk into someone else's brain, why is the blood oath so insane?" and he relented. Reluctantly.

I told him about how the bond formed, how it had endured generations of Kagiru, and how I had inherited it upon being born as a girl into my family. I told him that, for the five years I was gone, I was on my own, looking for a way to break it because of how it had killed my family and how I didn't want to end up like them. I told him, when he remained skeptical about my story, if he wanted to confirm the bond's existence, all he had to do was talk to Kakashi or even Asuma, but he declined and said he believed me—that the bond was improbable, but not impossible, he supposed. He looked pale as he said this, like if there really was such a thing as the blood oath, what other kinds of twisted rituals were there in the world?

Even if he still doubted the bond's existence, there isn't much for me to say otherwise to get him to believe it. It's been severed for the past two and a half years, and without Sasuke—

I choke. Even after all this time.

"What I don't understand," he said after he declined to talk to Kakashi or Asuma about the bond, "is why you didn't tell anyone about this earlier. If it was bothering you this much, if _this_ is what made you act . . . "

"Crazy?" I offered, and he scowled.

"For lack of a better word, yes," he said. "Crazy. If this . . . this _bond_ is what made you act crazy all these years, why didn't you tell us about it, Ren? You said you were did all those things because you wanted to see if you could find a way to break the bond, right? Well, if you had told one of us, we could have helped you. What?" he asked when I laughed at him. "I'm being serious. Two heads are better than one."

"Yeah, I'm sure," I said. "But, Shikamaru, if I spent all those years around the Wind and Fire Countries trying to find a way to break this bond and couldn't, what makes you think any of you could have found a solution here in the village? That's exactly why I left."

Shikamaru wasn't convinced. He tried to offer another rebuttal, but I cut him off with, "I'm going to stay in Sunagakure for a while."

He froze, leaving his mouth gaping, which suited the situation fine. He narrowed his eyes, asked, casually, "Oh yeah? What for?"

I took a deep breath, running my hands through my hair and ruffling it for good measure. "To take my mind off things," I said, shrugging. "And . . . maybe just because. I mean, given, when I get there, I won't be allowed to leave the village. But if I stay here, I won't be able to leave the village either. At least when I'm stuck in Suna, I'll have new things to look at. New places to eat, new rooftops to sleep on, new people to meet. Also, I'm sure Godaime wants me off her back, so. All's well that ends well, I suppose."

"When are you leaving?" he asked, avoiding my eyes by deferring to the clouds.

"No later than the day after tomorrow," I said, jabbing a stick into a soft spot in the earth. I pierced a leaf through the top part of the stick, turning it into a flag, and built up the earth around it to keep it stable. "I'm going under the pretense of being a medical advisor to some of the medics in the Sand."

He rubbed his face down with his hands, and I could tell that he wanted to say more, something that would maybe deter me from leaving, but I laughed and shook my head, leaning back on my arms to watch the clouds.

"You probably don't understand where I'm coming from because you belong here, Shika," I said. "This place keeps you happy. This place keeps you safe. _You_ keep this place safe. You are, through and through, a shinobi of the Konoha."

He asked, "So what does that make you?"

I blinked at him, the way his eyebrows creased together, the way his sharp brown eyes turned amber in the sunlight. I cleared my throat and sat back. I said, "I don't know. I want to be part of this. I want to be a part of everything here, but—" I pressed my hand to my chest, remembering the tightness and the pains and the overwhelming feeling of being crushed under this insatiable loneliness. "I can't if nobody trusts me. Going to Sunagakure will give me a chance to start over, and maybe if Tsunade hears about my good behavior from Gaara, she'll give me more liberties."

"You know, there was an easier way to get on Tsunade's good side than to resort to this," Shikamaru said.

"Yeah?" I asked. "And what was that?"

"Not attempting to run away all those times before," he said, and I snort.

"Yeah," I said with a small laugh. "I guess that _would_ have been easier."

"A bond, huh?" he said under his breath after a small pause. He kneaded his fingers into his forehead, let out a long sigh that deflated his lungs, and raised his eyes to meet my gaze. "All this time."

"All this time," I confirmed shortly, wishing we could stop talking about it already. It had taken everything I had to mention the bond to him in the first place, and then to discuss it at such length afterward—even if it was Shikamaru, I was made wholly uncomfortable by the fact that the bond is seemingly out in the open. I felt the need to ask him, "Please . . . don't mention this to anyone. I don't want people to know until—either Sasuke comes back or the bond is broken. You can understand, right?"

Shikamaru wasn't pleased by my request, as evident in the way he pursed his lips and shook his head, but he agreed, and said, "What are friends for?"

And, in that moment, I felt as though I could truly be free of this bond.

[+]

I go to the Sand, escorted by only one ANBU, which I think is a sign that I've won one battle with the village. It's not much, but it's a start, and I am all for new starts.

I'm passed off to Kankuro at Sunagakure's borders and brought to the Kazekage's office immediately after my arrival. Kankuro tells me to wait for Gaara, who should be with me shortly out of a meeting with some of the village councilors. True enough, Gaara appears in minutes, heaving a heavy sigh as he closes the door behind him. It's the first time I've seen him look anything but blank, and even then his fatigue doesn't show on his face for very long. He's back to being his collected self in a matter of seconds.

"I'm glad to see you made it here safely," he says as I stand to meet him. "You must be tired from your journey. Please, sit."

"I'm not really tired," I say, easing back into the chair. The Kazekage's quarters are barren, much like the landscape around Suna. The only efforts to brighten the room at all are the cloth thrown over the desk as décor and then potted plants placed off to the side. The windows behind Gaara burrow in rectangular cubbies in the earthy walls before rounding off for circular panes that look out over the village, which is equally as plain and serious as the rest of this country. "I'm more excited to settle into things."

Gaara presses his fingers together in typical Kage fashion and nods his head, his eyes focusing beyond me. "We have an apartment set up for you," he says as I glance over my shoulder to see what he could be looking at, "in the east block of town. It's in close proximity to our hospital as well as my office, in case you ever need to see me on short notice. As you know, one of the terms of you being here requires that you service our village in some way, and I know you and your Hokage expect you to volunteer at our hospital, but I think I may have come up with something else that would more suit your talents."

"Something," I repeat, "else?"

He leans over his desk, closes his eyes briefly, and then says, "I still need to do some more arm-twisting before everything works out, but I'm sure it will. In the meantime, I think I would prefer it if you trained with me in addition to your volunteer work."

I'm taken aback by his suggestion, and say, "Train with you? Are you sure? I—"

He meets my gaze, finally, and the turquoise of his eyes cuts me off. "Of course," he says, and I swear I see his lips twitch into a smirk. "We're friends now, aren't we?"

"Ah—yes," I say carefully, "but you're—you're Kazekage. I can't just—"

"But _I_ can," he says, sitting back. "Like you said: I'm Kazekage. We'll meet to train in the evenings," he says as though it's already been arranged. He turns in his seat to look out the window, his fingers still pressed together at the tips. "The councilors won't bother me around that time, so we should be free to train until sunset. What's the matter?" he asks when he notices me fidgeting. I twist my hands in my lap and bite my lip. "You _are_ here to improve your skills, aren't you?"

"Something like that," I say. "I guess—I wasn't expecting this kind of freedom, these kinds of liberties. Back home I was this . . . _pest_, you know? I'm not saying I didn't deserve that title, given the trouble I caused, but—"

"No one," says Gaara, "deserves that kind of label. Being the head of a village myself, I understand what was going through the Hokage's mind as she tried to handle the issues you created within the village. She needed to keep it safe, for one, and then she needed to pacify the concerns of the councilors for another—and I know how . . . abrasive—"

"You mean annoying," I say.

"—some councilors can be," he continues without pause. "But I don't think she handled your situation as well as she could have. Don't get me wrong," he says as my lips twist in confusion. "I believe the incidents you caused did call for disciplinary action—but it also called for reform, and that wasn't a concern of your village council. They suppressed you," he says softly, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up at how right he is. "They cut you off from what you needed most. And that only served to make things worse."

His words start to sink in slowly, and I understand what he means. Tsunade and the council had only ever determined how I was to be locked inside the village—by being placed on house arrest and having me spend every moment under observation even when I was teaching at the Academy. They never tried to help ease me back into being a normal, certified Chuunin, which is all I could have asked for.

I understood their fears. I understood their concerns in regards to Sasuke and Orochimaru. But who said they couldn't have placed me on a team with Shikamaru, who I would never dream of running away from? Or Neji or Hinata, Kiba, Shino, Chouji, or Ino, who would have reminded me why I wanted to stay in the village and enjoyed being in a place like Konoha? With any one of my friends, I would never have thought twice about Sasuke or Orochimaru on my missions, but the council was too caught up in the maybes.

"Their actions only served to make you angry and resentful," Gaara says, and I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, doubling over as my stomach twists and I have the uneasy feeling of wanting to go home, "and, in that way, their punishments were a hundred times more detrimental than they were effective."

"Spot on," I say into my knees with a weak laugh. "How could you tell?"

"I've felt that way before, too," he says softly. "When I was nothing but a monster that could be used as a weapon for the village or else destroy it completely in one of my fits of rage. I understand the loneliness that comes with not being trusted."

I snort, sitting straight and wiping my face with the ends of my sleeves. "All that loneliness made you this wise, huh?" I ask.

He blinks at me in wonder as though I should know better. "No," he says, clasping his hands together and pressing them to his lips. "It was the bonds that followed after the loneliness, when people started to trust and trust in me, which is why I'm granting you these liberties. Besides," he says, standing up, "if you step out of line and do anything to hurt my village, know that you will have to deal with me, and I will not let you off easily. But I have faith in you."

Despite the threat, his vote of confidence fills my stomach with warmth. It's more than I ever got at home. I could kiss him for his kindness, his understanding.

"Now," says Gaara, "it's about an hour until sunset. Would you like to begin your training immediately?"

I grin, wiping my face one last time as Gaara offers me his hand to help me up. "Gaara," I say. "I have a feeling we're going to be good friends."


	55. Stolen

**Bound  
PART III  
Chapter 55: Stolen**

**Two Years and Seven Months Later**

"Ren-san, don't you think you should take a break?"

I sit back, wiping my brow and squinting against the sunlight at a gardener who towers over me, his silhouette giving me no insight to his identity. "Is it almost lunch time?" I ask, taking the bottle of water he offers me. "Because if that's the case, then yes."

The gardener laughs as I dab at my brow again, the sweat rolling off my face seemingly unyielding. "I'm here to relay a message about that, actually. Godaime wants me to tell you he can meet you for lunch today," he says with a slight bow at the mention of the Kazekage, and I recognize his voice, his polite way of speech. It's Haru, one of the gardeners I'd recruited personally to help me around the greenhouse. He smiles kindly at me as I stand. "He's almost finished speaking with the Village Council, so if you'd like to wait for him in his office, he'll walk you to lunch."

I thank him and give him a few last instructions on taking care of my plants before going on my way. Upon stepping out into the blazing sunlight, though, I resent having to leave the greenhouse. Even though the air in the greenhouse was thick with humidity, I preferred it to this pressing heat, where wind blew but gave no relief. I've been in the Sand for five months, and no closer to getting used to this weather.

Not for the first time, I think about home. I think about the trees that provide shade, the leaves of grass that provide a cool place to sleep, the sweet smell of dew in the air when I leave my house in the morning. Here, there's only hot, hot heat and dry air and the sound of sand crunching under my feet as I walk around the village. And while it was nice to have a change of scenery for the first few days, it became monotonous quickly, and I could only think about how much I would like to go home. I was only supposed to stay here for as long as it took me to cool down from Sasuke's departure, after all, but then Gaara offered me an apprenticeship under one of his village's leading medical officials, and that extended my visit. Still, my training can be considered complete and I've cooled down considerably and now I want to go home.

Nothing against Sunagakure. Gaara has gone well beyond his duties as host to make sure that I felt at home here and, along with Temari and Kankuro, has ensured that I will not go home without new techniques to show off. I'll miss him when I'm gone—but nothing compares to the comfort of home.

As I'm thinking this, a massive shadow passes over me, reaching across the whole of the village streets, darkening buildings and market blocks. I stop where I am and look up, anxious. It's a rarity that we see clouds in this desert country, and so it's even more of anomaly when a cloud manages to eclipse the whole of the sun and plunge what seems like half of the village into darkness. This can't be the work of some gargantuan fluff of white.

My suspicious are confirmed when, overhead, I see not clouds but a blanket of sand, rushing through the air like a tidal wave, hell bent on washing out the village and burying everyone underneath. My body tenses, and I prepare to sprint the rest of the way to the Administration and inform Gaara, when it hits me: The villagers. It's not safe for them to be roaming around. As a shinobi, I need to consider the safety of the people first.

Around me, the villagers are gasping and shouting, their feet melded into place in their shock. They point and press their hands over their mouths, and even when I shout, "Everybody get inside!" they only look away from the sand wave to blink at me, scared and confused, keeping their children close to their legs.

I take hold of the people closest to me, a shopkeeper and a customer of his who had come out to survey the situation, and hiss, "Get back inside! Close all the doors and windows. Don't come out until we send people to tell you it's safe! Go!" I urge, shoving them both into the shop and shutting the doors behind them.

I'm able to usher a handful of people more into random shops and hotels before shinobi finally show up and assist me in doing the same. Upon seeing their own officials sweeping people off the streets, the villagers become more inclined to listen to them, and I wonder if I should have stolen a headband earlier during my stay here. Only to more easily gain the trust of these people when I need it most, that is, like now, when they are so very obviously in danger of the oncoming sandstorm and so very reluctant to listen to me try to help them.

"Has someone alerted the Kazekage?" I ask, catching one of the shinobi I recognize. He nods, glancing over his shoulder where his teammates are securing the area.

"He's the one causing this," the shinobi answers, motioning to the wave of sand. "It appears we've—"

An explosion cuts him off. Instinctively, we flinch and duck our heads, closing our eyes when sand pellets fall on us. They're compact and considerably large, like hailstones, and I'm sure there are bumps forming on my head from where they've hit, but that's pushed out of my mind as soon as the shinobi finishes his sentence.

"It appears we've been infiltrated," he says, brushing dirt out of his hair. "We're under attack and the High Council has determined a state of emergency."

"Then reinforcements," I say, and the shinobi shakes his head.

"Impossible," he says, and points to the sand swirling overhead. "There's no way for us to get up there, and the Kazekage can't concern himself with us during a fight of this caliber. The best we can do is stay back and—hey!" the shinobi cries indignantly when I shove past him. While I'm confident that Gaara can take care of himself, I'm not going to sit idly by and let him get hurt. I have a duty to protect this village that has been my home for the past six months just as much as any Sand Nin.

There's another explosion from overhead and I hear sand pellets whistling through the air as they fall, but I don't mind it. I need to get to higher ground where I can maybe hoist myself onto Gaara's sand. The plan is, so far, poorly thought out, but I'll wing it. Something will come up and work to my advantage.

When I burst into the Administration building, I can feel the vibrations being jostled above. I don't know if it's because of the fight or because someone is planning frantically from within. Either way, I quicken my pace, taking the stairs four at a time and cutting turns so closely my arm bumps into the corner walls. More bruises to add to my list of injuries and I haven't even gotten into the battle yet.

I turn a corner and slam into someone who grabs my arms to steady me and shouts, "Ren!"

"Kankuro?" I say, slightly dazed by my collision. "What's going on? What's with the sand—"

"We're being attacked," Kankuro says in a rush. "We're going up to the upper level to check it out right now and see what we can do. Come on," he says, grabbing my shoulder and steering me in the right direction. I stumble ahead of them, guided by Kankuro's hold, and by the time we're out on the rooftop of the Administration building, my dizziness has cleared, but I still can't comprehend.

There is Gaara, standing on his floating sand, battling off explosives that are directed at him by someone soaring through the sky on the back of a giant bird. The explosions come in quick succession, but Gaara manages to manipulate the sand fast enough to counter them all. I consider how I could get up there, being that I can't manipulate the earth like Gaara can, although I do have some reign. Over the course of my time here, I've discovered that earth's susceptibility to my vibrations coupled with my natural ability to control the element allows me to use the abundant sand around me, but nowhere nearly as well as Gaara's sand.

Then again, I don't have a sand demon sealed inside of me.

Gaara summons the sand to chase after the man flying on the bird, the sand taking shape into claws reminiscent of the Shukaku's as they grab onto empty air, getting closer to the man with each reach. The man swerves to a sudden stop, turning to face Gaara and the sand claws, which proceed to clamor for him. But then something small shoots forward, swirling around the sand claws and directed right Gaara, who has to reel his sand in front of him quickly to block the explosions that go off.

Gaara ends up cocooning himself in his sand as the claws dip under the man on the bird and swoop in, circling him and closing the man in a huge sphere. We watch as the man realizes what's going on and attempts to fly out of the sand which fills quickly.

But not fast enough.

At the last possible moment, as the last holes are being paved over, the man breaks out from the thinning of sand that has only barely covered the opening and gets free. But the sand catches onto the man's clothes, consumes his left arm, and in a plume of red and faded brown, Gaara crushes the man's arm.

Some of the Nin start cheering. I, on the other hand, along with Kankuro and Baki, the former Jounin leader of the Sand Siblings, stay quiet, watching as the man drops something that bursts in a cloud of smoke and catches him—another bird that flies him to level with Gaara.

"Ren," Kankuro says carefully, and I turn to him. "Do you know who it is Gaara's fighting?"

"I . . . no," I say. "I've never seen these techniques before and—"

"Look closely," he says, and I return my gaze to the man hovering above the village. He's an inky black blob on top of a creamy brown bird hovering above the village. As he sways, the sun glints off his coat, and I wonder why he isn't suffering from heat stroke considering the—

I catch a glint of red and my eyes widen and I say, "No."

"So you recognize them?" Baki says and I press my hands to my face because I don't want to believe it. "It's Akatsuki attacking Kazekage-sama then, isn't it?"

"That's what I thought," Kankuro says. "To think we were talking about them earlier. Speak of the devil, indeed."

Baki whirls on the shinobi gathered behind us and orders them to prepare for battle. Then, to me, he says, "Ren, go with the medical team to set up barriers and lead the villagers in there."

"No," I say, planting my feet where I am. "I've had experience dealing with Akatsuki. I'll help back up the Kazekage with the rest of you. Go," I say with a wave of my hand to the medical corps who stay behind for me. They look to Baki who nods, reluctantly, and they leap away onto their own duties. Baki leans his head back to watch as another explosion goes off frighteningly close to Gaara.

"Kankuro," Baki says. "Consider the idea of Gaara going crazy in your head, and the scenario of the Shukaku coming out."

Kankuro grits his teeth as though he had already been thinking about the prospect of both happening. But then he smirks and says, "That won't happen. Gaara won't harm the people of this village."

"Never mind that," I say, pointing at the man who is pulling something out of his bag. It's large, about the size of his head, and he holds it out, like he's presenting it to Gaara as a peace offering. "Judging from that guy's technique, I'd say whatever he's holding is another explosive. If that hits Gaara—" I stop speaking with a yelp as whatever the man had been carrying in his hands expands to the size of a small building. He makes a series of wild gestures before he tips it over the edge of his bird and it begins its descent right over the center of the village.

The chakra that package has condensed in it makes the vibrations go haywire. If that thing goes off in the village, everyone could—no, _will_ die. And I think the people below sense as much because there is screaming from the people who haven't been evacuated yet and shinobi are running back and forth like they can do something, but I feel the sand swooping in and building and then we're in shadow again and we're protected and the blast that goes off only serves to shake the village and send down a rain of debris from Gaara's shield as it takes the damage.

There is cheering. Baki lets out a moan of relief. Kankuro smiles. But the amount of chakra that it had taken Gaara to do _that_—

He's not going to last.

The sand shield dissipates without ado, showering the village as I scan the sky for Gaara. There's a small explosion that occurs where he's taken cover. When the smoke clears, I can see that he's managed to close his shell in time to keep himself safe, but then the shell begins to bulge and writhe in odd places, like there's a monster inside trying to claw its way out.

Baki mutters under his breath about the Shukaku getting loose, but I stop him and say, "It's not that. The energy is different. It's—"

"The sand!" Kankuro cries, and yes, the sand. The sand is dripping away from Gaara, cascading over his limp body as Gaara must be losing consciousness.

I explain in a hurry, "That chakra inside the shell hadn't been Gaara's or the Shukaku's, but that Akatsuki guy's! It was a bomb, somehow, that had gotten in and _Gaara is hurt_."

The sand continues to fall away from Gaara until it loses its grip on him completely. And then Gaara is falling and my stomach is dropping along with him and the man is swooping in on him.

But—why doesn't he continue to attack the village? Is he after Gaara specifically, and had only used the village as a decoy? These are question I don't have time to give my full attention because, if this man is after Gaara, then I have to do something before Gaara is captured.

I charge my fist with my chakra and punch the rooftop, thinking about how it really is lucky that all the buildings in the Sand Village are made of, well, _sand_ and stone and other earthy elements. I release my chakra into the earth and meld it with the particles in an orderly fashion so that the ground rises in a staircase, reaching high above the buildings and maybe, maybe close enough to Gaara.

Kankuro shouts after me as I leap up the thick steps of the staircase, surging my chakra to my foot. I kick the corner of a step; it breaks and goes flying, directed right at the man aiming to catch Gaara before me. He has to swerve out of the way in order to avoid the boulder crashing toward him, which gives me enough time to ascend the final steps and, sending a burst of chakra to my feet, jump from the top of the staircase, and grab Gaara as he falls.

Which leaves me falling too.

I should have thought this part through, but I was more concerned about getting to Gaara to consider this. Luckily, Gaara is warm, still half-conscious, and has the sense to summon up his sand to catch us. Either that or his autonomous sand had its own sense to catch its vessel. Whichever it is, I'm grateful as I sit up on the sand island that keeps us afloat, I think I hear cheering from below, but there's no time for that because the bird is soaring right at us again, much faster this time, and I end up having to lay Gaara down in my lap as I flip through hand seals to manipulate the earth on which we sit.

I make the appropriate hand signs before slamming my palms into the island. It shakes and thrusts us backwards as chunks of the sand break off and bullet at the bird, predicting where he'll go to dodge and then hitting him spot on. He spins out of control and I use the moment to my advantage.

I press my hands into the dirt, my fingers sinking through the compact sand like water and my chakra flowing into the particles easily. I lean all my weight forward, careful not to crush Gaara, and the island sinks down, gaining momentum in our descent. Below, a number of Nin wave their hands back and forth, signaling for me to land there.

I hear Gaara groan, and I mumble, "Relax, Gaara. I've got you, you're safe, we're almost—"

The vibrations shudder around something small but charged with a massive chakra flies toward us. I peer over my shoulder to see if I can pinpoint exactly what it is that's rushing at me, but I'm only met with fire and a blast that sends the island reeling and spinning and singes the edges of my clothes where embers catch onto the fabric.

I curse under my breath, freeing one hand from the sand island in order to keep a better grip on Gaara. The blast throws me off and makes me lose my sense of direction, but I know one thing for sure—I need to get down.

I lean forward again as the sand crumbles beneath me. Gaara must losing consciousness completely. I surge my chakra into the sand island to keep it together, but it does nothing to help me control the sand as it falls, without a single power to brace it, plummeting out of the sky much faster than I would like.

And people wonder why I have a fear of heights. It's this kind of free-falling that leads to your death, painfully sends you splattering on the ground, and to top it all off, you have to endure the anxiety of the fall first. At least I could grab onto trees and shit in the area around the Leaf Village to stop myself. I add that to my mental list of Reasons Why I Want to Go Home.

An idea strikes me. I tug my hands out of the sand, flipping through hand seals quickly as my chakra gathers into the appropriate amounts, and when I slam my hands into the sand island beneath me, I can feel that it's enough earth to do as I intend.

The sand shoots out beneath us, stretching toward the ground like a giant pillar. It's not long enough to hit the ground, but I don't need for it to. Instead, I swerve the island left and, just in time, it skids across the top of a building, sinking in through the roof and jerking us to a stop.

I grab onto Gaara, who almost flies from the island as we come to a crashing halt, and begin to go through the motions of make sure he's okay. His face is crumbly from his sand shield, and I wipe the remnants of it away with an easy wave. There are slight burns where the blasts had broken through his sand, but other than that he is unhurt and unconscious because of the chakra it takes to maintain his shield and manipulate his sand to such a degree.

I hear someone tsk and look up quickly to find the man—no, boy. By the timbre of his voice, he's only a few years older than I am—on the bird hovering in front of me. He's grinning as he says, "Impressive, yeah. But how about you hand him over? I don't like fighting girls, and I commend your resilience. I have a timetable to keep t-oo!" he cries as I dig my hands into the sand and launch sand bullets at him. His bird jerks back and forth to avoid them.

"Earth element, yeah?" he asks and smirks, holding onto his bird with tight fists. "I thought it was a little odd how you managed to pull up that stairway earlier. That means—you were the one controlling the sand island, weren't you?" He laughs when I glare at him and says, "Good news for me then: I've successfully managed to knock out your Kazekage without killing him. Well? He's not dead, yeah?"

"Get lost!" I hiss, pulling Gaara closer to me as the boy eyes him. "And tell your friends—your Akatsuki gang—to leave us the hell alone. I recognize your coat," I say when his eyes widen with surprise. "I've run into your ilk before. I know you want the jinchuuriki, although god knows why."

The boy laughs again, shakes his head, and says, "You could say that, yeah. This was fated by Him to happen. So give him here, yeah, and we'll all go on our merry way."

"No deal," I say, and plant my hands into the earth again. The boy flinches, waits for my attack to come, but instead I'm falling along, grabbing Gaara around the waist and hugging him tightly to me as the sand dissolves and sends us nose-diving for the ground. I see Kankuro jump with surprise from the top of another building, the other shinobi scrambling around him to figure out how to catch us, but I trust in Gaara and his sand, or at least my vibrations to cushion us, and that we'll be able to land safely if only I can move us faster.

I pull the vibrations, smoothing them out to ease the friction in the air, preventing us from slowing, when I feel the boy plummeting toward us too. I send a blast of vibrations to knock him off kilter at a range he can't dodge, but he manages to break through them and come at us much more quickly than before. And instead of aiming to grab Gaara alone, he catches the both of us on his bird. I slam into it hard, landing so gruffly and painfully on my shoulder that it dislocates and I groan.

I keep my grip around Gaara, rolling over him in order to face the boy, but before I can steady myself properly, I'm shoved, and in my current state I lose my balance and tip over the edge of the bird. I tighten my grip on Gaara's sash and end up swinging back and forth in the air as the boy holds Gaara aboard.

"Determined girl, aren't you?" I hear him grumble under his breath before he tosses something over the side of the bird that hits me in the face and gets caught in the ends of my hair. My good arm is occupied holding onto Gaara and my other arm won't lift because of my shoulder. The vibrations shiver as whatever the boy has dropped on me begins to crawl up my hair and brush up against my face. I think to shake my head to get the thing off of me, but that thought is cut short when my fingers are crushed under a heavy boot and I'm forced to let go.

Free-falling once more, I reach up to catch the bug crawling through my hair and toss it aside as it explodes in a ball of heat and fire and smoke. Unfortunately, I'm not far enough away from the blast to make it out unscathed. Embers stick to my shirt and skin, melting where it touches. The blast does wonders on my head, causing dizziness to set in, and I wonder if it's possible I could have been concussed. Or severely whiplashed. I don't have long to consider this though, as I crash into a body that has prepared to catch me but still crumples under my weight.

I struggle to get off my savior, muttering, "Gaara, Gaara," as they help me to my feet.

"Kankuro is going after him now," someone says, holding me steady. "We've been instructed to take you to the hospital, Ren-san."

"No," I say, brushing them off. "Where—I'm going—"

"You're in no shape!" someone says, taking hold of my bad shoulder, and I wince.

"I am," I insist, pushing their hand off, and, taking my elbow, I push my arm up and, god, it stings and the shooting pain goes all the way through my torso until I feel my bones snap back into place. I press my hand over my shoulder to ease the swelling, but that last exertion of energy is enough to drain my chakra reserves and make me black out.

[+]

I'm shaken awake, which serves to make my head hurt even more, but when I wake up I manage to grumble, "I was concussed, and you let me fall asleep? What if I had fallen into a coma?"

"No time to worry about that right now," someone says quickly, pushing me off the bed and supporting me as I'm forcibly set on my feet. _No time to worry about that now_, I think incredulously as the person beside me tightens their hand around my waist. No, I suppose now isn't the time to worry about it, but thirty minutes ago, maybe, or when I had initially passed out. That would have been a good time to worry about it.

"Kankuro," the person says and I'm not sure if I should be offended when they grunt as I lean on them. There's no time for me to consider, though, because they say, "There was another Akatsuki member waiting outside the gates. He poisoned Kankuro, and none of the other medics can figure it out. We need your help."

"How long?" I ask, bracing my head as the person at my side leads me to—god, I don't even know where we are. The hospital? My eyes don't register any of our surroundings though. But that might be because of my head.

"What?" they say.

"How long has the poison been in his system?" I say, growing irritated and pushing away from this person. Despite the slight sway in my step, I walk much faster than they do. "Have you guys been keeping him sedentary? The faster his heart beats, the quicker it moves through his system."

"An hour and a half at most," the person says. "He's resting here in a separate room. Here." They jog ahead of me to hold the door for me to enter, but I stop before going in.

"And Gaara?" I ask, and the medic looks away quickly.

"I'm afraid we weren't," he's saying, but I walk past him into the room and am swiftly flocked by the medics who give me a report of Kankuro's condition. I wave them away, telling the closest one, "Bring me Haru from the greenhouse, please." and taking gloves from the next medic who offers them to me.

Pulling them on, I'm at Kankuro's bedside. Someone has taken the liberty of stripping him and bandaging him up. Unraveling some of the bandages, I place one hand over Kankuro's heart and press my chakra into it to slow it as much as possible without killing him.

"You're gonna be okay, Kankuro," I say softly, and begin muttering soft prayers to the spirits for his comfort as I infuse my free hand with chakra and use it to cut beneath his ribcage. I run my hand smoothly over his circulatory system, making the rounds once, twice, three times, collecting the infected blood and drawing it out through the cut I've made.

"Someone heal that cut, and get me a vial to hold this in, please?" I say, and someone swoops in to take over for me while there is a bit of rummaging, some glass clanking against more glass, before someone else holds out a vial and I deposit some of the blood into it. It sloshes back and forth with a distasteful purple tinge.

"What kind of analysis have you done on the poison?" I ask, holding the poison on display.

"It's nothing we've seen before," says one of the medics. "It's caused paralysis, obviously, and it seems it won't kill him immediately, but he doesn't have long. Two or three days, judging by the way it moves through the bloodstream."

"Well, I've drawn most of it out," I say. "The only thing we have to worry about now is it infecting the rest of the blood cells. We can keep drawing it out, but . . . I don't think that will delay things for very long."

"Ren-san?" It's Haru, coming in through the doors, his face smudged with dirt from the greenhouse as I carry the vial to him. He cringes as he sees the blob of blood still circling in my chakra that I hold in my hand, but then I give him his own vial of it and he pales even more.

"Take this," I say, and he does, holding it far from him. "See if you can break down the chemical composition of the poison and find herbs that will negate them. We only need a stall right now," I say as a medic hands me another vial without me asking. I deposit the rest of the poison into the container and finish, "Once we get a basis for the poison, we can start to find the actual antidote. And for god's sake, someone call on Chiyo. We'll need her."

At the mention of the elder, Kankuro tries to sit up. The medics nearby insist he stop, but he brushes them away and waves Baki forward, mumbling something into the Jounin's ear.

Baki's eyes widen and he stands straight. He gives me a knowing look and says, "Based on what Kankuro's told me, both of the elders will come. They won't be able to resist."

I don't know what he means by this, but I don't have time to dawdle. The clock is ticking and I need to find an antidote, so I leave the infirmary and go to the greenhouse, where I meet up with Haru.

Even with his help, the best I can do is create a kind of universal antidote that will suppress the poison. From the analysis Haru gives me when he finishes, none of the herbs we have, at least, none that I can think of, can completely flush poison's out of a system. They only suppress it to insignificant amounts which the body then builds a resistance against. If that's the best I can do right now, then I'll take it until I can study this poison more and find the perfect antidote.

[+]

When I bring my finished product to Kankuro, I find Chiyo and Ebizo, the two Sand Village elders, at his bedside, speaking with Baki as she examines Kankuro. They don't hear me enter as they speak, but are unsurprised by my appearance when I approach them.

"Poison is my specialty," Chiyo is saying, "but even I don't know of this. Sasori's grown a huge amount."

"Who's Sasori?" I ask, and Chiyo turns to squint at me. Or glare. I can't tell. Either way, she doesn't look happy to see me.

"My grandson," she says, her voice small, and I'm surprised by how she's let herself sound so fragile.

Baki makes a noise of impatience and prompts, "What should we do? About Kankuro?"

"I have something made up," I say, holding out my antidote. "It's not much, but—ah—hey!" I snap, grabbing for my antidote as Chiyo snatches it from my hands. Chiyo holds it out of my reach and inspects it. She tsks, swirling it around in its container and says, "I can tell by looking at it: This won't do. All you're doing now is slowing the process of the poison. After all this time, you've still have yet to produce a fully working antidote."

"Yeah?" I retort, finally able to retrieve the vial as she turns around. "I can still create potent antidotes against _your_ poisons, granny, so maybe it's your skills that have sunken below par since your retirement."

Chiyo harrumphs and turns away from me as I step forward to administer the antidote. "The only one who has more knowledge about neutralizing poisons than me would be the Slug of Konoha, Tsunade-hime," she says, and I flinch as I attach a needle to the end of the container, nearly pricking myself. "During the Great War, she was able to figure out the poisons I created, and mix antidotes for them immediately, which embarrassed me. All you can do is call her here now and ask her to examine him. You're allied to Konoha now, aren't you?"

"Yes, but," Baki says, and I cut in.

"Tsunade is the Hokage," I say, injecting Kankuro with my antidote. He squirms, lets out a small grunt, but his breathing slows considerably, which I count as a small victory on my part. "She can't leave her village like that."

"Even if she does come," Baki says, shifting on his feet, "it takes three days to reach the Sand from Konoha, and if what the medics say about the poison is true, Kankuro doesn't have that long—and it's already been two and a half days. For now we've sent a request to Konoha for a specialist team and it's taking all of our strength waiting for them to arrive."

"At this point, they should be here any minute now. This antidote will buy him some time if they move slowly," I say, discarding the empty container. "And when the Leaf Nin arrive, we'll see if they know any better than we do."

Chiyo scoffs, narrowing her eyes at Baki. "Stop relying on other people," she says like she's irritated to remind us as much. "You're so dependent on your alliances with other countries you've become careless with your own training, and this is what becomes of it!"

"That is by no means what we intend by these alliances," Baki says, but the old man, Chiyo's brother Ebizo, standing at Kankuro's head, sighs.

"It couldn't be helped," he says, looking down at Kankuro as he winces in his sleep. "It's because Kankuro lost his composure and chased them too far that he's like this. Even for a shinobi, this was too reckless."

"Would you have rather abandoned Gaara?" I say, and Ebizo says softly, "They would have gotten away with him anyway."

"Why are you depending and relying on Konoha?" Chiyo says, at sends me a pointed scowl. I scowl right back at her, half-glad that I'm not wearing my Leaf headband, which would only serve to make her irritation with me worse. "Because you didn't put the advancement of your own village's power as your first priority! But you must remember: _They are them, and we are us_! Friendly alliances are a fabrication. During times like these, all they can do is formally send us useless underlings. My main point is," Chiyo says, frowning deeply. "I can't stand that slug woman!"

I sigh and grumble, "Chiyo-sensei, now is really not the time to be distracted by your old grudges."

She's about to argue with me I hear my name called. The voice is recognizable enough but—I haven't heard it in years. So when I turn around to face Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi, I lose my train of thought.


	56. Like Old Times

**Bound  
****Chapter 56: Like Old Times**

Naruto is too stunned by the sight of me to move out of Sakura and Temari's way, resulting in him being shoved aside so they can get around him and to Kankuro.

I am equally surprised as he is, although I have the sense to move when Temari and Sakura come close, more because of my aversion to Sakura than anything. And then, when the vibrations shift, I am quick to react as Chiyo leaps forward, lunging for Kakashi. Naruto creates a kage bunshin to counter. One of him blocks Chiyo's attack, while the other one goes in for the retaliatory hit, but I slide in between them, catching the bunshin's fist and twisting it behind its back to slam him against the wall.

The bunshin disappears in my hold and I brush my hands off, sighing, "Chiyo-sensei, you've been away from society for too long. That is _not_ how you greet guests."

Likewise, Naruto demands, "Why are you going at Kakashi-sensei so suddenly for, you wrinkled old hag!"

I frown, propping my hands on my hips. "_That_ is also no way to talk to one of the most important people in your host country, Naruto."

Chiyo's face darkens as she speaks, ignoring me. "I remember that time," she says. "That _White Fang_ of Konoha! My son's enemy—I will get my revenge."

Kakashi holds out his hands in defense, stuttering, "Ah, no, I'm not—"

"There's no use arguing!" Chiyo snaps, and I tense as she lunges for Kakashi again, only to have Ebizo step in her way to stop her.

"Sister," he says, calmly. "Take a good look. There is a strong resemblance, but he isn't the White Fang of Konoha."

Chiyo looks from her brother to me, as though for reassurance. I explain, "Chiyo-sensei, this is—_was_ the Jounin leader of my cell back in Konoha, Hatake Kakashi. Kakashi—Naruto, Sakura, meet Chiyo-baasama and Ebizo-jiisama, the elders here in Suna."

Chiyo blinks at Kakashi, squints, and then throws her head back, howling with laughter as though this is by far the greatest practical joke anyone has ever played on her. She says, "No _waay_! I was just pretending to be stupid!"

Kakashi breathes a sigh of relief as Sakura calls attention back to Kankuro, leaning forward to examine him. I watch as she goes through the same motions I had of stabilizing Kankuro and opening a small cut to draw the poisoned blood from his system.

"Thanks for that," Kakashi says, shoving his hands into his pockets and drawing my attention away from Sakura as she works. "Anyway, it's nice to see you, Ren. How have you been?"

"Good," I say as Naruto looks between us, like he's confused that we're on speaking terms. "The heat here has a way of evaporating any desire you may have to put efforts toward running away, so I've been at ease."

Kakashi raises his brow in amusement and says, "I'm glad to hear you haven't lost your sense of humor."

"You get what you can," I say with a shrug. "But don't tell me: You guys are the team Konoha's sent out to help us bring Gaara back?"

Kakashi nods and asks me if I can tell him a bit about what's happened. I explain as much as I can—from noticing the wave of sand about to hit the city, to trying to recover Gaara from the Akatsuki member who worked with bombs, to getting a concussion and waking up in the hospital to helping Kankuro recover from the poison and hearing about Gaara being kidnapped. All the while, Naruto stares at me, and I think he sees me as a ghost of a person he used to know, and I wish he would stop looking at me like that, so I smile and say, while Kakashi hums in thought at the new information I've given him, "Hey, Naruto, nice reaction time back there. You've gotten better since I've last seen you. You look good."

"Ah—yeah," he says, averting his gaze. "Thanks. You too."

An uncomfortable silence settles around us as I watch Naruto, who shifts on his feet and keeps his hands in tight fists at his side. Then, keeping my voice low, I lean in to Kakashi and ask, "Is something wrong? Naruto's acting . . . weird."

Kakashi hums in thought, taking his turn to observe Naruto too. He says, "No one can expect to be away for so long in such circumstances and then come together and act as though nothing has happened."

"There!" Sakura announces, holding out the blood in her chakra absorbed hand which effectively stops me from asking Kakashi what he could mean. The glob she extracts is less than I had gathered, and she grins as she says, "I don't think there's any need to worry about his life anymore. I've directly extracted the poison from his system. Now I have to make an antidote for the little bit of poison left in his body. Please gather what I say."

She holds the poison up for examination, scrutinizing it, and Chiyo says, "That a girl like you would be sent here . . . you're a lot like that slug woman."

Sakura laughs, wiping the sweat that has gathered on her brow as she worked. "Yes," she says, "that's because Tsunade-sama is my master, and she said that I should come here."

Chiyo's eyes dart to me and I avoid her gaze as she smiles and Ebizo says, "Sister, time really is slowly flowing by."

"Right!" Naruto says, clenching his hand, at once his normal self: loud and brash and putting his fist before his brain. "But we're not here to be slow! Let's go after Akatsuki!"

Kakashi smacks the back of his head to quiet him and says, "Not until we finish helping Kankuro and get direct orders from the Sand. Remember our assignment."

"Ah," Sakura says as she examines the poison still floating in her hand. "It seems—there's something in here already working to neutralize the poison."

"That was Ren-kun," Chiyo says, nodding to me. "She injected it into him this morning. I'm glad to hear it's actually doing something."

I glower at her as Naruto repeats, "Ren-_kun_?"

Heat creeps over my cheeks as I clear my throat, pushing my hair over my shoulder as Chiyo booms with laughter at my expense. "Chiyo-sensei thinks I'm too aggressive to have a lighter honorific," I explain, and then change the subject with, "I have a basis for the antidote if you'd like to look at it, Sakura. I extracted most of the poison yesterday; what you have in your hand are the blood cells that have been infected from the little bits of poison that were left. I created an antidote that works as a suppressant, so it's not very effective, but if you'd like to look at it," I say again, feeling sheepish because I really should have said something earlier so we could have avoided wasting time. "You're welcome to."

[+]

"Wow," Sakura says, as she enters the greenhouse. I call for Haru and introduce him to Sakura before asking him to set up the supplies I had used earlier to create my antidote. As he goes to the worktable, Sakura catches one of the leaves of a bigger plant and starts rubbing it between her fingers. "For a desert country, I'm surprised by how healthy these plants are!"

I cringe as I watch her smooth her thumb across the leaf. I catch her wrist and say, "Please don't. The oil on your hands isn't good for the leaves, so, uh. If you could please not, unless that's what you're looking for."

"Oh, sorry," she says meekly as I let her go. "I'm just impressed. They're really . . . _really_ beautiful," she says with a soft sigh as she looks around. "Almost reminds me of home."

"You know," Haru says to Sakura as organizes the supplies. "That's exactly what Ren-san said when the greenhouse started flourishing. It wasn't this beautiful before she came here. She spends hours here every day to tend to these plants."

I flush deep red as Sakura looks at me with surprise and Haru continues to gush about how much responsibility I have to the greenhouse. I turn away quickly, picking out the herbs she'd talked about on the way over. Almost like home. At that I sigh too, slowly shifting a pot aside. "This could never compare to home," I say under my breath. And then out loud and frowning, I say, "Let's just get that antidote done, shall we?"

I take the supplies from Haru and lay them out in front of Sakura, giving her the little extra antidote I have left over from earlier. I explain to her what herbs I had put together to make it and she nods along, understanding, and when I finish she says, "That sounds almost perfect. I think the only thing your antidote could be missing for full effectiveness is a flower from the tomoshiri-sou plant."

At this Haru lets out a soft sigh. I look at him curiously, and say, "Do we have that?"

"Yes," he says, somewhat deflated. "I can gather it for you relatively quickly, but—it's a beautiful thing, the flower. And we have so few; I'm a little reluctant to clip them. But for Kankuro-san," he says quickly when I quirk a brow at him. "To save lives, of course."

"Sorry about him," I say, setting out a small pot and strainer for her. "He's a botanist. Rare plants are his thing. But he's useful around here. He helps me with Chiyo's lessons a lot."

Sakura hums beside me, taking the ingredients and crushing them into the strainer to get their juices. "So that old woman," she says, "Chiyo. You're her apprentice here?"

"That's right," I say, heating a distiller for the next step. "She wasn't . . . eager to take me on in the first place, being that I'm from Konoha and she doesn't believe in entangling alliances and all that, but I was able to convince her otherwise."

"Yeah? And how'd you manage that?"

I grin, saying, "I told her I'd go back home and take an apprenticeship under Tsunade instead. After that, she had to prove she would be better than the Slug Princess, as she calls her, and that I would go home an accomplished medical kunoichi, so she took me on."

Sakura laughs, shaking her head, and I wonder how it is that we're talking so easily after all this time when I had been much closer to Naruto before, and I had hardly managed to say a word to him. That closeness is probably why there is such a drift, though. I probably hurt him much, much more.

Like Kakashi said: No one can expect to be away for so long in such circumstances and then come together and act as though nothing has happened.

I ask, "How's your apprenticeship?"

Sakura pauses for a moment, like she hadn't been expecting me to continue exchanging pleasantries. But she plays it off skillfully like she'd just been thinking about how to respond and she says, "Good. I finished it, technically, a few months ago, but I'm still learning every day. It's hard, but it's rewarding."

"Yes," I agree as Haru bustles back in carrying beautiful blooms of white flowers. He gives them to Sakura, taking deep breaths each time she presses one into her antidote until I take them from him and shoo him away in my irritation.

"And," I start, once we're alone again, "Naruto? He's well? Hasn't changed personality-wise, I see."

"Yes," Sakura says this time, with a small smile. "But I think that's something you should find out for yourself, Ren. When he came home, he . . . didn't take the news that you were gone so easily. He really missed you. _We_ really missed you," she corrects, and I sigh. She stops what she's doing for a moment to turn to me, her eyes shining in the desert sun.

"Are you happy?" she asks, and she's not asking it out of resentment or spite, like I should feel guilty about putting them through such an ordeal, but because she genuinely wants to know.

And I have a genuine answer. "Yes," I say. "I'm happy."

"Good," she says, and goes back to work.

In the end, Sakura is able to procure three antidotes. When we return to Kankuro, Sakura takes up at his side and I go out to the balcony to be alone. I hear them talking inside, hear them make plans to go after the Akatsuki and retrieve Gaara, but I don't interject.

They do fine without me.

Chiyo notices me on my own, and hobbles out to speak with me. "What are you doing sulking out here?" Chiyo says.

"Nothing," I say, lowering my gaze into the streets below where people skitter past like ants on a food run. "Like always. I told you how it is when I'm with Team 7, why I came here. Around them, I'm useless."

"Ah," Chiyo says, nodding. "That's right." Chiyo comes up beside me, although in her withered old state, her head barely passes over the wall barricading us from falling. She can't see into the streets below, but she looks up at the cloudless sky. "That Sakura," Chiyo says, and I tense. "That's the girl you've been telling me about, isn't it? The Slug Princess's apprentice has become like her in beauty and in talent; she is a worthy rival, just like the Slug Princess had been for me!"

"Are you saying, then, that I'm poisoned with _your_ warmness and optimism?" I say, and Chiyo cackles with laughter. "I never imagined I'd be so lucky."

"Did I ever tell you why I took you as an apprentice, Ren-kun? Other than the fact that I had to show you that you can learn just as much from me as some slug," she says with a sniff. I peer at her curiously, the corner of my lips curled into a small smile. Chiyo is never one to grow very sentimental around me, so I'm amused when she lets the age in her bones show as she reminisces. "When Gaara presented me to you and asked me to take you under my wing—you, this impressionable young kunoichi from the Leaf Village which, up until recently, was one of our fiercest rivals!—I was against it. I had retired, after all, because it was time this generation learns to look after itself. Besides, why would I pass on the secrets of my talents to someone who wasn't my own kinsmen? But the fervor with which you spoke to me, that was what convinced me."

She sighs, closes her eyes as she considers her next words. "I've been retired for a long time," she says, her voice low with the wind as it passes, "because it's long overdue that a new generation takes over. I am no longer part of this youthfulness, and so my _usefulness_ has expired. But you made me realize," she says, opening her eyes to meet mine, and I see a spark of the passion she must have held when she was my age, a passion that transcends old age and still exists in her. "The youth is useless without old bones to teach them. And while I think it's rather wasteful that I'm not teaching these poisons to one of my own," she says, turning her nose up at me, and I laugh, "I'm glad that I'm teaching them to someone who rivals the apprentice of the Slug Princess."

"Hmph. Right," I say, shaking my head. "Thanks for the pick-me-up, Granny, but I—"

Chiyo grabs onto the ends of my hair and I yelp as she tugs me down to eyelevel. "I mean that, Ren-kun," she says, shaking her finger at me, as I decide that I have to cut all this hair off before someone manhandles me like this again. "You are everyone's equal if you look at the right angles."

"Yes, Chiyo-sensei," I say, bent over in an awkward half-bow as she gives my hair another stinging yank. "Thank you, Chiyo-sensei. Please let go, Chiyo-sensei."

Chiyo barks with laughter as she lets me go, and I massage my scalp, frowning with the pain of Chiyo's grip. Good god, I think, as Chiyo's laugh dies down and she smiles at me like a sweet, innocent old lady. If there was one thing I won't miss after leaving the Sand, it's Chiyo's abrasiveness.

Someone clears their throat. It's Sakura, standing at the entrance of the balcony with Naruto at her side. They both have their backpacks strapped on, ready to leave.

"Sorry to interrupt," she says, stepping forward cautiously, like she doesn't know if she's welcome out here. "But Kankuro has been stabilized. You can go see him now if you like."

"I think I will," Chiyo says, surprising me. She's never shown such care for the Sand before now, so going to check on Kankuro is an oddity. But then I realize that she's trying to leave me alone with Sakura and Naruto because she says, "Ren-kun, I suggest you stay out here to . . . _clear_ your head some more. And remember: We're all equals."

"I—sensei," I groan as she goes off, and I press my hand over my face, sighing.

I feel Sakura coming up beside me, Naruto staying at the entrance to the balcony, and I'm reminded of when they'd trapped me in to talk to me before Naruto left, before I cold-shouldered Sakura for a good two and a half years. Maybe this is another one of their schemes to have me talk to them. To _force_ me to talk to them.

"Coming out here," Sakura says as she leans against the wall, "I think about the greenhouse again and I can't believe it exists in a place like this. You've done a really great job in there, Ren."

"Thanks," I say, "but it was mostly Haru. I've never worked with plants before I came here and he taught me everything. It really does," I admit, "remind me of home, though. That's why I like it so much."

"Will you be coming home with us?" Naruto says, and I turn to him. "After we rescue Gaara, will you go back to the Leaf with us, Ren?"

It would be easy, considering I'm due home anyway, and I _want_ to go home. But there is a feeling in my gut that makes me anxious. After all, Naruto's return means he and Sakura can start concentrating their efforts of finding Sasuke, and—I scratch the back of my head, say, "I . . . I've established a solid foundation here. With Chiyo-sensei and Haru and Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro. You know, I can't . . . but I would really like to go home," I say when Naruto deflates. "Lately, it's all I've been thinking about, but. This village," I finish feebly.

"You've really gotten close to these people," Naruto says. He is confused and irritated all at once, shown in the way he furrows his eyebrows together and presses his lips tight. "Haven't you, Ren? You never used to call Kakashi 'sensei'. And you're not even wearing your headband."

Sakura stays quiet, stays facing the street, like what Naruto has pointed out is what she had been wanting to say all along, but didn't have the guts. I reach up to touch my bare forehead, knowing the truth in what he says. I had taken it off my first day here to avoid the curious stares from the villagers and hadn't put it back on since. It sits in my drawer in my complementary apartment, underneath some of my clothes where I don't have to think about it.

"It's different here," I say. "With Chiyo and—"

"Did you miss us," he says, and my chest cramps at the hurt on his face, "at all?"

"I—of course," I say quietly, but I've hesitated and stuttered, and that's not enough for him.

"Whatever," Naruto grumbles and goes back inside. I stare after him and Sakura shakes her head, pushing away from the wall, making like she's going to follow.

"That Naruto," she says, stopping in front of me. "He can still be a little petty. All in due time, I guess."

"I don't get it," I say, watching as he goes inside to stand next to Kakashi, like he's making a point. Kakashi gives Naruto a short cursory glance before returning to his book when he notices nothing amiss. "Why's he being so . . . so—"

"Difficult?" Sakura offers with a short smile. "It's Naruto. Unless you're totally on his side—"

Sakura cuts off and I push my hair back, and she says, "I didn't mean—" and I say, "I know."

"He feels cheated," Sakura says, peeling her gloves off her hands and shoving them in her pouch as she fans herself. I can tell her that's not going to help, but she figures it out on her own soon enough and frowns at the heat. She says, "You're so connected to these people after only six months in their village, Ren, when we spent almost two years together as a team. You walked away from us so easily then, and when Naruto asked you if you were coming home, you hesitated. Think about it," she says, deciding that the heat is too much for her, or maybe being next to me, the girl who had left her behind, is too much for her, and goes back inside. "Do you see how that puts us in an odd spot?"

I do, but I don't know what they expect from me in the meantime. As I'd told them, we had different goals. They wanted Sasuke back, believed they could bring him back, whereas I wasn't so optimistic. But, as they had told me, people change. And I have definitely changed.

Coming to the Sand Village, I didn't just work on my medical abilities or learn how to tend plants. I did a substantial amount of thinking as one does when they've been evicted from their country, and I did a lot of making up my mind.

"Hey," I say, catching Sakura before she goes back inside. "I should tell you: During my time I here, I decided something. Whatever you're planning in regards to . . . _Sasuke_—" I swallow, Sakura's eyes widen, Naruto hears me from inside and looks up.

"I'm in," I say, keeping my voice steady, firm so they'll believe me. Because I'm telling the truth. I'm all in.

"What's the catch?" Naruto asks, interrupting Sakura as she beams and tells me about how glad she is that I've seen the light. Naruto has come to the balcony again, but is careful to keep his distance. Over his shoulder I see Kakashi watching us, although his head is still bent to make it look like he's reading.

I guess I should have expected Naruto to be the one to call me out. Despite how smart Sakura is, she is blind with hope whenever something goes her way. Naruto, on the other hand, doesn't hold me in favor at the moment. His distrust is based more so on the fact that I have seemingly turned my back on my kinsmen than the fact that I couldn't have had such a wonderful change of heart.

Still, I smile dryly, say, "You got me." and take a deep breath before I state my condition.

"I'll help you," I say, "bring Sasuke back. But if he does _anything_ to hurt _any_ of you beyond what he's already done, I reserve the right to kill him when I get the chance."

Sakura startles and Kakashi narrows his eyes. Naruto betrays no emotion as my words sink in. He retains his suspicious demeanor, as Sakura says, "Ren, absolutely _no_—"

"Deal," Naruto says, and Sakura lets out a mangled gasp that turns the heads of everyone inside.

"Naruto!" Sakura protests, but he grins, and I can't help but return it because I know his mentality behind agreeing with me even before he explains himself.

"Deal," he says again, "because it won't get that far. I won't let it."

And then he turns on his heels to go back inside, and that's when I notice. Naruto's shoulders are broader than I remember. He's taller, obviously, and he carries himself differently. He's brighter. Inside and out.

"If you're true to your word," Naruto says over his shoulder. "You should come with us to fight these Akatsuki guys. You should know as well as we do what Sasuke is after: Revenge on Itachi."

"And Itachi," I say, "is part of Akatsuki. So getting closer to Akatsuki means getting closer to Itachi, which will, somehow, get us to Sasuke, is that right?"

Naruto grins at me, and I realize that I _have_ missed that smugness, the brazenness with which Naruto carries himself. "That's right," Naruto says. "So let's go."

Baki helps me gather supplies as I prepare to head out with Team 7. I wonder if this means I'm officially part of the team again, but that's something to decide when we get home. And god, the thought of being able to go home after completing this mission makes me so happy that I have to keep biting into my lip to remind myself that I'm not sleeping.

I get to go home. That is all I could ever ask for after these months in the Sand Village. I wasn't lying when I told Sakura that I'm happy here—but a greenhouse can't replace all the forest and grass and the sweet smell of dew.

"If you wait a moment," Baki says as we start on our way out the village, "we can have one of our ninja here too."

"No, really," Kakashi says. "The four of us will be enough. Ren, I'm sure, will be able to provide us with as much insight as we need from one of your Nin."

Baki begins to say something about how it's not a matter of knowledge but a matter of the Sand's pride and duty to their Kage when Temari comes outside, walking with purpose as she meets up with us.

"I'll come with you," she says, adjusting the fan on her back. "It's the least I can do after—"

"Temari, stay here and work on the defense of the country border," comes a voice from above, and when we look up we find Chiyo, balancing precariously on the balcony rail. "From the shinobi of the Sand, I am more than enough."

Temari, Baki, and I all protest, but Chiyo waves it all off and says, "Don't treat me like an old woman!"

"But you _are_ an old woman!" I say as she leaps from the balcony, much to the anxiety of Naruto and Sakura. She lands with a heavy thud on the ground before me, causing my teammates to jerk out of her way with shock.

She grins darkly as she raises her head and says, "I've been wanting to show my grandson some love for a while now. You can understand."

I frown at her as she shoos Baki and Temari inside, and I can't believe she's serious about coming on this mission with us. Kakashi holds up a finger, as though remembering. "That's right," he says. "Kankuro gave us a scrap of Sasori's clothing to help us track him. I'll summon my dogs to get on that right away."

"If those Akatsuki guys were around," I say, helping Chiyo to steady herself although she bats me off with a wrinkled fist, "do you think there were any others in the perimeter that they're meeting up with?"

"It's possible," Kakashi says, bringing his hands together before pressing them into the ground to summon his dogs in a big cloud of smoke. "I'll have some of the dogs go around searching for other suspicious scents."

As Kakashi gives orders to his dogs and offers them the scrap of cloth from Sasori's robes, I turn to Chiyo, who is brushing the dust off her clothes, and ask, "Where did you disappear to earlier? When I came in from talking with Naruto and Sakura, you were gone."

"That's none of your business, Ren-kun," she says. "How did that conversation go, anyway? Did you make amends?"

"Yeah," I say to Chiyo as my friends listen to Kakashi as he directs his dogs in different directions, each of them nodding in comprehension although the only one I ever hear—and have ever heard—speaking up is Pakkun, who, while considerably smaller than the rest of the dogs, seems to be the leader of the pack. With a small wave, Kakashi sends them off. "I'd say we're on good terms again."

Chiyo nods like she's glad to hear it, but from the look in her eyes, she's distracted by how close she's getting to her grandson. It's reminiscent of the way Naruto used to look sometimes, eyes set to see everything, head tilted forward, ready to barrel toward Sasuke and meet him halfway, and I'm afraid that Chiyo will let this encounter with Sasori get the better of her. But that fear goes away as I remember that Chiyo is not nearly as optimistic or foolhardy as Naruto. She is old and wise and she knows better.

I hope.

It isn't long before a distant howl rings across the desert, and Kakashi smiles, pointing us northeast, where his dogs are calling him forth. Naruto turns to me and urges me to come along because we don't have time to waste if we're going to save Gaara.

"Let's go," Kakashi says, and we go.

[+]

Once you travel a considerable distance away from the Sand Village, you start to come across a forest of spindly trees that gradually begins to thicken as you head north to a wetter, cooler climate. Once we cross the border into the River Country between the Fire and Wind Countries, the forest is so rich with life that I nearly lose my footing a few times trying to take it all in. I settle with breathing deeply as we move through the forest, reveling in the smell of the leaves and dirt instead of trying to look around.

Chiyo scoffs after I fall for a third time when I'm distracted by a bird's nest we bypass. She says, "And you think _I_ haven't gotten out much? Look at you, falling all over yourself trying to remember what the world looks like outside of the Sand Village."

"Hey, that wasn't by choice," I protest, scowling. "_You_ cooped yourself in that tower, fishing day in and day out and torturing Ebizo by playing dead."

"Well, remember, Ren," Kakashi says. "This isn't the time to forget your place. The enemies we'll be facing are the Akatsuki."

"Yeah, yeah," I say, disgruntled to be lectured so early in the game. "Cut me some slack, won't you? My joints are a little rusty, but you forget how fast I can move once I'm all tidied up."

"Naruto," Sakura starts, treading in the conversation carefully. "Can I ask you something? Since when did Akatsuki start targeting you?"

I blink at her as Naruto diverts his eyes, discomforted by her question. "You know about that specifically, Sakura?" I ask her, and she grins at me like I should have expected more from her.

"I haven't just been training these past few years, you know," she says. "Being as close to the Hokage as I am, I had access to information most people don't even know exist."

I shiver and look away when she says this, thinking about what other kind of information she could have come across during her research. The Hokage obviously had some very sensitive files on me, given what Gaara was able to discover when he visited a few months ago to bring me to the Sand. He is one of the few outsiders who know about the bond, and because Tsunade had saw it fit to tell him no less. Maybe she would have thought her apprentice should know as much as well.

Chiyo notices the way I clench and unclench my fist to work the anxiety from my system. Through her old age and experience as one of the village elders, she knows about my bond with the Uchiha and has heard stories about it. When she first took me as an apprentice, in fact, she had asked me about it within the first minutes of our first lesson, and I, knowing I had nothing to lose and nothing to protect here in the Sand Village, had confirmed its existence to her, all the while explaining how I had kept it a secret in the Leaf Village because of the nature of Sasuke's influence over my friends and how I desire to break it more than anything else.

So when she notices my anxiety over Sakura's statement, she comforts me and says, keeping her voice low, "There is nothing you need to worry about, Ren-kun. It would be different if she knew, wouldn't it?"

I'm only partly reassured by Chiyo's statement, but I smile and accept it because she's right. Sakura would never be able to contain herself if she found out about the bond.

"A while ago," Kakashi is saying as we continue to move through the forest, "two of Akatsuki's agents infiltrated the Leaf to contact Naruto. It's been three years since then, and only recently have they started moving again, but I don't know their motive behind their movements."

"Why did they wait three years?" Sakura asks.

"Maybe it was that they _couldn't_ take action," Kakashi offers, "rather than they didn't want to. Naruto always had Jiraiya-sama at his side after all."

"I've heard there were other reasons," Chiyo says. "It requires a considerable amount of preparation to separate a bijuu that is sealed within a man. I assume that's what hampered their effort."

_Separate a bijuu_. Is that what they intend to do, then? Extract the demon inside of Gaara? But then—

"A bijuu?" Sakura says. "What's that?"

Chiyo lets out a cry of indignation, saying, "You call yourself Tsunade's apprentice and you don't know what that is?"

"The information regarding the Kyuubi is top secret material in the Leaf," Kakashi says. "She probably wouldn't have thought to research such a thing, so her question is understandable when you look at it from our point of view."

"Then why is it Ren-kun knows so much about them?" she asks, and I flinch and laugh nervously as Naruto and Sakura turn to regard me over their shoulders.

"I've told you why, Chiyo-sensei," I say, wishing I could keep the old bat from saying things that put me in the spotlight. "My parents held nothing back when they were training me. Not to mention, I did more traveling as a child than any child in the Leaf could hope for because of—my family," I finish lamely and clear my throat. "Anyway, the bijuu, Sakura, are these apparently magical beasts and are so named because of the tails they possess that determine their characteristics."

"Yes," Chiyo says. "And the Sand has always possessed the Ichibi, the one-tail guardian raccoon sealed within Gaara-sama."

"Ichibi, the one-tail," Sakura repeats. "So there are other kinds aside from the Kyuubi?"

"Indeed. There are a total of nine bijuu in the world," Chiyo says. "Ren called them _magical beasts_, but in actuality, the bijuu are a monstrous formation of chakra; I guess, in that sense, they are magical. During the Great War, every hidden village attempted to acquire the power for military purposes. They competed to obtain these beasts. However, no one can control such power beyond the ability of man. I've yet to know why Akatsuki attempts to acquire such power. It's too dangerous."

"Not to mention," I say, "it's an arduous task. Like Chiyo-sensei said: every hidden village attempted to acquire the power of the bijuu for military purposes, and once they got their hands on that kind of thing, they tended to retain it, so each hidden village, whether they admit it or not, probably has a respective bijuu to their name, as the Sand has the Ichibi."

"Well even through times of peace," Chiyo continues as Naruto remains quiet, "the ages shift on. I've heard that all the tailed beasts are scattered across the world by now, so Akatsuki's efforts are either truly commendable or truly sinister."

"I'm willing to bet on both," I say as the light begins to grow brighter at the end of the forest, cuing that we're close to a clearing. I'm disappointed to be leaving the forest already, but I shouldn't be concerned about that. There will be plenty of forest when I go home. For now, my main interest is Gaara—saving him, protecting him, and bringing him back to the Sand Village.

The vibrations press against me oddly as we move through the last parts of the forest, warning, and I say, "Kakashi," and he answers, "Yeah," before saying more loudly as we break through the last of the trees, "Everybody, stop!"

We dig our heels into the ground, skidding as we come to a halt. The clearing opens to another expanse of forest we'll have to travel through, and the mountains beyond that frame the horizon. And in front of it all stands a single man, bulky in his red cloud-spotted black coat, obviously on the offense in the way he stands with his legs apart.

I tense, take up the defense as I expect the man to launch himself at us without hesitation, but then I see his face and I freeze and my posture goes slack, a naïve move when facing someone in the ranks of the Akatsuki.

Especially when that someone is Itachi.


	57. Confrontation

**Bound  
Chapter 57: Confrontation**

I stare at Itachi, my breath caught in my throat as his eyes skim over us, pausing on me only for a second, but long enough to do something to the bond. For the first time in three years, it hikes up, yowling, pressing hard into the side of my head, and constricting my lungs. I wince, gasp, and step back, clenching my chest as Itachi's Sharingan flick to me.

God, Sharingan—I haven't seen them for so long and a rush of happiness fills my stomach, urges me to go forward and join Itachi because he's the closest thing I have to Sasuke, and I need to feel that again, feel the satisfaction of being able to be by my master, the comfort of familiar blood beside me.

A hand grips my arm and Naruto cries, "Ren, what are you doing!"

I snap out of my reverie to find I'm a number of steps in front of my team. Chiyo has her hand tightened around my forearm, holding me in place, and I stumble back when I realize what I've done, nearly running her over in my attempt to regain my composure.

"Careful, Ren-kun," she says. "Remember your place."

"Yes, Ren-chan," Itachi says, and the bond shivers at the sound of his voice. "Wouldn't want to show everybody how much you miss my dear brother, do you?"

"Go to hell," I say, and Kakashi gives me a sidelong glance. "Your words don't intimidate me like they used to, Itachi. They're not the same. _I'm_ not the same."

"It _has_ been a while, Ren-chan," he says, acknowledging the fact with a nod. "And you, too, Kakashi-san, Naruto-kun."

"You bastard!" Naruto shouts, pointing an accusatory finger at Itachi, who stares at it unflinchingly. "Not just me, but _Gaara_? I'll beat you all down!"

Itachi is unmoved by Naruto's threat. He raises his hand to brush the statement away, and this simple gesture causes Kakashi to jump in time to react, warning us not to look into Itachi's eyes.

That's a given, I want to scoff. They're Sharingan. In spite of Kakashi's warning and my knowledge of what the Sharingan is capable of, it's too late for me because, once I realized who it was who stood before me, I couldn't stop looking into those eyes, the way they gleam as he watches us, the power they carry. The bond eats them up, gaining so much strength from the mere sight of them that my head starts to throb and my heart goes haywire.

_Sasuke. Where is Sasuke?_ it whispers, as though it had missed the memo three years ago when he severed his ties with me. I grit my teeth thinking about it, remembering how he had turned on me and never looked back once. I think, cynically, how things would have been different if I had been bound to Itachi instead. He seems much more reasonable than his brother.

I smirk at the idea of it and Itachi keeps his eyes on me, as though he can hear what I'm thinking. I wish he could. Then I wouldn't have to hold back all the obscenities I want to shout at him.

"Hey, hey, Ren!" Naruto takes my face in his hands and turns me away from Itachi. The bond wails and I jerk out of his grip as he asks me, for the second time, "What are you doing? Kakashi-sensei just told us _not_ to look at his eyes! Have you been listening at all?"

"Yes," I say, rolling up the sleeves of my heavy Sand uniform. Outside of the Wind Country, the clothes are unbearably long to protect against harsh sunlight that doesn't exist. "Sharingan. Don't look at them or else you get caught in genjutsu. 'When it's one on one, surely flee'," I repeat dutifully and Chiyo grins. "'When it's two on two, take the rear'. Or haven't we discussed that yet?" I ask when Naruto and Sakura regard me with confusion. "Something I learned from Chiyo-sensei when I was training under her."

"I was getting to that part," Chiyo says, and begins to explain the mechanics of genjutsu to the team while I go back to observing Itachi. It's gracious of him to allow us this time to strategize. He's always been patient, I remember, but being that he's part of the Akatsuki and Naruto is one of his targets, why isn't he attacking us already? He could take us all at once, I'm sure of it. There must be something else.

We're too caught up in his presence. Although we talk about how to combat his techniques as though he's not here, we are, ultimately, not moving forward. This is what he wants, I realize, why he's not attacking us presently. He doesn't need to hurt us, only keep us at bay while Akatsuki has their hands on Gaara.

But still. There is something odd about the way he holds back, about the way his eyes shine.

The bond shudders, purrs something before fading away. And that's the part that gets me the most: It fades away. No matter the Uchiha, no matter the situation, the bond shouldn't dismiss them so easily.

Kakashi catches my attention with a flick of his head toward Itachi. He raises his brow, like he's considering the reality of Itachi's presence, and I give him a knowing look. This seems to be enough for him and he lets out a soft sigh that doesn't go without notice from the others.

Effortlessly, he joins in on their conversation and says, "Those tactics are all right for normal genjutsu, but in this case it will be a little more troublesome. He uses a specific doujutsu called the _Mangekyou Sharingan_ that surpasses the normal Sharingan. If you fall into the doujutsu, you won't be able to avoid his genjutsu, no matter what you do."

Chiyo makes a noise of dissent, as Itachi speaks up, impressed. "That's Kakashi-san for you," he says. "Knowing all that, after having been affected by my tsukuyomi only once."

"Which is not to say _you_ weren't affected after using it too," Kakashi says as I look between the two, confused. "That level of doujutsu made you weary, and you left immediately after your battle with me."

"When was this?" I say to Kakashi. "When were you able to fight Itachi at such a level?"

Kakashi narrows his eyes at Itachi, like the memory of it makes him resent the man in front of us more. "A few hours before your own encounter with him in Otafuku Gai," Kakashi says, and my nerves twist in my stomach. All that time, Itachi could have used such a devastating technique. Is that what had caused Sasuke to break in the first place?

"It requires quite a bit of chakra to maintain that technique, though, doesn't it?" Kakashi asks, reaching up to push his headband up, revealing his own Sharingan. "It presents a great risk to your eyes as well. So tell me, Itachi: How far has your eyesight deteriorated?"

Itachi bows his head, and if I didn't know any better, I would have thought he was annoyed that Kakashi had been able to discover so much about his technique. Instead of answering Kakashi's question, Itachi raises his head like he can hear me thinking about him and meets my eyes again, unsurprised at my readiness to look into his Sharingan unlike my teammates.

"It wasn't worth it to use that level of a technique against Sasuke," says Itachi, and my stomach drops at the sound of his name. "If that's what you're wondering. He wasn't strong enough to handle it then. It would have torn him clean in two, much worse than how I left him."

I laugh, shaking my head at the way he says this. "You think you did us a favor, then, breaking Sasuke as you did?" I retort. "I guess in a way that's true, if you meant to make me realize how subpar my medical skills had fallen and make Sasuke turn traitor. Then you, sir, are a great success. But what else could I have expected from the genius of the Uchiha clan?"

"I could only hope," Itachi says, "that I was able to instill some initiative in you two."

"Well, then, Itachi-niisan," I say, smiling widely. "Congratulations."

"Ren," Kakashi warns as I tighten my hands into fists. "Even I won't be able to handle him by myself. We must work together if we hope to overcome him."

"Let's not resort to violence so quickly," Itachi says, pointing a finger at Naruto. "I'll kindly ask you to come with me now, Naruto-kun."

The vibrations shudder, and before I can say anything Kakashi lurches forward, throwing his fist at Itachi who blocks it deftly. Kakashi twists in Itachi's hold, swinging his leg up to pummel Itachi's face, but Itachi simply slides out of the way, appearing behind Kakashi.

I whirl around, hiking my foot up before slamming my heel into the earth and sending my chakra through the soil. The earth rolls up in spikes, building up until it's the size of a house as it bursts out of the ground beneath Itachi, who jumps out of the way, avoiding the attack. Mid-air, he sends a flurry of kunai at me that threaten to pierce Sakura, Naruto, and Chiyo as well. But I wind up the vibrations, send them pulsing at the kunai which disperse and fall to the ground, before I sweep down to press my hands into the earth and pull up a massive chunk of it, propelling it at Itachi with a hearty kick.

Itachi doesn't flinch, giving the boulder flying at him a single, decisive punch it the center and breaking it into pieces that rush past him. I grin and bring my hands together to activate the chakra I had seeped into the rock before releasing it at Itachi. The debris Itachi had been so kind to create for me sharpen and point at him, drawn by the closest source of chakra, and then pull together as though trying to reassemble itself into the boulder it was before.

Sakura lets out a gasp as there is the sweet crush of the earth crashing back together, molding into one single solid mass and dropping to the ground with a heavy thud. But I know, without having to check, Itachi has avoided my attack, because he appears in front of me, slashing a kunai at my throat. I step back in time to avoid him, taking the vibrations and pumping them forward, which promptly sends him flying back at Kakashi.

"Naruto!" I say, and Sakura turns to look at him, notices the blankness of his wide eyes, the sweat that's gathering profusely on his brow as he stares without seeing. "He's caught in Itachi's genjutsu," I say, keeping my focus on Itachi and ready to backup Kakashi should he need my help. "Disable it, and get him involved before Kakashi wastes himself with his Sharingan."

"Therein lies your weakness, Kakashi-san," Itachi says, steadying himself in the aftermath of my attack. "Your body isn't made to wield the Sharingan. In this battle, I can last much longer than you."

"That may be true," Kakashi says. "But, unlike you, I have comrades who will support me should anything go awry."

"Hey!" Sakura calls then. "Naruto is clear. Ready whenever you are, sensei!"

Itachi moves, like Sakura's message had been meant for him, and begins to flip through familiar hand seals, and when he releases the fireball I expect coming, it's larger than any I have ever seen. This can't be blocked by the earth or blown away with the vibrations, and my only option is to leap aside with my team.

The fireball scorches the ground, leaves the earth partly hollowed in its wake, and when I try to find him I don't see Kakashi anywhere, until I notice a hole where the earth hisses from the flames' burn.

Itachi doesn't sense Kakashi until Kakashi has burst from the ground, fist poised to strike Itachi's jaw. Itachi leans out of the way, catches Kakashi's elbow, and drags him down, executing a right hook that narrowly misses Kakashi's head. But using his free hand, he takes Kakashi's face, bringing it forward so their eyes meet, and he can, presumably, cast a genjutsu. Sure enough, Kakashi freezes, and Itachi lets him go, saying, "Hmph. I should have known that you, Kakashi-san, of all people would be able to avoid it," as Kakashi crawls out of the hole in the streak of the fireball's fury, and says, "Naruto, now! Finish off him and my bunshin!"

From the woods behind Itachi, Naruto comes flying with a copy of himself; in their hands, they carry a ball of chakra—the Rasengan—that doesn't compare to Itachi's fireball in size, but I can tell just by the way the vibrations rumble as Naruto flies through the air, this attack surpasses the fireball in strength. The Narutos let out a fierce cry as they bring their Rasengan down on Itachi, the ball of chakra expanding to press a crater into the ground and send cracks rippling from the epicenter of the attack.

Itachi drops into the crater with a distasteful thud, and Naruto lands in front of him, breathing hard and bracing himself on his knees. When the smoke clears, Chiyo and Sakura go to Naruto's side as I tug on the thick scarf around my neck, searching the surrounding forest for another blimp of chakra or suspicious movement.

There is nothing.

When I tap into it, the bond is just as empty as it has been for these past few years, disappointed and drained, emaciated from the lack of its precious or those like him. But it doesn't bother attacking me, doesn't bother suffocating me. Which is all well and good, but . . .

Kakashi sighs. "I had a bad feeling about it in the middle," he says as I come forward, reassured that there is absolutely no one else around to attack us. "Ren, you felt it too, right?"

"Yeah," I say, brushing the dirt off my hands. "His chakra was off. It was still Itachi's, but there was something else to it, something that was familiar enough for me to overlook, but not enough like Itachi's for me to believe it was him completely."

"That makes sense," Chiyo says, "given who it is, Ren-kun. Look."

I do as I'm told and startle at the man who lies motionless in the midst of the rubble. I knew it hadn't been Itachi, but I'd been expecting some hapless chump. In other words, no one I knew at all, but the man who lies lifeless in the crater is someone who I've seen walking around the halls of the Administration building, sometimes even accompanying Gaara to meetings with the High Council.

Kakashi says, "You two recognize him?"

"He . . . his name is Yuura," Chiyo says as I exhale through pursed lips. "He was a Jounin from my village."

"From the Sand? So does that mean—"

"I don't know," Chiyo says, and Sakura frowns.

"Could he have been a spy?" she offers.

"Or impersonating Itachi using a transformation jutsu?" Naruto says when Chiyo shoots down Sakura's theory.

"No," Kakashi says. "This was at a higher level than a henge jutsu. The Goukakyuu—that fire technique he used—is something that the Uchiha clan has worked out and used well. Not just anyone can do that." Kakashi sighs again, rubbing the back of his head. "Beaten again, I guess. Looks like the real Itachi is at the hideout. His objective was to delay and gather information about us. Those bastards have good jutsu indeed."

"If they're working to stall us," Chiyo says, "it means they must have already started extracting the bijuu."

"I don't understand why they would want to do that, though," I say, crossing my arms. "What do they expect to do with that mass of chakra they can't control?"

"Yes," Chiyo agrees, her head low. "Perhaps they plan to use the One-Tail to create a new jinchuuriki that they can control better than they would have been able to manipulate Gaara-sama."

"There's no time, then," Kakashi says. "We have to hurry."

"Wait," Sakura says, turning to Chiyo, who continues to stare-without-seeing at Yuura as though she has been caught in a genjutsu. "What do you mean by jinchuuriki?"

Chiyo's shoulders droop as she begins to explain, but I stop her and take the reins, allowing her to collect her thoughts in the meantime. "Remember," I say, "how Chiyo-sensei mentioned that, since the bijuu have this massive power, every country wanted to use them for military reasons? But you can't exactly put a leash on masses of chakra, so jinchuuriki exist to control that power."

"But," Sakura starts, and Chiyo scowls at me.

"You don't do a very good job of explaining," she says. "It's a wonder you were ever a teacher, and at a Ninja Academy no less. Those poor kids. Over time," she says to Sakura, and I throw my hands up in deference, "people have experimented with controlling the bijuu—and succeeded, by sealing the bijuu into humans. Those human containers are _jinchuuriki_. By sealing the bijuu inside of someone, the massive chakra that the bijuu carry is compressed and can be directed by their human hosts. Including Gaara, the Sand has had three jinchuuriki."

"And," Sakura says, "these jinchuuriki were used many times for war, weren't they?"

When Chiyo confirms, Sakura's face falters. She looks quickly at Naruto, then away like she doesn't want him to realize she's thinking about him, about the danger he faces. It's obvious what she's going through her mind, though, as she asks, "Then the ones made into jinchuuriki—that is, how do you _remove_ a bijuu?"

Naruto startles, as though he hadn't considered removal to be an option. He stares at Sakura, wide-eyed and touched, but the answer, I know, is nothing to look forward to. Humans can't endure the kind of power it takes to remove such a massive energy from them. Humans are fragile and small, and devastatingly mortal.

I shift uncomfortably as Chiyo says, "It takes a considerable amount of time to do what you're asking because a sealing jutsu must release the enough power to rival the bijuu's. But if that were to happen, even for an instant, then the seal would break and the bijuu would come free—but as a result, the jinchuuriki would die."

Naruto stiffens and doesn't speak. He blinks at Chiyo like her words don't mean anything to him as she says, "The two jinchuuriki of the Sand who I mentioned before had the Shukaku extracted from their bodies; that's what caused their deaths."

Sakura's eyes begin to well with tears as she realizes there is no real hope of freeing Naruto of his chains as a jinchuuriki, a target of the Aktasuki. She thinks there is nothing she can do to ease his suffering, but the truth is she's already doing just as much by being his friend.

If I've learned one thing from being friends with Naruto and being with Gaara all these months, it's that jinchuuriki don't need sympathy or to be overprotected as though they are innocent children in a cruel, dark world. They need care and love and attention—just like anyone else. They need to not feel isolated in a world where they are looked down upon and seen as nothing more than unstable monsters who are indispensible weapons of war. This is all they could ask for, and it is the least we could do for them as fellow human beings. Because they are, ultimately, human beings.

"You're always being moved to tears, Sakura-chan," Naruto says with an easy grin and Sakura turns to him, wondering how he can keep up such a façade in the face of what he's learned. "But I told you not to worry because I'll save Gaara!"

She cries harder and says, much to my surprise, "Naruto, it's _you_, I'm—"

"Come on, let's hurry," he says, adjusting the strap of his backpack and walking ahead of us. Kakashi, with a soft sigh, and Chiyo follow not long after, leaving me with Sakura as she stares after Naruto, the tears still streaming from her face. I take a deep breath, moving to stand next to Sakura, and watch Naruto's back recede in the distance alongside her. She must see it too: Naruto's indefatigable optimism, his persistence in keeping everyone around him safe, in preventing anyone from ever feeling as alone as he was. But she doesn't understand.

"He doesn't need your sympathy," I explain. Sakura turns to me; one of her tears flies off her cheek and plops onto the ground. "You know about the Kyuubi inside him now, don't you?"

Sakura nods stiffly, wiping her face with her wrist. "He told me about it as we were coming to the Sand."

"Well. That was bold of him," I say, and wonder if this is my cue to start telling Naruto and Sakura about the bond. After all, if Naruto had finally told his secret, maybe it's time I did, too. I shake off the feeling and say, "But, even with the Kyuubi in him, Naruto has been able to manage well this far. He knows love and kindness and friendship, in spite of his situation. So I believe," I say with a wave as I go after the boy in question, who steps lightly as he walks, "he will be fine, even if he has to carry the burden of the Nine-Tails for the rest of his life. Especially with friends like us, wouldn't you say?"

[+]

We walk on for a few more hours until it starts to get dark. Then, Kakashi proposes we set up camp and rest until dawn before we finish the last of our trek to where Sasori's trail ends. We find a small clearing, build a fire, and eat. Kakashi sleeps through it and I wake him when we finish, feeding him the meal we'd saved for him.

"By the way, Ren," he says as Naruto and Sakura lay out their blankets and I throw the remains of our dinner into the fire. "I want to compliment you on the way you fought against Itachi. I should have known all along that you would be an earth element type."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I ask as Sakura giggles.

"Nothing," Kakashi says. "You've come a long way since you've been in the Wind Country."

"Yeah, well, having all this sand around really helps," I say, re-pinning my hair as it starts to fall loose from the bun I'd set it in when we were preparing the fire. "But thank you," I say, bowing my head. "That . . . means a lot to me coming from you."

My statement has a double meaning: I am, genuinely, happy that I've managed to impress my former sensei, but I also want to show Naruto, who blinks at me in surprise, that I still respect Kakashi. Kakashi is, likewise, taken aback by my statement and I scowl as a grin works across his face. He finishes his meal and stands, saying, "I'm going to go on a short walk just to map the area. Everyone rest up. When I return, we'll discuss options and come up with the best way to proceed."

"You're not going to sleep like that, are you, Ren?" Sakura says when Kakashi leaves and I close my eyes, sitting with my legs crossed and back pressed against a tree.

Chiyo cackles and says, "Trying to connect with those _spirits_ of yours again?"

"It's just," I say, a vein twitching in my forehead, "a small meditation exercise. But, essentially, yes."

Naruto makes a noise of disgust and says, "Meditation? That's lousy training."

"You only think that because you lack the proper discipline for it, Naruto."

"What do you mean by trying to connect to spirits?" Sakura asks as Naruto scowls at me and I pull myself back to the fire, realizing that I won't be able to meditate with so many people around.

"Ren-kun believes she has a connection to the spirit realm," Chiyo says, and I frown at her derisiveness. "Says she has a medium through which she can feel the spirits of the Earth when she sits still long enough."

It's more complicated than Chiyo makes it seem. And less crazy, too. But it's true. The thing is, ever since my run in with Rei the first time around, I've been . . . _feeling_ things more, I guess. The spirits, that is. Whether Rei rubbed off on me, I don't know, but there is a calm about it that I like having, and it's helped me control my vibrations better than I ever have. I hadn't known how closely the vibrations resonated with nature before, and having the spirits on my side made it so much easier for me to move—through crowds, during training, even during medical operations.

"I don't appreciate your teasing," I say, reaching up to brush the feather that keeps my hair in place on top of my head. "Shouldn't you be resting or something, you old crone?"

Chiyo merely laughs again and turns around to a bush spotted with berries. She starts to pick them, muttering something about respect—or lack thereof—and doesn't look back. From there we lapse into a silence. Sakura falls asleep beside the fire and I lie down on my side, drawing my fingers through the dirt, occasionally bringing up the earth into small towers. Eventually, I get to the point of creating an elaborate village—one that looks hauntingly like the Leaf with the Hokage monument and everything.

I sit up, slightly put off that my subconscious has created this. But it is beautiful, even in dirt form, and I wish I were there now, in the comfort of the leaves.

"What do you think?" I ask Naruto, who is still sitting up and had been watching me work. He jumps, like he thought I couldn't feel his eyes on me, and I grin. "Did I get it right?"

Naruto stares down at the village, smiling at it warmly and reaching out to touch one of the highest rooftops. "Yeah," he says. "I think so. It's weird. Even though I've been gone for two and a half years, nothing's changed."

"Villages have a funny way of doing that," I say, leaning back on an arm and watching as the fire sends flickering shadows over the sculpture. I purse my lips and cock my head to the side, thinking. "Makes you feel kind of lonely doesn't it? Like you're leaving something important behind as you grow up."

Naruto's smile slips off his face. He says, "I don't know. I think it's more like . . . there's always something to welcome you home after you finish with a mission. I think, the way it is, you can never feel lonely because everything you know and trust in is always there."

I blink at Naruto for a moment before sitting up and wrapping my arm around his shoulders. I lean my head against his and smile, saying, "You've really grown up, haven't you, Naruto? _That_ makes me feel lonely."

He sits straighter and takes a deep breath, and when I look at him, I see his face is flushed red, and I can't help but laugh. I pat his cheek as I pull away and say, "I've missed you, kiddo."

And it's true. Despite the fact that it had been my own choice to cut ties with him and Sakura all that time ago, and the fact that I don't regret my decision in the slightest, I had missed them both. After all, for a year I had spent almost every day with them; you don't just walk away from a relationship like that without feeling something, no matter how hard you pretend. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, isn't that right? And, in the case of Naruto and the village, distance has absolutely made my heart grow fonder.

"Ren," Naruto asks after a considerable moment of silence. The softness of his voice makes me search his face for what he could be thinking, but I don't have to look for long because he says, "I've been wondering, since our fight with Itachi—since we went on our first mission together, really—what's the story . . . with you and the Uchiha?"

"Hmm? What do you mean?" I say, throwing brittle twigs into the flames. The twigs catch fire quickly, turning into ashes in mere seconds and gathering uselessly at the bottom of the pit.

"When we were fighting Itachi," Naruto says, explaining needlessly what I already know he's talking about. "You talked to him like you had a history together beyond what you know about him and Sasuke. Plus, you called him 'niisan'. What connection do you have, exactly, to the Uchiha?"

I blink at him, taken aback by the way he phrases her question. He watches me, unrelenting, and I can't help but laugh and shake my head. He must have spoken about this with Sakura beforehand, sometime during our journey when I wasn't paying attention, and he's probably planning on telling her everything we say later.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," I say, prodding the fire.

"Try me," he says, and I snort, amused by his determination.

I run my hand through my hair, glancing over my shoulder at Chiyo, who pretends to be occupied with plucking the berries off a nearby bush, but I can tell by the way her ear twitches that she's listening to every word. I grin at this, and turn back to Naruto. Behind him, Sakura sleeps, tucked comfortably under her blanket. He should be resting too, realistically, but the stamina the Kyuubi gives him keeps him awake and alert at this late hour, and what a better opportunity for storytelling than when the sun is down and there is a small fire to set the mood.

There is a time and place for everything, they say. But now, in the middle of all this, is not when I want to tell Naruto about the bond. And especially not when Sakura is sleeping. I want to tell them together, when things are calmer and there is no awkwardness between us. When we are relatively as close as we used to be. And if that doesn't happen any time soon, well, I'm not complaining.

I need to tell Naruto something presently, though, to keep him pacified until the moment of truth comes. So I say, with an offhanded wave as I get up, "My family worked for the Uchiha. We did menial things around their compound, and I spent most of my time there when I was growing up. I trained with them a lot," I say, unraveling the thick scarf around my neck because the heat of the fire is enough to keep us warm tonight. "Especially with, you guessed it, Sasuke and Itachi. That's why the the familiarity. That's why the honorific."

I ball up the scarf and set it in my lap, pulling my bag closer to me. "We were close enough," I say, unearthing my blanket from my bag, "that my family's compound was built beside the Uchiha family compound, so we saw each other often. We were also close enough that, when Itachi massacred the Uchiha, he massacred my family, too. But that was a long time ago," I say when I see Naruto's eyes widen to saucers, "and there are better things going on now, so it's all okay."

Still, Naruto's hands tighten over his legs and he says, "Then, do _you_ . . . that is—"

"Have a grudge against Itachi?" I finish, and by the way he purses his lips I know I've guessed correctly. "Yeah," I say. "But it's nothing as dangerous as Sasuke's. You don't have to worry about me getting all wrapped up in my hatred for Itachi like Sasuke is. I have other things to be concerned about."

Chiyo scoffs, bringing attention to herself as turns to face us, and says, "What am I picking these berries for? We're not going to have time to eat again when you brats wake up."

I laugh, holding my scarf out and collecting the berries. I wrap them up and say, "I'll hold onto these. We can eat them as we walk tomorrow."

"If by _we_ you mean _you_," Chiyo says. "I've seen the way you eat, Ren-kun, and I've heard from Haru how you're always sneaking food from the kitchens when you should be working on poisons."

"They're energy boosters," I defend, putting the berries into my bag. "I can't concentrate on an empty stomach. Right, Naruto? Naruto?"

When I turn to look at him, I find that he's wrapped up in his blanket, sleeping—or feigning sleep, really, because he was sitting up just a second ago. I revel in his peacefulness, and reach over to brush his hair down, hoping that peace would rub off on me and ease my heart.

"That boy," Chiyo says quietly, so that the conversation stays between only us. "He's an odd one."

"Yes," I agree, and start to tuck myself to sleep as well. I'm about to say good night to Chiyo when I notice the way she watches Naruto, her face sagging with sadness and nostalgia and I say, "Chiyo?"

"Hmm? What is it, Ren-kun?"

I should leave her to her thoughts and sleep. I'll need my energy for the morning. But I find myself sitting up and saying, "Why is it you never told me about Sasori?"

Her eyes flick to me then, and she cocks her head as though it had never occurred to her. She says, "You're a good kid, Ren. You're smart and talented and you have a bright future ahead of you. While it was necessary for me to know about who you were and what motivated you when you were my apprentice, it wasn't necessary that you know me and my history, and you did just as well without it. You should get some rest," she says, allowing me a waning smile. "Good night, my dear."

My dear? Whatever Chiyo is thinking about must really be bothering her for her to speak so sweetly to me. But I decide not to press it and I lie down, although I do say, "Maybe you should consider meditating some, sensei. The spirits could help ease your troubles."

Chiyo chuckles. "I don't believe I'd get along with the spirits so well," she says. "I think I'll trust you to be my medium, Ren-kun. Put in a good word for me."

I do. Always.

[+]

Chiyo wakes me up as the sky is turning a dreamy indigo. I grumble as we gather our things, so dazed in the initial minutes after waking that Sakura has to snatch my blankets from my hands and stuff my things away or run the risk of us setting off late.

"You mean you haven't perfected the art of sleepwalking yet?" Sakura says, shoving my bag into my hands as I complain about how tired I am still.

"I'm working on it," I say, jumping into the branches above as Kakashi leads the way. "You can't rush that kind of technique."

"Well, we need you alert presently, Ren," Kakashi says, waiting for the others to catch up. "Keep a look out with your vibrations, and make sure to tell me immediately if something is off."

"Yeah, yeah," I say, rubbing the remaining sleep from my eyes. "I know my responsibili—hey, Naruto!"

He has rushed ahead of us, his feet leaving small breaks in the branches as he bounds forward, his chakra swirling the vibrations into a flurry. Sakura groans and jumps faster, calling after him and telling him to calm down. I follow suit, leaving Chiyo and Kakashi to take the rear as Sakura and I catch up to him.

"What's gotten into you?" Sakura says before she notices the lines on his face have become more prominent and his pupils have sharpened into catlike slits.

"Hey, I understand you're upset," I say. "But we'll catch up to them. We'll get to Gaara and save him."

"I just hate it," he says, gritting his teeth. "These Akatsuki guys are only after us for—the bijuu. The power that comes with the bijuu. But they don't get it. We're not some monsters they can poach without remorse."

"I know, Naruto—"

"But you don't _get it_," he snaps, and I hear a small growl to his voice. Sakura glances at me nervously, wonders if I know what I'm doing, and for a minute I second guess myself too. But then Naruto speaks again, and this time he's lowered his voice as though he'd sensed his malice and hadn't meant to alarm us.

"All this time," he says, "Gaara has been alone because of who—because of _what_ he is. And he's finally been able to turn it around; he's the Kazekage now! There are people who look to him for protection and guidance. He's important to the people of the Sand, and these guys can't just take that all away from him! Not when he's worked so hard to push past that loneliness."

I watch Naruto as he moves, the way he keeps his hands clenched into tight fists, the way his eyes shine brightly in the sunlight, and my heart fills up. For him to empathize so deeply with Gaara makes me love him an infinite number more. I want to grab Naruto and pull him into a hug, hold him close enough so that maybe his kindness would rub off on me and help me become more like him.

Naruto's strength lies in his kindness. It surmounts any kind of physical strength or mental shortcoming. It lends hope to everyone, and that kindness is what makes people believe in him, that he can do whatever he puts his heart into, and makes me want to do everything I can to make it so happiness is the only thing he ever knows.

Now I understand why Sakura had cried earlier when Naruto turned away from her and played it off like being free of the Kyuubi didn't matter to him. I nearly want to cry now, just thinking about it. But I know Naruto would just tease me like he had teased Sakura, and that only makes me want to cry harder. And the fervor with which he makes his argument makes me want to keep at his pace for the remaining kilometers it will take for us to get to the Akatsuki hideout. But I know better.

"You're right," I say. "I agree with you one hundred percent, Naruto, and I want to save and protect Gaara as much as you do, but if you waste all your energy running at this speed, we won't be able to do much for Gaara once we reach him. Well, _you_ might be able to, given the stamina the Kyuubi provides you, but the rest of us won't. And you'll need us if you hope to defeat these Akatsuki guys, so come on. Take it easy."

He makes a noise of aggravation but before long he's slowing and Kakashi and Chiyo have caught up with us once again. Despite having calmed, the marks on his cheeks don't fade and the vibrations continue to weave around Naruto unsteadily as his impatience gets the better of him.


	58. Puppeteer

**Bound  
Chapter 58: Puppeteer**

"Someone's up ahead," I announce as Kakashi directs us over the body of water that surrounds the Akatsuki hideout. There has been, expectedly, minimal interference, but as we approach the hideout, I can pinpoint it without Kakashi's help. The vibrations shudder, fluctuating at such odd wavelengths that I can't distinguish how many people are inside; I can feel the spirits pressing on me without having to touch the feather in my hair, and if this power is enough to disturb them to such a degree, then we have to be careful.

"The enemy?" asks Naruto, and there is again the small growl in his voice.

"No," says Pakkun, who has been riding on Kakashi's shoulder for the length of our trip. "It's a friendly scent."

"It must be the back-up team Godaime sent after us," Kakashi says. "Let's catch up with them before they get in over their heads."

We pick up the pace and before long we see four people lingering beside a large boulder. Even from our distance, the obnoxious green jumpsuits assault my eyes. As we land, they're saying something about the seal that's been placed on the boulder, and Kakashi kindly points out to Team Gai, "That's a Five-Barrier Seal for you."

The gang turns around, their faces noticeably brightening as they realize who we are. They greet us, but I'm too perturbed by the energies swirling around behind the boulder in front of which we stand to do more than mumble when Lee voices his surprise at seeing me. The vibrations move closely against my skin, fluctuating in time with the chakra that streams steadily beyond the stone. I can feel the spirits sweeping around me, staying as far from the hideout as possible. There are faint murmurings that come in my ear, whispers, I feel, that must be the spirits as they become unnerved by the way the energies beyond flow.

I breathe deeply, ignoring the spirits and shifting on my feet as I try to shake the vibrations off of me, when someone taps my shoulder.

"Neji," I say as he comes up beside me. I give him my best smile, rubbing my arms to stop the goosebumps rolling over my skin as Neji furrows his eyebrows at me. "Hi. How is it that you guys are here before us?"

"We ran into one of Kakashi's dogs on the way over," Neji says quickly, and then says, "Can you feel it with your vibrations?"

I'm caught off guard by the sudden subject change, but I know what he means. I purse my lips, turning back to the hideout with distaste. "Yeah," I say. "It doesn't feel good. Have you already seen what's going on inside?"

"It doesn't make any sense," he says, following my gaze to the seal that Kakashi points at as he explains how to break the barrier. "When I look, there are the auras of nearly ten people, but I can only really see two. These Akatsuki must be—"

But I don't get to hear what he thinks they must be because Kakashi says, "Neji-kun, if you could locate the other four seals for us."

As Neji does what's asked of him, I turn to Chiyo, who appears as unsettled as I feel. The spirits begin to level out, which only serves to make me more uneasy as I say to her, "We may be too late, Chiyo-sensei. I think they're almost finished."

Chiyo tenses, letting her head hang for a moment before she tightens her fist. "We are never too late, Ren-kun," she says, offering me a smile I see right through. "Have faith in this old lady."

"Right," Kakashi says, drawing my attention back to him as Gai's team sets off to remove the other four seals. Kakashi is pressing a communication device into his ear, one, I assume, that connects with Gai's team, as he says, "Now, there's nothing for us to do until we get the signal from Team Gai. In the meantime, is there anything you can tell us about these Akatsuki members, Ren, Chiyo-sama?"

"Ren-kun's the one who fought them," Chiyo says as I cross my arms at the unpleasantness of the memory. "She could tell you much more than I could."

"I don't know about Sasori," I say, giving Chiyo a pointed look she avoids, "besides the fact that he uses poisons, but the one who had infiltrated the Sand and fought Gaara directly is able to mold explosives using clay and surging it with his chakra. He's more of a long-range fighter, so if you can get close to him, then it's possible that you can get an advantage. If not, he'll have you running for cover."

"Explosions, huh?" Sakura says, frowning. "Sounds like it could be troublesome."

"Extremely," I confirm, pulling my hair up and pinning it together with the feather. As my fingers brush against the feather, the spirits burst with alarm and I feel, for the first time, completely, the fear and caution with which they storm around the hideout. There is so much dark energy still swirling inside, but when I search for the chakra that really matters, I can't feel it. I finish fixing my hair into place quickly, saying, "Especially since it seems like he can direct the bombs at you if he wants. Even with his sand, Gaara had a hard time deflecting each of the bombs."

Kakashi hums in thought, gives the stone blocking the entrance to the hideout another once over, before heaving a sigh. He leaps to the top of the boulder, picking up the corner of the seal and says, "In any case, we'll figure it out as we go for now. Gai and his team have reached the other seals. Sakura, prepare to break this boulder for us. From there, we'll enter with a buttonhook entry. Ready?"

We take our places, and as Kakashi tears the seal away, Sakura rushes at the boulder, reeling her fist back for a punch that splinters the boulder and sends it crumbling into the water. Kakashi gives the signal and we enter the hideout quickly, the light that floods into the cave shimmering for a blinding instant until our eyes can adjust to the new filter.

Sakura, Chiyo, and I flank the right side of the cave walls, while Kakashi and Naruto take up the left. Sitting in the center of the cave, without trying to hide themselves, are two Akatsuki members. Sure enough, one of them is the boy I had encountered back in the village. He sits smiling smugly at us, his head cocked to the side amused as we glare at them.

I choke as I realize what—or I should say _who_ he is sitting on. Gaara lays lifeless beneath the boy, the dark lines that surround his eyes melding together and making it seem like he's already decaying and there is nothing left to his eyes but hollowed sockets. My nails dig into the palm of my hands as I grit my teeth, and the boy who sits on top of Gaara snickers and says, "You—I recognize you, yeah! The one who tried so hard to save this one"—he jabs Gaara's forehead, which only serves to make my anger boil over in my stomach, edging my vision with black.—"and failed. Come back for another shot, yeah? No dice, girlie. You're too late."

I don't dignify his provocation with an answer, drawing a laugh out of him. He shakes his head and leans over his knees, saying, "Well, you're not our target of interest anyway. But do us a favor, since we're acquainted already, and tell us which one is the jinchuuriki, yeah?"

From the other side of the cave, I can feel the vibrations striking up. The water beneath my feet begins to ripple without a movement from either Sakura, Chiyo, or myself. It's Naruto's chakra doing this. Naruto is losing his temper again, allowing bits of the Nine-Tails to leak out of him. I look over at him, wondering why he isn't trying to control the Nine-Tails in the least. He must realize what kind of threat he poses to everyone around him if he loses control. Maybe he thinks this is the only way. Or maybe he's just resorting to every option possible because he is so desperate to bring Gaara back.

He steps forward and shouts, his voice trembling with hatred and disgust, "You bastards! I'll smash you all to pieces!"

The boy smirks, says, "That one, yeah. Seems to fit the description perfectly."

Naruto ignores the boy, taking another halting step forward as he says, "Gaara, what are you doing, sleeping there and letting these guys sit on you? Stand up! Hey, Gaara: _Are you listening to me?_"

My heart throbs and I purse my lips at Naruto's cries. Kakashi has the decency to say, "Stop, Naruto. You should understand."

And, yes, while it's one thing to understand, it's another thing to accept, and Naruto will not accept the fact that the boy who sits on top of Gaara states plainly: "Yes, well, don't you get it? He's dead, yeah."

The vibrations drum against my skin so ferociously that I start to lose feeling in my fingers as the Kyuubi's energy spills through Naruto, filling the cave in a matter of seconds and making me shake.

"Naruto," I start, but he's well past reason at this point. The whisker marks on his cheeks have become charcoal-dark against his skin, his eyes shining bright red as he barrels forward, saying, "Give Gaara back, you bastards!"

Kakashi swoops in, throwing out an arm to bar Naruto from going any farther. "Calm down," he says. "If you go rushing in there without thinking, they'll destroy you."

The boy on top of Gaara hums in delight, turns to his partner—Sasori—and grins, saying, "It seems like that jinchuuriki wants to take this one back. Sasori, this will probably make you angry, but I'll handle that jinchuuriki, yeah."

Sasori turns to the boy, and for the first time I really look at him. He is large, gorilla-like, almost, in the way his back hunches and he seems to stoop forward with his weight. He has a bandana covering the bottom half of his mouth, and his eyes bulge when he speaks.

"The assignment is one person per beast," he says. "Don't push it, Deidara."

"If an artist doesn't get high levels of inspiration, his sentiments are dulled, Sasori," Deidara answers, "and it's said that the Kyuubi jinchuuriki is strong. Think of the inspiration I could draw from that, yeah."

"What, you call those explosions fine art?" Sasori retorts. "Fine art is something that lasts long into the future, endures with an eternal beauty."

"You know I respect you," says Deidara, "but fine art is the beauty of a single, fleeting moment of explosion. Wouldn't you say so, yeah?" he asks, directing his question at me.

"Fuck you," I say.

"Anyway," he says with a shrug, unaffected. "It requires the same amount of labor."

"Stop playing around," Naruto growls, and reaches into his pouch for a scroll. He unravels it in a flourish, drawing his thumb over the length of it to summon a large shuriken that he promptly grasps and throws at the Akatsuki pair.

Sasori's robes flutter and a tail appears. With a simple flick, it blocks the shuriken and continues to sway tauntingly. All without a single glance in our direction.

"Deidara, you little shit," he continues. "Are you trying to piss me off?"

"I said it might make you angry, yeah," says Deidara, getting to his feet as the bird modeling beside him begins to scoop up Gaara in its mouth. "My fine art is explosions. It's completely different from your puppet shows, yeah."

Sasori closes his eyes, like he's counting to ten to ensure he doesn't lash out at his partner when he answers, but then his tail shoots forward, aimed directly at Deidara's throat. Deidara manages to jump out of the way in time, however, landing on top of his bird as it takes off. Sasori clicks his tongue in disappointment while Deidara gives him an airy wave and smile.

"See you later, Sasori," he says, and takes off over our heads, his bird swallowing Gaara whole.

This effectively lures Naruto out of the cave, his shouts dying in the distance as he follows Deidara. Kakashi huffs, aggravated, and follows Naruto, saying, "Naruto and I will handle the one outside. You three take care of this one, but, until Team Gai comes back, try not to overdo it."

"I'm coming with you," I say, stepping toward Kakashi, but Chiyo waves out her hand, stopping me.

"You will stay with me," she says, her crinkly voice calm and more forceful than I've ever heard it. "Sakura and I aren't familiar with each others' techniques. You'll act as a type of liaison for us until reinforcements arrive. Is that clear?"

"Chiyo-sensei," I protest, but she gives me a stern look and my arm twitches.

"I know Gaara means a lot to you," she says as I swipe my hand against my elbow, where she's somehow managed to attach one of her puppet strings, "as he means a lot to the welfare of the village. But your fight is best fought with me, Ren. Now stay."

So I stay and Kakashi goes and we are left to brace the merciless stare of Sasori, whose eyes follow Chiyo as she steps in front of me and Sakura. I exchange a look with the old lady to make sure she knows what she's doing, and she gives me another one of those flimsy smiles. I roll my eyes before I see Sakura, who is so tense she can't expect herself to react in time should Sasori swoop in for the attack.

"Relax," I tell her as I turn back to Sasori, who allows his tail to swing back and forth as he waits for us to make our first move. "Chiyo has this covered. Right, Granny?"

"Something like that," she says, reaching up her sleeves. "But she's right, Sakura. Don't be afraid. I'm here. Just stay behind me for a moment."

She yanks on the threads she has stored up her sleeves and releasing a number of kunai at Sasori that sway uneasily in the air. With a jerk of her hands, though, she has them straightened out and shooting toward Sasori, who takes cover behind his tail with an easy swish.

One of the kunai manages to scuff his cloak, ripping it. There is a moment's pause, as though Sasori can't believe one of the kunai had hit him, before there tear that grows louder as Sasori sheds his coat, exposing an odd body shape that is obviously human but has been enhanced with a shell on its back that looks like a haunting clown mask. Through its mouth, the tail slithers like a metal tongue as Sasori crouch primitively.

He says, "If you plan to fight me, then I suppose I have no choice. You and those kids could join my collection, Chiyo. First I'll drag out your entrails. Then, when I've ripped off all you skin, I clean off all the blood. Yes, yes," he says eagerly. "You will do quite nicely."

"Just so you girls know," Chiyo says, keeping her hands stiffly at her side. "That's not Sasori's real body. It's a puppet."

"I'll treat the skin so it doesn't decay," Sasori goes on, his eyes rolling up into his head in delight. As determined as I am not to let myself be turned into a play-thing for this man, his words sends a shiver of chills up my spine. The way he speaks as though we're not human to begin with, and that we are only and could ever only be toys makes him infinitely more creepy. "Then," he says, "I'll stock you up with the rest of my puppet collection, along with this body that I have. Like Chiyo said: It's merely one of the many in my collection. With you three, I will have exactly three hundred. That is my _fine art_, as Deidara called it."

I eye Chiyo, the way she stands deathly still. I half expect her to close her eyes and wait for me to ask her if she's died before she would spring to life, laughing, and say, "I was only _pretending_ to be dead!"

It would be a very ill-timed joke.

"I can tell that's not his real body," Sakura says, her brow knotting together as Sasori's tail continues to swish, cat-like in its movements, "but, then, where is his real body? Puppeteers usually control their puppets from behind, don't they?"

"In this case," Chiyo says, "Sasori's body is on the inside."

"That would explain why he's so massive," I say, frowning at the curve of the puppet. I can't imagine being inside something like that, as big as it may be. The way it stands—or crouches, rather—would make it uncomfortable to control it, despite its advantages.

I've trained with Kankuro enough times to know: He's always open whenever he's controlling his puppets. It's easy to sneak up on him from behind, or use my earth element to get beneath him, break his concentration, and cause him to sever his puppet strings. Sasori's puppet effectively negates all those problems.

Except Chiyo admits that she has knowledge of Sasori's puppet's mechanisms, so that coupled with my earth element should be enough to take out Sasori. But she shoots down the option as she explains that her knowledge of Sasori's puppet is probably outdated, being that she hasn't seen the defensive shell or the thick metal band on its left arm before. If those two enhancements are any indication, Sasori may have also changed or updated the mechanisms his puppet carries.

"Still," I say, "our main concern should be to get Sasori out of that puppet, right?"

Chiyo hums in agreement, says, "I don't have the power to break through it, but _you_ girls should. We'll have to get you close enough to break Sasori's puppet, but first you'll have to get past all of his traps."

"And," she says with a gulp, "they're poisonous, right?"

"Yes. The slightest scratch can be fatal. And to avoid the attacks, you have to know the ins and outs of the traps set in the master craftsman's puppets, and have the ability to react to a situation in an instant."

Sakura lets out a weak chuckle that is all nerves and no amusement. "Knowledge of traps," she repeats, "instant reactions. I don't have either of those."

"Well, lucky you're not fighting alone then, isn't it?" I say, nudging her with my elbow. She looks up, seemingly alarmed to find me by her side. And I guess after all these years of me snubbing her, it is a surprise for her to fight beside me again. But this time, I'm sure, we'll be much better equals.

"And what do _I_ look like to you?" Chiyo says with a grin, removing her cap and letting out her hair which hangs in straggly strands down her face. "A helpless old hag? Leave it to me," she says, oozing confidence and, I feel, smugness as she spreads her hands in a gesture I recognize well enough to know what she's doing. "That's why I'm here. His battle experience pales in comparison to mine. Plus, the first move has been made. Together, we'll defeat him. Trust me."

"Nice speech, sensei," I say, pulling my arm across my chest for a stretch. "But if you don't mind, I'd like to stop delaying. Ready when you are."

"Right," she says, and jerks her head to call Sakura over. Sakura leans down to let Chiyo whisper in her ear and then gulps when Chiyo finishes explaining the plan.

"You got that with the vibrations, Ren?" Chiyo says, and the vibrations rumble against my fingers.

"Got it," I say, digging the heels of my feet into the ground.

"All right," Sakura says, taking up her stance, standing slight ahead of both me and Chiyo. "Let's go for it."

"So you're finally done?" asks Sasori, reaching up to grab the bandana around his mouth. "I'm sure you know I don't like to be kept waiting."

"Then you don't have to worry," Chiyo says. "We'll kill you quickly."

With that, the three of us run forward, Chiyo and I flanking Sakura to surround Sasori as Sakura barrels straight for him. He yanks away the bandana, exposing a jaw that opens wide and releases a plume of needles that whistle through the air as they speed at us. Sakura and Chiyo find openings in the attack: Sakura flips, catching herself on an arm and twisting her torso through the patchwork of needles while Chiyo ducks. I take a more straightforward approach, winding up the vibrations and dispersing them to knock the needles off course.

During our defensive maneuver, Sasori aims his left arm at at us and discharges it, sending it between the three of us. Its contraptions pop open, dispensing needles in a three-sixty range so we can't simply duck or dodge out of its way.

Luckily, I still have the vibrations to deflect them all; Sakura and Chiyo on the other hand manage an intricate dance around the needles, seeming to recognize the pattern the needles scatter and escaping each one.

In Sasori's surprise, he leaves himself wide open. I take the chance to slide up beside him, reeling my arm back and preparing to throw my fist forward, when his tail comes swooping in to stab me. In time, I slam my foot into the ground, and when I bring it up, a wall of earth comes up with it, protecting me from the point of his tail, which stabs through the earth and gets stuck.

"Now, Sakura!" I hear Chiyo shout, and feel Sakura sprinting toward us.

In the seconds it takes Sakura to reach him, though, Sasori wrenches his tail free of my trap and makes a beeline for Sakura. Just as she closes in on him, though, the tail jerks to a stop and Sakura swings her arm forward, shattering the puppet into irreparable pieces.

Without pause I press my hands into the stone wall, manipulating the earth so that it springs forward and captures Sasori before he can get away, but my technique doesn't move nearly as fast as Gaara's and just before the earth shuts him in, he jumps out and is in the clear.

A mass of black skids to a halt a few meters away from me, chuckling as it straightens up. "Of course," he says, his voice considerably softer outside of the puppet. "That's my grandmother for you. That would explain how that girl avoided all my attacks. _You _saw through them, and then used chakra threads from the puppet jutsu to direct her around them. And the threads you put on Hiruko's tail—although I didn't notice them until you stopped my attack, you placed them when you threw those kunai earlier, didn't you? The chakra threads on the kunai transferred to the tail when they hit."

"Indeed," Chiyo confirms as Sasori turns around, keeping the scrap of cloth from Hiruko around him, shrouding his face. "Though I was suppressing the chakra as much as possible so it was invisible, you worked it out well."

"Of course," he says with an even shrug from under the cloth that hides him, and I'm annoyed that he won't show us his face, like we're not good enough for him to grace us with his looks. "Who was it who taught me to play with puppets? No one else but you."

"Yes," Chiyo says quietly. "Well, we're done playing for today."

Sasori laughs and, finally, he pulls himself out from under the cloak, revealing a tender face of a boy not much older than Sakura and me. He has wide, sweet brown eyes that beg innocence as he asks, "Do you really think it'll be that easy to fight me, Chiyo-baasama?"

He would be endearing, I think, if he weren't trying to kill us and vice versa, so I tense when he reaches into his cloak and pulls out a scroll. He lets it fall open with a soft smile, presenting us with _san_, the kanji for three, though I can't understand what kind of indication that gives us for the type of puppet he's going to use.

He says, "I'll show you what I brought along. Killing him for my collection gave me a hard time, but that's why I like him best."

As he calls on his summons, the hair on the back of my neck stand on ends and the vibrations buzz. The spirits around me whirl more heavily on me than I have ever felt them, and I can't imagine how they would be if I reached up and brushed the feather in my hair. They are alarmed, that much I can tell, but why I don't know because as the clouds from the summons clears, the puppet that wraps around Sasori's neck is as normal as I've ever seen them.

It's features are hauntingly human, I'll give it that. The hair that bristles on its head flattens authentically, not like the fibers Kankuro uses to dress his own puppets, and its eyes are frighteningly clear, although they lack the focus of consciousness.

There is something familiar about this puppet that I can't shake. Chiyo must feel it too, although to a much higher degree than me, because she gasps and takes a startled step backward.

"What?" Sakura asks, and I repeat to myself _san, san, what in the village—_before it hits me. I had seen pictures of this man before, hanging around the Administration building, when I would go to visit Gaara during the week. It's—

"It's Sandaime Kazekage," stammers Chiyo, regaining her composure. She purses her lips together, seemingly disappointed as she watches her grandson manipulate the puppet over his shoulder, leading it to the ground. "It's been over ten years since Sandaime suddenly disappeared from the village. Sasori, you—"

"For a retired old woman near death," says Sasori, maintaining his indifferent countenance, "you're still quite good."

"Even retired and near death," Chiyo spits, "I'll still take action. I've too many regrets to die yet. My grandson, you've not only fallen to the level of a mere criminal, but you've betrayed your village and gone after the Kazekage three times!"

"Three times?" repeats Sakura, and I begin to second guess my abilities to hold up against this guy. If he thinks he's confident enough to pit himself against a Kage three times—and obviously he is, given the puppet he controls at the moment—then who am I to compete with him?

I have to remind myself: I am not alone. I have Chiyo here, who I know from training under her isn't completely senile in her old age. She has lived through the war and been in more battles than I can imagine for my age. And then there's Sakura, who's brilliant in her own right. Together, we should be enough.

This is what I'm telling myself as Chiyo says, keeping her eyes narrowed at Sasori, "It was Orochimaru who killed Yondaime Kazekage, Gaara's father, but it was _this one_ who guided him. And then with Gaara, and now to find out about this."

"Hey, hey, I don't know about Yondaime," Sasori says. "It was my subordinate who guided Orochimaru. Yes, I was originally partnered with Orochimaru in Akatsuki, so we did many things together, but Yondaime was out of my hands."

"You . . . ," Sakura starts, and I hear a new sharpness in her voice, one that makes me, foolishly, turn my back on Sasori in order to watch as she frowns at him, her face twisting into this ugly anger that reminds me why they're going after Akatsuki in the first place: to find Itachi, to lure in Sasuke. Sasuke, Sasuke. Always Sasuke.

"You know about Orochimaru?" Sakura finishes.

Noticing the shift in the air as Sakura flexes her fingers, Sasori smirks and says, "Well, let's get going."

Sasori's puppet flies at us, and as Chiyo yanks Sakura back with the chakra threads, I pull up the earth right in front of the puppet to stop it in its tracks. Instead, it unveils a series of blades hidden up its right sleeve and swings it forward, breaking through my shield and continuing on its way to Sakura.

The puppet moves considerably fast, reaching Sakura just as Chiyo pulls up the tail of Sasori's last puppet to buy her more time to pull Sakura farther away. Sasori laughs at the stall tactic, and there is clicking sound as he manipulates his puppet's left arm. It stretches out, reaching for Chiyo and Sakura, before the wooden panels that make up its forearm unclasps, revealing two summoning seals. When Sasori activates them, twenty-some-odd arms sprout from each of the four panels, growing like bamboo sprouts, their many hands taking root in the ground.

Chiyo isn't able to pull Sakura out of the way fast enough, but I can see through small openings that Chiyo manages to twist Sakura's limbs around each of the hands before they stab through her. As Chiyo tugs Sakura out of the tangle of arms, she cries, "Ren!"

"Right!" I answer, and flip through hand seals to pulse my vibrations forward and splinter the arms into toothpicks. When the arms break, though, gas starts to plume from them, rolling toward Sakura like a dust storm.

Chiyo makes to yank Sakura back again, but it doesn't seem to work. Two ropes have shot forward out of the half of the arms I hadn't broken, catching Sakura and keeping her within range of the poison gas that begins to swell through the room.

"Sakura, don't take a breath!" Chiyo warns, and I wind the vibrations up again, saying, "Brace yourself, Sakura!" before I release the vibrations to blow away the poison, effectively sweeping it up and out of the cave, and knocking Sakura to Chiyo, who catches her deftly. Sakura spills onto the ground, coughing wildly and slightly scuffed from the blast of the vibrations as Chiyo kneels beside her, patting her back as though to drum what poison she may have inhaled out of her lungs.

Sasori chuckles, his droopy eyes sizing me up. "Interesting technique," he says. "But to sacrifice your teammate like that, however slightly, is a little insensitive."

"As though you should be one to talk," I retort, jerking my head at the Kazekage that hovers eerily over his head, ghosting him. "I think my judgments are quite sound when compared to yours."

At this he gives a little scoff, raises his hand so that his puppet swoops down in front of him. I flinch and he says, "You are mere children. You are nothing compared to me. Crushing you will prove to be easy."

Sakura lets out a small roar of aggravation then, jerking up to shout at him, "I'll get you! No matter how much you resist, no matter what you do—even if you blow off my arms and legs, even if I take in your poison and it paralyzes me—I swear I'll get you! I'll beat you half to death and make you talk about Orochimaru, _got it_?"

Sakura's outbursts leaves me stunned, and I blink at her in awe as she takes in gasping breaths. Orochimaru—of course he would turn into a trigger word for her. He is the only other connection we have with Sasuke after Itachi. But it's more the lengths she's willing to go to to get information that baffles me, and Sasori takes my surprise to his advantage and launches kunai at me from the remainder of his arms.

The vibrations buzz in time to alert me of the oncoming attack, and with an easy flick of my fingers, the vibrations swings up into a gust and sends them away. Chiyo and Sakura are likewise barraged by kunai, but Chiyo is quick to unravel scrolls and present her own summons, two puppets that shield her and Sakura from the attack.

"Do you think men stop to listen when a woman's talking?" Chiyo says, and I direct my glare at Sasori, annoyed that he's sunk to the level of sucker punching us as though we wouldn't know better. "I would have thought Tsunade would have taught you as much."

Sasori cocks his head to the side, letting out a soft, "Ah," as he recognizes the puppets that stand before Chiyo. "Them."

"That's right," Chiyo says, and has the puppets raise their heads. One, a man, shares Sasori's shaggy red hair. The other, a woman, has Sasori's droopy eyes and raven-black hair that meshes with the black coat she wears, making her look like a massive black blob in which a pale white face floats. They, like Sandaime Kazekage, have glossy eyes that see without seeing, lacking only the vision of consciousness to make them human.

"Your parents," Chiyo says softly. "The very first puppets you ever made."

"What do you plan on doing with those things?" asks Sasori, unimpressed, as I shiver at the thought of him drawing out the entrails of his own flesh and blood, skinning the very people who had created him. "They're puppets _I_ created. I know all their secrets. This is pointless."

Chiyo doesn't answer, simply has the puppets touch hands for a moment before drawing them away. Wires thread between their fingers, and then they fly forward. They circle around the remainder of the arms, their wires cutting through the chutes. The severed chunks crumble uselessly to the ground, and as the puppets reach the former Kazekage, Sasori has Sandaime unclip his arm, jumping back once in order to buy him some time so that he can draw out a knives and wheels of blades.

At this point, the fight goes so fast that I can only feel their movements through the vibrations; to my eyes and ears, they are nothing but a flurry of blurs and clinks as their blades collide. They pull apart in unison, like it's been choreographed, and the puppets abandon their weapons, which have been dulled to stumps.

Sasori hums, says, "Well, this has become awkward. Shall I get serious, then?"

He makes the seal of the dog, and Sandaime's mouth drops open, displaying sharp metallic teeth. It starts to dispense a black grainy substance that seeps through the air with jerky movements, and the spirits combine with my vibrations to make my stomach uneasy as I watch the blackness swirl slowly around Sasori and the puppet.

"So," Chiyo says, narrowing her eyes, "that puppet uses the Sandaime's jutsu."

"It's been a while, hasn't it?" agrees Sasori, allowing more and more of the blackness to form around him. "This jutsu that made people realize that Sandaime was the strongest Kazekage of them all. I'm really going to kill you now."

"What is it?" Sakura asks, getting to her feet and taking a defensive stance.

Chiyo hesitates and before she explains she says, "Ren-kun, come here."

I barely have time to register her words before I'm yanked back by her chakra threads, my arms and legs flailing in my wake. I land brusquely, my heels digging into the sand as I brace myself. Chiyo doesn't give me a chance to complain about her methods of keeping me safe, and speaks immediately after she gets me to her side.

She says, "This is the most feared weapon in Suna: the Iron Sand."

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**A/N:** Hey, guys! I haven't left a note for you in a few chapters and just thought I would check in to tell you to check my profile for extra content if you feel are so inclined. I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Thank you for reading!


	59. Strength of Will

**Bound  
Chapter 59: Strength of Will**

"Sandaime Kazekage was born with the ability to change chakra into a magnetic force," Chiyo explains, the black sand coiling around Sasori. "Based on a previous Shukaku host's jutsu, Sandaime created this himself. It can be changed into any form and weapon to suit the situation."

"What does that mean?" Sakura says as I brush myself off. "Isn't it just a puppet? As an inanimate object, why would it have chakra?"

"Because it's a _human puppet_," Chiyo explains, and once again my stomach flips uneasily. "It's created from a living body, so it's made to contain the chakra from its previous life, which allows him to use its jutsu from when it was alive. No one else can create a human puppet. That is his greatest advantage."

Sasori grins, the iron sand wriggling around him in wreaths. "That's why it's my favorite from my collection," he says, and I get chills from the way he smiles oddly and looks at us like we're meat.

"Ren-kun," Chiyo says sharply, "Sakura. You must leave now. I will handle it from here alone."

"No way," I protest, keeping my feet planted firmly where I stand. "I'm not completely useless, Chiyo-sensei. I can control the earth element, so—"

"Your elemental control means nothing against the iron sand," she says. "And you're not skilled enough with the vibrations to deflect the iron; it's too heavy. This is far beyond what I thought. Now that it's come to this, you can't do anything."

I'm about to argue when Sasori's chakra spikes and the cloud of iron that had been simmering around him clump together in pellets. They move so quickly that the earth kicks up, leaving a trail of pebbles in their wake, and while Chiyo has one of her puppets grab Sakura around the waist and jump away, the other grabs me and tosses me behind it. Chiyo makes a series of movements with the chakra threads, and the puppet throws its hands out, its forearms opening into four panels that surge with chakra to block the pellets from impaling us.

I feel unsettled standing beside these puppets too, and I wonder if Sasori had also created them out of his parents' remains or whether he had just created them in their likeness. Deciding I don't care to know, I brush myself off and stand, keeping my eyes trained on Sasori, who smirks.

"It seems you've upgraded them since I've last played with them," Sasori says. "Adding a chakra shield—very clever."

The panels on the puppet's forearms begin to close, creaking back into place. Before they close completely, they jam, shaking as they try to press together. Chiyo mutters to herself as black grains begin working their way from the crevices of the puppet's joints and over its paneling, causing the whole thing to shake as it Chiyo tries to move it.

Sasori laughs, shaking his head and looking derisively at us. "You know the only way to counter that jutsu is to avoid it," he says. "But you were just concerned with getting that little girl away, weren't you? Now I've worked the iron sand all throughout that puppet's body. It's useless. And now, I'll just attack the three of you at once so you can't get away—and to make sure I kill you, I'll have the iron made into a truly lethal shape."

The iron begins to slither out of the pockets in the ground, hovering right over our heads like black, oblong discs that elongate into oversized needles as Sasori activates the Sandaime's chakra. Although the iron moves fast, Sasori's technique is sloppy and I have time to flip through seals and form a wall of earth to protect myself. This time, however, the earth is a physical manifestation of my chakra, and so when the spears slam into it, my wall is thick enough that none of them break through and I'm protected.

The impact of the needles is enough to bring the earth up in craters at my feet, sending debris flying around my shield and stoning my shins and arms. Dust gets in my eyes and causes them to water, seeps into my lungs and causes me to cough, but I dissolve shield with ease to find Sasori staring at us wide-eyed.

Chiyo has managed to keep both Sakura and herself safe. Sasori's puppet mother protects Sakura with her own chakra shield while Chiyo has put her own arm forward and released the paneling in her false arm to protect herself.

Sasori chuckles and seems to marvel at the family resemblance as he says, "You've rigged your own body. We puppeteers definitely think along the same lines."

"Chiyo," I say as the iron sand begins to creep along her own arm. She sighs in dismay and reaches up to squeeze her shoulder, which is enough to dislocate the arm and send it crumpling to the ground.

"What do are you going to do now?" Sasori asks, amused. "Both your puppets are useless, and a puppeteer without a puppet is just a regular person. I suppose I should take it upon myself," he says as the iron spears he had shot at us begin to dissolve again, reshaping in front of him to form a massive rectangular box and pyramid, "to finish it off."

"Even for someone like me," Chiyo says, her old voice crackly and defeated, "the situation is hopeless. The two of you must get away immediately."

"Absolutely not, Granny," I say, frowning and standing firm. "You saw how effective my earth is against that iron, especially when I meld it with my chakra; I can handle him, promise. I'm staying," I say when she sighs. "I'm not going to leave you to die like this."

"Chiyo-baachan well beyond her years," Sasori says offhandedly. "Don't lament. Anyway, you'll be joining her in my puppet collection."

"Like hell I will," I retort.

"Sakura," Chiyo says, turning to the other girl who has her hands clenched into tight fists, teeth gritted as though just being here still pains her. "Don't be foolish like Ren-kun. Get away while you can."

She starts, looks bemused by Chiyo's request, and then peers over the old lady to look at me. I'm not sure what she's hoping for, but I give her an encouraging smile, not one that guilts her into staying or pities her into leaving, but one that tells her that I know, whatever she decides, she will make the right decision. The smart decision. Because that's who she is.

It seems that's enough to keep her from trembling, enough to have her make up her mind and come forward, taking a place in front of Chiyo and saying, "Chiyo-sama, please use me as your puppet."

And I grin.

Chiyo sighs again, and I'm sure that if she keeps wasting these breaths on hopeless kunoichi like ourselves, she will have very few left to her name after this battle.

"I only have one arm left," Chiyo says to dissuade Sakura. "I won't be able to control you as well as before!"

"That's fine," Sakura says. "I may not have amazing weapons in me like a puppet or Ren's admirable control over her elemental chakra, but what I do have is my master's contempt for losing."

I laugh, say to Chiyo, "If the Slug Princess has nurtured an apprentice like this, she can't be all bad, right?"

Chiyo mirrors my expression, says, "Yes. I would say our styles are not so different after all. In any case," she says as I wonder what she could mean, "Sandaime's ability is magnetic force, so iron and steel weapons are ineffective."

"Perfect!" Sakura says, pumping her fists together. "What I also got from my master were unarmed combat skills. And, Ren, you can manage just as well, can't you?"

"Something like that," I say.

"Useless," I hear Sasori mutter from the other side of the cave, and I'm tired of him saying that. Unlike Shikamaru's catchphrase of _troublesome_, Sasori's mantra is miserable, full of pessimism, and I find it degrading that he thinks we will be unsuccessful in our endeavors.

Well. It'll be a matter of time before he sees how wrong he is.

Sakura and Chiyo barrel toward him, and Sandaime raises his arms, moving the pyramid so that the point is directed at Sakura. It stretches, moving faster than Sakura has time to react herself, so Chiyo pulls her aside and I use my earth elemental to create a pillar that pushes the pyramid up and keeps Chiyo and Sakura out of harm's way. The pyramid pierces the cave wall over the entrance and sends debris plopping into the pool of water there as Sasori manipulates the rectangular block, crashing it into the ground where Sakura stands, just as she manages to get out of the way.

She recovers quickly, getting to her feet and rushing at the block with her arm reeled. When she throws her punch, the block zooms backward with surprising force, slamming into the opposite wall and sending cracks spider-webbing in the earth from the epicenter of the hit.

Sasori, who has jumped aside to avoid the block crushing him and sits on the wall just beside his creation, narrows his eyes at Sakura. He raises his hand; in turn, Sandaime raises his hand and the pyramid that had been lodged in the wall above shifts, turning into millions of pins that shower down on us.

To counter, I make the appropriate hand seals and slam my palms into the chunks of earth that have broken up in Sasori's assault. My chakra surges through them and creates a shelter over both Sakura and Chiyo, and when Sasori takes advantage of my defensive tactic to volley his rectangular block at me, Chiyo has already brought Sakura to my side to send the block right back at him.

It smashes into the cave wall again. This time the collision is enough to send pieces of the ceiling falling over Sasori's head, but he uses the Sandaime's technique to protect himself in the same way I had protected Sakura and Chiyo. And again he tries to catch us off guard, gathering the iron from the pyramid to from another one of his little building blocks and have it fly toward us.

Instead of aiming the new block at Sasori again, Sakura sends it on a collision course for the first rectangular block, which Sasori has unsurprisingly sent at us in our attempt to defend ourselves from the other attack. When the blocks ram into each other this time, Chiyo, Sakura, and I jump out of the way and let it follow through with its course as one flies back at us and the other goes toward Sasori, who avoids it as well.

The biggest disadvantage of his technique is these blocks are too big for him to move them around effectively. Sure: Once they gather enough momentum, they become a force to be reckoned with, and Sakura can't expect to be able to counter them with one of her monstrous punches. But in these closed quarters, he can't hope for as much.

This time around, Sasori directs both of his blocks at us and I allow Sakura time to rest, using the earth to knock the blocks off course. They ricochet into the walls, sending more debris crumbling into the cave, before they flatten, slipping out from between the pillars I create and the side of the cave, and then come rolling at us like a pendulum that has been knocked off its stand. I collapse the earth beneath it, catching it in a crater. It rolls off the side of the crater, into the ceiling above, and the cave folds in on us.

Sasori uses the iron to protect himself; Chiyo, Sakura, and I take cover under a shelter I create and then dissolve to counter his blocks that have reshaped into pins to pierce us.

The iron gathers over our heads when the attack finishes, forming a platform that drops on us. Charging my heel with chakra, I pump it into the earth, bringing it up beneath Sakura who goes flying at the platform. With a slight angle of her fist, she punches it and manages to send it spinning at Sasori who tries to shield himself with the other iron block.

To my surprise, Sakura's punch carries the platform so fast that it slices right through the block, and Sasori is forced to leap out of the way, his puppet flailing behind him as he moves, as though he's losing his concentration and can't properly control it. If I could get close enough, I could maybe sever those threads with my own chakra, but that would call for some dangerous methods, and it's nothing we can risk while he's using these iron blocks so dangerously.

"And you call yourself a girl with that unnatural strength," Sasori says as Sakura breathes heavily. He's apparently inspired by her counterattack, though, and attaches the platform to the reformed block. Sandaime rises in the air, his cloak opening over his chest as a blast of chakra emerges from it.

Spindly veins begin sprouting from the iron blocks, their branches multiplying a hundred fold as they stretch across the area of the cave, moving blindingly fast. They pierce the remainder of the cave, breaking down the entrance wall and opening our battleground to the water beyond that fills up quickly with boulders. Chiyo yanks Sakura back, sending her flying as the old woman tries to pull her out of the way, and I build up another chakra wall to protect myself. Even then, when the iron slams into it, it pierces through the top of my wall, and sends rocks crumbling down on me. Another branch of iron impacts the wall, drilling through it, creating cracks in the earth that makes it more vulnerable to the next branch of iron that hits, and the next, and the next, until I'm thrown backward by the force the last impact the wall can bear and crash into the cliff side.

The iron branches continue to expand, and I'm left trying to dodge them. They rush at me, stabbing into the rock just seconds before I move, and leave me little time in between to avoid the next branch. But with the slightest hint from the vibrations, I'm able to dodge each one, although just barely.

When the assault finally stops, I've managed to get away with a few scuff marks, but no cuts, only my shirt pinned into the ground by one branch that had barely missed my side. I tear myself free, careful not to touch any of the iron bars that trap me in case they can spread to human limbs like with the puppets and render me useless when my friends need me most.

Looking around, I can barely see through the iron bars, but I hear Chiyo shouting for Sakura nearby and it doesn't take me long to find her. Chiyo had been able to pull Sakura a considerable distance closer as she is standing amid the veins, holding onto her left arm and staring dazedly ahead. Small cuts run along her cheeks and arms and as she begins to sway on her feet, Sasori laughs.

I recognize the way she trembles, the way she tries to step forward but freezes before she can lift her heel off the ground, and then when she collapses, falling face-first into the rubble, I know: She's been poisoned.

Chiyo curses and Sasori raises his eyebrows in condescension. Sandaime opens his arms and then soars through the reeds of iron at Sakura and I follow suit.

I faintly register Chiyo calling for me to stop, but like hell if I'm going to let Sakura lie defenseless while a puppet eats her and makes her one of its own. And, yeah, I know puppets aren't _zombies_, but what Sasori does to them makes them the equivalent and I hate that.

Humans aren't meant to be playthings, manipulated like they don't matter. A life is a life, no matter how it's lived, no matter the merits of the person living it, and people should be able to rest after they've died, not be turned into a toy and be turned against their own people, doing things they would never normally do. This kind of afterlife is undignified and undeserving.

Concentrating my chakra into the snake hand seal, I bring my chakra up through my lungs, my esophagus, and when I release it through my mouth, it transforms into a shot of mud that sprays across the iron bars, dirtying everything in sight, before it splashes over Sasori's puppet, who isn't deterred by it in the least. But then I make the sign of the dog and my mud hardens and Sandaime begins to slow, descending and ramming into nearby iron bars that break off fingers, a portion of his arm.

The puppet looks like it's still going to hit Sakura, but as I'm about to close in on her, Sakura miraculously pushes herself to her knees despite the poison coursing through her body, charges her fists, and punches the puppet, shattering it. The moment Sandaime begins to fall apart, the iron melts, dripping down like sand in an hour glass. I stumble to halt in my surprise, but think to grab Sakura as the iron around her dissolves, pulling her out of the black sand before it can mat our clothes and do something ungodly to us.

"Thanks," she pants as I drop her beside Chiyo who, now that I really look at her, I notice has her arm crushed under a rock. "If it hadn't been for your technique slowing down that puppet, I don't think I would have caught him in time."

"Don't mention it," I say, lifting the rock off of Chiyo. "Really. That technique is a little embarrassing for me, so. You all right, Gran?"

Chiyo is too busy staring at Sakura in awe to answer me, instead saying, "Sakura, you . . . ?"

Sakura grimaces, reaches into her pouch, and extracts a small vial, showcasing it to us. "My antidote," she says. "There's one left. I'll give it to you, Chiyo, since it seems like Ren has an easier time avoiding Sasori's attacks than either of us. Your vibrations, isn't it? Anyway," Sakura says after I shrug as I heal Chiyo's arm. She does the same, healing the cuts on her arms, although she pales as she does.

She continues, "When I was making the antidote for Kankuro-san, I was only able to make three, and since I knew Sasori used poison, I put them into injection form and brought them along—_ahh_," she gasps, her chakra fading as she runs her hand over her forearm, flickering as though it's short-circuiting.

Avoiding all of Sasori's attacks and countering them with those chakra charged punches have taken a toll on her. The girl needs to rest before she kills herself. So I take the vial she has clasped in her other hand and tuck it into Chiyo's pouch, waving Sakura away as she tries to heal her other arm. I take over for her, noticing the way she continues to breath heavily.

She thanks me quietly before saying, "Sasori didn't know about the potion, so I waited for him to use his final attack before I resorted to using it. The thing is, though, the antidote only works for three minutes. In that time, no matter how much poison we're infected with, the antidote will turn it into a harmless protein. So we have to finish this battle in that amount of time. There's no time to waste," she says, getting up just as I finish healing her wounds. "Can you move now, Chiyo-sama? Are you good to go, Ren?"

"You could let me handle this, Sakura," I say, ready to pull her back down and force her to rest. "I have more stamina than you—"

"No time," Chiyo says, getting to her feet as well. "He's making his move."

Indeed, Sasori, on the other side of the black pool of iron sand, takes the top of his cloak in one hand and gives it a forceful tug. It comes off in a flourish, and Sasori sprouts blades that spread out like wings. There is a cylindrical block with his name painted on it where his heart is, and a compartment where his stomach is, where a coil slithers out and weaves under his feet, lifting him off the ground. Black liquid slides from the coil, dripping onto the ground and staining the rock. It looks almost like blood, but if I had to guess, it's oil to allow the coil to slither smoothly, serpentine-like, and I shiver at the imagery of snakes, the reminder of Orochimaru and—

Sasuke.

I want to throw up.

I vaguely hear Chiyo saying something to Sakura about Sasori not aging, but I don't care. I'm thrown by my memory of Sasuke and how he makes my stomach turn when I think about him. It's hard to understand why he makes me feel like this, like I can't handle the fact that he's gone despite everything I've done to try to get away from him.

But I wonder. I wonder how he looks now, whether he retains his trademark Uchiha looks, whether he is still perennially scowling. I wonder about the extent to which he's been able to grow, become stronger, and I wonder if he ever considers us in his day-to-day activities, whether he thinks about Naruto or Sakura and what they did to try to keep him around. Whether he thinks about me at all.

The vibrations bristle and, fortunately, I'm able to break out of my reverie and grab Chiyo around the waist, dragging her behind a large boulder to protect ourselves as a blast of fire shoots at us. Sasori's doing, I assume as Chiyo tsks, saying, "What distracted you so much back there?"

"When?" I ask. "If I was distracted, would I have been able to dodge that attack?"

She doesn't answer as the fire stops in a sudden _woosh_ and I hear Sasori's voice come faintly in the distance. There is a whirring sound, like gears spinning, and I look up in time to see Sasori uncoiling the chord from the compartment in his stomach, maneuvering it around the rocks, and at Sakura. Sakura can't avoid the stinger in time; it threads through her right side, makes her stumble backward, before lodging itself into the rubble behind her.

The coil is enough leverage to heave Sasori into the air, send him flying at me and Chiyo, his blade-wings spread wide as he comes at us. The blades begin to spin, cutting through the rocks he rams into, and while he is obviously aiming to hit Chiyo, he can't do that without getting through me first.

I brace myself, preparing to manipulate the earth again, or use the vibrations to blast him away, but before I can act on either impulse, I see Sakura grab onto the chord, yanking on it to unravel it further. Sasori allows her a smirk, a small side glance, but believes he has enough length to reach his intended target. Until there is a loud crack, a creak of metal gears reaching their limit, and Sasori is jerked toward Sakura who lets out a fierce battle cry before she punches him, right in his gut, effectively disassembling him.

His parts drop left and right, crashing into the rubble beyond Sakura as it continues with its path of motion. He slides into the iron sand, which doesn't shift as his parts settle into it, and Sakura is grinning at us, giving us a weak chuckle as she says, breathing heavily with her hand pressed to her wound, "We did it. We beat him! And just . . . within the time—"

Another whirr begins that freezes us, the clicks that subsequently sound making shivers run up my spine. Chiyo gasp as, behind Sakura, Sasori reforms easily, his limbs pulling together as though possessed by a god-like force. His head reattaches backward, but swings around to meet Sakura's terror as she turns to look at him.

Chiyo tsks, flicks her hand, and from the rubble she pulls her other arm, which attaches to her shoulder with relative ease. This movement distracts Sasori enough that he doesn't move toward Sakura, despite the fact that she is wide open for attack.

Chiyo reaches into her pouch and says, "This is a jutsu I forbade myself from ever using again, but it seems that wasn't meant to be."

She extracts a scroll that she promptly sends sprawling out. It hovers around her in a ring, the kanji in the center of diamond shapes billow outward as her summons appears, taking the shape of ten individual puppets. They glisten a ghostly white, floating around her like spirits ready to claim the dead.

"I'll put an end to this here," she says, and Sasori's wide eyes grow wider with anticipation.

"Impressive, baa-san," he says. "They say that the strength of a puppeteer is measured by how many puppets they use at one time. I've heard rumors of this technique. It's a mechanism that's said to have taken down an entire castle—the _shiro higi: jikki chikamatsu no shuu_. It belonged to the very first puppet master, Enzaemon. They were his ten masterpieces."

He flicks one of his fingers as well, and a scroll attached to a compartment on his back comes free. It unravels in front of him as he opens a panel on his chest. The number of chakra threads that fly out of the compartment is so vast that they glow, no longer invisible in their masses, as the scroll releases his summons.

A black cloud forms overhead, darkening out the entire area around Sasori as it blocks out the sun. Squinting against the light, however, I can see that it's not a cloud that has gathered over him, but puppets, dozens of them, cloaked in black and terrifying in the way they stare down at us.

"With this," says Sasori. "I took down a country." He sighs, shakes his head, and presses his hand to his forehead. "How will I explain this to my superiors? That it took me this long to take down two little girls and an old hag, that I even had to resort to my last trick."

When he raises his eyes to us again, the amusement and wonder on his face is gone, replaced by irritation. Sakura takes the cue to rush back to us, sliding into place next to me. We take the defensive, but Chiyo says our names softly, catching our attention.

"Do not do anything," she says. "Your antidote has already worn off, Sakura, and we only have one left."

Sakura grins at her and I scoff, waving away her warning. "You know me better than that, Granny," I say. "Like you, I'm not one to leave loose ends."

"And you should already know my character," Sakura agrees, refocusing on Sasori, whose lips are pursed into a small, tight smile that contorts his face with mania.

Chiyo doesn't sigh, doesn't utter another protest. Instead, she chuckles, says, "Yes. You've both inherited the wills of two very stubborn women. But you know: This will be the final act. Are you prepared?"

_The final act._ At the moment she says this, I'm more nervous than I have been throughout this entire battle. I'm not sure what she's planning, what she anticipates to happen, but I know that it won't be anything that I am prepared for. But when Sakura answers with an enthusiastic, optimistic, completely confident "Yes!" I'm compelled to do the same, feel the same, hope the same.

There is only so much you can do to keep prolonging the end. Inevitably, the end will come, and to think otherwise would be foolish and cause much more grief than endings themselves could ever truly bring. As they say: The show must go on. So I brace myself, physically and mentally, as Sasori sweeps his hands out and the threads shift like reeds in the wind and his puppets swoop down for the final act.

It is harder to avoid these puppets than I thought it would be. There are so many of them—hundreds, by my estimate—that it's hard to keep track of them all at once. Having Sakura on my side while Chiyo handles her puppets makes it easier on me. She watches my back and I watch hers, and we fall into an easy rhythm, playing off of each other as well as Sasori's puppets ambush us.

"Sakura!" I shout, twisting around in time to dodge a puppet who lunges at me with a sword. I grab it by the forearms, swinging it aside, right at Sakura's clenched fist, where the puppet meets its end, shattering into pieces. In the meantime, a puppet flies up behind her, and as I wind up my vibrations to blow it away, Sakura kicks up her leg and destroys another puppet that grabs for my hair.

I smash my hands into the ground, bringing up the earth in a sheet to block a horde or puppets that attack us before I hear Sakura yell, "Chiyo-sama!" in panic and despair.

I turn in time to see Chiyo faltering, her puppets lurching as she staggers with the wound in her side. She recovers her footing, but the color drains quickly from her face and her breathing goes ragged.

Sasori sends another handful or puppets at us, some of them swooping so low that they brush against their fallen, throwing off the vibrations, but I'm much faster than Sasori gives me credit for. As Chiyo shouts instructions at Sakura to finish Sasori off, I barrel into the crowd of puppets, shoving through them and managing to get away without being stuck with their weapons in my brazenness. Once I'm behind them, mere meters away from Sasori, he makes another cloud of puppets rush in front of him. Only, my intention was never _him_.

I surge my chakra to my hands, keeping my fingers pressed together, and spin, shredding the chakra threads that bind the puppets. They jerk mechanically before they start to drop like flies. I swirl toward the remaining puppets, the one that barricade Sasori, and as my hands graze them, they are cut into slivers and collapse to the ground with heavy thuds.

This leaves enough of an opening for Sakura to send a bright orb flying over my head, whistling as it flies toward Sasori. With a quarter of the distance to Sasori left, the orb bursts and transforms into a lion head with rows of sharp teeth that jut out of its gaping jaw. It clips Sasori over his around his arms and torso, some of its teeth digging into his leg as it slams him into the opposite wall and pins him against the rock.

A seal painted onto the back of the lion's head reads _closed_, effectively locking Sasori's chakra pathways, which explains why the chakra threads all severed. The moment it had made contact with him, the chakra threads faded, sending his puppets plopping to the ground in a shower around us.

I wipe my brow with the heel of my hand, relieved that this fight is over, however anticlimactic it might have been. I don't need panache in my plays. Just happy endings. The three of us alive is as much as I could ask for coming out of this battle.

I'm about to turn around and cheer, smile at Sakura and Chiyo who I can sense still behind me, when I notice something: Under the jaws of Chiyo's lion head seal, Sasori is alarmingly still. Just because his keirakukei has been suppressed doesn't mean he's _dead_. He should be fidgeting, shouting obscenities at us, or expressing his incredulity on the fact that we've managed to defeat him.

But there is nothing but silence and our heavy breathing, and when I look closer, I see: Dark holes where his eyes should be glaring at me, empty pockets on either side of his chest.

I whirl on my heels, crying out for Chiyo's attention, but it's too late.

Behind her, Sasori looms, cloaked in a black rag of one of his puppets, a sword clenched in his hand. I move to get to Chiyo, protect her as Sasori stabs the sword at her. I know I won't make it to her in time, know I won't be able to save her this time with my earth or with my vibrations because I had been too stupid to think of either before I started rushing toward her. My muscles start to fail, my heart stuttering in my chest as I watch the sword falling down on her, seemingly in slow motion.

There is a blur of pink, reckless and quick in contrast to the speed at which I see the sword moving. Sakura puts herself between the blade and Chiyo, taking the blow for the old woman, much to the surprise of both the Nin before her. Taking this chance, I leap to Chiyo's side as she winces again from the poison that is infecting her body, causing her to deteriorate.

"Sakura," mutters Chiyo as I brace her, and all Sakura replies is, "Hurry! Take the antidote."

Sakura's voice, like her body, is trembling with the pain of the injury, the effects of the poison that must be lathered all over the weapon that pierces right through her. She grips the sword, holding it in place as Sasori chuckles.

"What a girl," he commends, "to be worried about others, with an injury _like this_," he emphasizes, and digs the sword farther through Sakura's body. She gasps, slides back, and crumples over, and although her knees knock together as she braces the attack, she grips the blade, attempting to keep Sasori in place.

"Chiyo," I say, taking her by the shoulders so that her drooping head meets my gaze. "Take the antidote! Now, hurry before—"

"No," Chiyo says as she extracts the potion, popping off the top. "This sort of thing . . . should not be wasted on an old woman."

With that, she leans around me, stabbing the antidote into Sakura's leg.


	60. Strings

**Bound  
Chapter 60: Strings**

I let out a devastated little shriek. Which is not to say I don't want Sakura to come out of this alive, or believe that Chiyo's life is more valuable than Sakura's currently. It's more that this—this sacrifice, this great either/or situation where both outcomes are equally as terrible, where there are only no-win options—makes my heart hurt and bleed and die.

"_Her?"_ demands Sasori and moves to yank his sword free as Chiyo doubles over, taking halting breaths. She is sweating profusely and jerking as the poison overrides her will and anguish overrides my logic.

I spring to my knees, taking the vibrations and swiping them through Sasori's blade, cutting Sakura free. Sasori stumbles back, caught off guard, and I grab his hand that's still fisted around the handle of the blade, yanking him forward so that I can knee him in the gut.

One for Chiyo, I think as he detaches himself at his elbow, revealing a thinner blade that glistens brilliantly in the sunlight. He makes a stab for me, but I deflect it with his arm, pressing the blade down and hiking up my foot to slam my heel into his face, promptly sending him colliding into the remains of his puppets. One for Sakura.

I run at him, give up all pretense that I want to do anything else to him than smash his entire stupid puppet body to smithereens with my bare hands, and toss aside his arm as he uses his chakra threads to conjure up a wave of decimated puppets to protect himself. I blast them away with the vibrations, and leap for his throat, managing to wrap one hand around it, pinning him to the rubble, as I beat him with my other hand, his puppet face cracking and peeling with each punch—one for Naruto. One for Kakashi. One of Kankuro, the entirety of the Sand Village, the previous Kazekage. Gaara.

There is nothing more satisfying than hearing the sound of his soulless, shell of a body breaking under my fist.

I'm about to throw the last, decisive punch, when he shouts, "Enough!" and sweeps his arms up, bringing puppet remains with it that slam into my side and send me sliding against the rubble that bruises my ribs and snags onto my clothes. I twist my arms, bracing myself in a way that allows me to bounce back, leaping across the rubble as Sasori jumps after me, brandishing his sword and managing to cut up the slivers of my clothes that flair behind me as I move.

"Ren!" calls Chiyo, and I follow the sound of her voice, leading Sasori back to her.

My sandal catches on one of Sasori's puppets' arms, trips me until I'm flailing, slamming into the rubble. He dives to dig his blade into my stomach, but I kick it off course with my sandal, catch his gut with my other foot, and throw him over my head.

He somersaults over the rubble, lands right on his feet before Chiyo, and lets out a maniacal laugh as he reels his arm back, ready to pierce Chiyo as she heals Sakura's wounds—

Until he jerks to a stop, his laugh drowning in the blood that gurgles out of his esophagus as two swords cross through his heart. Flanking either side of him, wielding the swords that kill him, are his parents, leaning toward him as though ready to embrace him in the afterlife. At his feet, black lines trace the rocks, locking him in place with a sealing jutsu.

"In the end," Chiyo says, "you were careless. _Now_ you cannot move. Of that, I am certain. From that skinned body of yours, just the left part of your chest remained intact. A puppet body, after all, is just a regular puppet. Your real body is that chest part that uses chakra. That is your weakness."

I roll to my feet, breathing hard, and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, massaging the aches and bruises I've received from the fight. Noticing what Chiyo's doing, I go to her. "You shouldn't do that," I admonish, reaching to move her hands off of Sakura, but she shakes her head, dismissing me. "You should let me heal her."

"You're too slow," she says as her hands begin to glow darker, and the energies around her hands swirl closer, stronger, yanking, pulling threads. My stomach jumps in alarm. "Besides, it looked like something you needed to get out of your system."

I frown at her as Sasori chuckles, despite his injury, and says, "What you're doing—it's useless. Since you're a medical ninja, I aimed for a vital spot. Even without the poison, she'll be dead soon enough. There's too much blood loss."

"I have already stopped emergency medical treatment," says Chiyo, and I raise my fingers to the feather in my hair, grasping it in my hands. Sure enough, I can feel the spirits weaving through the air, threading between Sakura and Chiyo. _Leaving_ Chiyo. "What I am doing now is not medical ninjutsu. I am giving my own life energy."

I knew it. This feeling, this unsettling churning in my stomach: It's the spirits, moving from one body to another, unnaturally changing hosts.

She continues, "In the beginning, it was for you, Sasori. I alone spent many years working out this jutsu for you. With it, I can even give life to a puppet . . . in exchange for using up the user's life force."

"Chiyo," I say, my voice bordering a whine as I reach for her hands once again, but she gives me a withering look and Sakura's eyes flutter open and she lets out a shuddering breath. "Chiyo, please—if you stop now, I can finish healing her, you don't have to—you can't—"

"It's a dream that can't be realized," she admits, and the glow from her hands fades and dies, "but it seems this isn't a dream that has gone to waste."

My chest is heavy, my vision swerving in and out of focus, my palms growing sweaty. Crazy. She's crazy. Crazy and senile and . . . and—

"Pathetic," Sasori says quietly. And then, with a snort, he bursts into laughter and says, "_Pathetic_. When did you start getting senile, obaa-chan?"

Sakura stirs, pushing herself to her hands and knees. She lets out another shuddering breath, shakes her head to clear it, and looks at us dazedly. Chiyo takes her shoulder to brace her, and I notice for the first time the cloudiness in Chiyo's eyes, the paleness of her face. And still, despite her current state, despite being poisoned, despite her frailty, she can only ask, "Sakura, are you all right?"

Sakura blinks at her, as though wondering, like me, why Chiyo continues to worry about everyone but herself. "Yes," says Sakura. "It's _you_ we should be worried about, Chiyo-sama."

Sasori hums thoughtfully, his eyebrows peaking on his forehead. "That's odd," he says. "Shouldn't you be dead after using that tensei ninjutsu, exchanging your life force for another?"

Chiyo breathes raggedly, her shoulders quaking. "Sakura received a fatal wound," she explains, "but she didn't die. So I only suffered the same as she did."

He chuckles, lowering his head as he smirks. "Well," he says. "That's a pity."

There is a crack, like bones breaking, as Sakura bolts to her feet and lands a punch on Sasori's left cheek, sending his head spinning around, just like before. It's a satisfying sound, gratifying, but it's nothing like when I had done it myself. I wish I had, but I'm too focused on Chiyo, the way she struggles to keep herself upright. I take her arm and her eyes soften as she meets my gaze. She leans against me, her hand clasping tightly over my fingers.

"Give it up," says Sasori, his neck clicking as he turns his head back into place. "This body feels no pain. If you keep hitting me, your fist is all that will hurt, like that other hopeless girl earlier. Women like to do useless things, don't they? And, even connected by blood ties as we are," he adds nonchalantly, "I won't feel a thing if obaa-chan here dies. Of all the hundreds and thousands I've killed so far, she's just another one of them."

"What do you think a human life is?" demands Sakura. "What do you think blood ties are?"

Useless, I think. It's all useless. Blood ties don't mean anything—nothing has to mean anything if you don't want them to, if you don't make anything out of them. Blood ties can be pushed aside, broken for the sake of personal achievement. Broken for the sake of revenge. They don't mean anything.

"Hey," Sasori says, trying to ease her out of her anger through his condescension. "Are those the words of a shinobi?"

"Why," she says, gritting her teeth and clenching her fists, and the way she sounds reminds me of when she had confronted Sasuke, when she had tried to stop him from leaving the village. There is the same sort of defeat in her voice, the same sort of sadness and resentment. "Why can't you think any other way?" she asks, and I purse my lips, keep my gaze averted in case she looks back and begins to accuse me of the same heartlessness.

I could have stayed in the village. I could have made more of an effort to stay, to have Tsunade warm up to me through good behavior, by impressing the village elders like Sakura managed to, like Shikamaru managed to. But that blood tie, those normal ties—they are suffocating when all they do is disappoint you or overshoot you and make you seem so small. I had to get out and become something on my own.

"It's all right, Ren," Chiyo says to me, rubbing her thumb across the back of my hand as I realize I'd been cutting off the circulation to her fingers with my grip. "You are not the same as Sasori. Sakura," she says more loudly, "you don't have to say more. What made him this way is the terrible customs and teachings of the Sand."

"Consider my point of view," says Sasori, inclining his head. "If you do, then you'll probably get what I'm saying. A body that doesn't decay, a puppet body that can be rebuilt over and over, unfettered by a mortal lifespan. I can make as many people as I want out of puppets, and I don't just add for the sake of numbers. Collections are about quality."

Sakura is further discomforted by his explanation. She steps away from him, asks, "What the hell _are_ you?"

"If I must say," Sasori says without note of her disgust, "I am a person who couldn't become a puppet. I _am_ a puppet, but an incomplete puppet with the 'core' of my real body. Not human—but not puppet either. A dream," he adds quietly, eying his grandmother, "that couldn't be realized."

He sighs, flicks out his tongue to lick the blood that drips from his mouth because of Sakura's blow to his face. "I won't be able to move for much longer," he announces, meeting Sakura's gaze. "In the meantime, I'll do something useless for you. A . . . _reward_ for defeating me. You wanted to know about Orochimaru, didn't you?" he asks when Sakura throws him a questioning look and she freezes, her hands going slack at the sound of Orochimaru's name before she tenses and prepares herself for the information. I, on the other hand, focus my energy on steadying Chiyo, who continues to sway although I hold her upright and whose face continues to drain of color.

"Go to the Tenchi Bridge in the Grass Village," Sasori says, his head drooping, his voice losing volume. His breaths come out in wheezes, and his sad eyes slouch to a close. "At noon, ten days from now. I have a spy in Orochimaru's subordinates. I am supposed to meet with him there."

Sakura stares at him and waits for more, but Sasori's chest stops heaving after that, his head falling completely forward without his will to hold it up. Chiyo, likewise, releases the threads she'd been using to keep Sasori in place with his puppet parents, allowing the three of them to collapse together, their puppet pieces clattering as they collide with the rubble.

Sakura takes a deep breath, letting her shoulders sag as she rolls her hands into a fist and lets it go flat and turns to us. "You did it, Chiyo-sama," she says with a weak smile of victory. Her lukewarm green eyes appear duller than usual as she regards us, much like the puppets, whose eyes no longer glow with a blind sight. "Incredible."

Sakura's words snap Chiyo out of her trance. The old lady shakes her head, breaking her gaze on Sasori and his parents at last. "No," says Chiyo, using me as leverage as she pushes herself to her feet. "The one who really should have been defeated was me. Sasori saw my last attack. But somehow, he couldn't avoid it."

"Or else _wouldn't_ avoid it," I say, feeling her body shake as she strains herself to stand. In response to my statement, she grins grimly and pats my head, and then gives a gasp before her knees give out and she falls on top of me.

I catch her under her arms as Sakura rushes to our side, saying, "Chiyo-sama! Ah—the poison, Ren," she realizes, bracing Chiyo's left side. "Quickly, let's go back to the village! I'll make a new antidote and—"

"No," Chiyo pants, perspiring so much so that I'm afraid she'll become dehydrated in this heat. She brushes Sakura off and leans solely on me, like because I haven't openly protested against her condition, I will be more likely to help her do what she wants. Contrary, I agree with Sakura on this: We have to get her back to the village, get an antidote made up for her, and then see what we can do about the damage she had taken for Sakura. I don't say as much, though, because as long as she relies on me to brace her, I have my grip on her and can drag her back home if need be.

"But—why?" says Sakura. "We've done what we had to do. If we don't get back and make an antidote—"

"There is something I must do," Chiyo says, and then, with all her might, pushes off of me to stand on her own. She gives me a knowing look, like she knew exactly what I meant to do by keeping her close to me, and then says, "Look, I can stand on my own. Your antidote is already helping by giving me more strength than I could have ever hoped for after being hit by the poison. The antibodies it's created to turn the poison into proteins are still somewhat effective. Now, let's hurry to Naruto and Kakashi before it's too late."

Chiyo leaps over the rubble before Sakura and I can say or do more. We exchange cautionary glances and then follow after Chiyo. She moves slower than before, stumbling every few meters and then grumbling at us when we try to steady her.

"Ren-kun," she says after a ways of traveling in the general direction of the scuff marks and broken branches Kakashi and Naruto had left behind. "See if you can't pinpoint how much farther we have to go before we catch up with them."

I nod, trusting Sakura to watch over Chiyo as I focus on the vibrations. A hundred meters. Two hundred. Five hundred.

That's when I sense the stirring, the rush of chakra as it swirls and then expands, pluming out in a whirlwind. I recognize the way the chakra moves, the spin of it. Naruto.

"Half a kilometer ahead!" I say. "It feels like—they're about to finish up. Sakura, brace Chiyo, won't you? She won't be able to travel that much farther without collapsing."

Sakura follows my order just as I feel another spike in chakra. This time, it doesn't twist and spin in Naruto's signature attack, but instead explodes in a violent rush, a malevolent swing of anger and bloodlust. I recognize this, too.

I'm not sure if I should tell Sakura to stop—if we catch Naruto as he's transforming into the Kyuubi, we'll be so far in over our heads that it won't matter that we made it out of our fight with Sasori alive. But then the chakra cuts short, shrinking until it disappears completely, and I can only sense us closing in on Naruto and Kakashi, and one other faint chakra mark.

"This way," I direct, and bring Sakura and Chiyo down through the trees until we're in a small clearing, landing in front of Kakashi and Naruto, who are a crouched together, looking worse for wear.

"Ah, finally caught up," Sakura says, easing Chiyo to the ground. Naruto perks up, gives us a weary smile as he brings his hands down from his face. I notice a small seal coming away on his fingers, one that he quickly crumples up into his fists, hiding it away.

"You found this place well," says Kakashi, appraising us to find that we appear to be in no better condition than him and Naruto.

"We saw where the enemy was flying before," Sakura says. "And Ren's vibrations helped track you, too."

"You are still having trouble here, it seems," says Chiyo as Kakashi considers the range of my vibrations and then compliments me on being able to extend them to such a degree.

"Sakura-chan," Naruto says, his voice crackling like paper. "Ren. The three of you managed to beat him . . . ?"

"Yes," Chiyo affirms. "But, more importantly: What of Gaara?"

Naruto's eyes flick to a tree branch where we find two other Narutos supporting Gaara, whose head droops onto his chest, much like Sasori's had. My heart drums in my ears, and I'm about to leap up to him when I hear a faint crack, a rustle in the leaves nearby.

"Ren, what are you—"

I hold my finger up to my lips to quiet Sakura as I slide toward the brush where I can make out that faint chakra mark I had sensed earlier, in addition to three others. The mark begins to hurry its pace, and I jerk forward, parting the brush. There is Sasori's partner, Deidara, wide-eyed as he looks between me and Lee and Gai and Tenten and Neji, who corner him from the other side of the clearing.

"_Shit,_" he curses and then leaps away as I swing my foot at his head and Tenten barrages him with shuriken and kunai. He weaves through the trees, using them to his advantage to block Tenten's weapons as he makes way to a branch where his decapitated bird modeling begins to take flight again, carrying him over and under the branches.

Deidara lands just beyond Team Gai, leaning forward to take a gooey bite out of his bird. He swallows it, grinning madly in the meantime, and says as his body begins to expand beneath his coat, bursting the zipper, "Take a look at my ultimate work of art. Art," he says as the vibrations buzz as he expands and I think to grab Chiyo and haul her up, "is a _bang_."

"Everyone, _hurry_," Neji says at the same time I begin to usher Sakura back toward Kakashi and wave Naruto down from the tree, pulling Chiyo along with me as I follow Neji's order of, "Get away from here!"

Deidara's laugh rings through the forest along with the birds that are startled into flight, taking off for higher ground. I peer over my shoulder as the vibrations begin to move faster and see his body bulging, clumping and bubbling up as his chakra builds inside his body, about to explode.

We're not going to make it to safety in time. The explosion will come too quickly, and beaten as we are, we won't be able to move fast enough. There's no way I'm going to die after having survived the likes of Sasori, though.

I hand Chiyo off to Sakura, grinding my feet to a halt as Team Gai rushes past me. Neji shouts, "What are you _doing_?" but I ignore him, flipping through the appropriate hand seals as I hear Kakashi shout, "Neji, pull her back!" Neji's arm goes around my waist, tugging me away as the explosion begins to consume Deidara's body, whirling in a giant sphere of fire that reaches out and burrows into the ground, but not before I dig my heel into the earth, managing to surge my chakra into the dirt and send a wave of earth crashing over the fireball and sending the flames wayward as they slam into the earth—

And then seemingly evaporate into thin air with a small _pop_.

My wave of dirt spills over, rolling in the pit left behind from the fire, smoking slightly from its encounter with the flames. I blink at it in surprise, at the sudden lack of heat, gripping Neji's forearm as he, too, stares in bewilderment at the lack of fire that's supposed to have blasted us away.

"Wha," I begin as Neji's hold on me slackens, but I stop when Naruto cries, "Are you all right, Kakashi-sensei?"

Kakashi has collapsed onto his back, only to be caught by Naruto and held upright. Kakashi's breathing is ragged, his face soaked with sweat as his Sharingan shines at me. "I think," he says, "the question is, are _you_, all right, Ren? That was quite the idea you had there."

"What in the world did you do?" asks Sakura weakly as my eyebrows knot together at Kakashi's current state, trying to compose myself as I wonder if I should thank him or shout at him for exhausting himself so heavily. Obviously, he'd been using the Sharingan earlier and then to pull a stunt like this—his chakra reserves must be at their bare minimum.

Winded, panting, Kakashi says, "I sent him and the explosion to another dimension," and the way he says it so dismissively, as though it's nothing we should be concerned about, tips me off the edge.

I take a deep, billowing breath and say, "_Sent him to another dimension_! Yeah, no big deal or anything. You could have just _wasted_ your chakra reserves and _died_! Kakashi," I say, stomping over to his side to examine him. I drum my fingers up his torso, measure his heart rate, and then press my hand to his forehead to make sure he hasn't put any unnecessary strain on his mind in order to _send a man to another dimension_, as I finish with, "I think you're secretly vain. Why else would you develop such showy moves? Who in their right mind—"

"What matters is," he says as I fume and motion for Naruto help Kakashi up, "everyone is safe."

I continue to glower at Kakashi as our teams cluster together, Gai making some absurd statement about how valiantly he and his team had fought and how he could see that we had done the same, and something about the vitality of the youth or whatever. From above, the Narutos leap down with Gaara between them, and I'm reminded of why we had come this far in the first place. I stop haggling Kakashi to look at Gaara, the way his body hangs over the shoulders of the Narutos, the way his feet drag against the grass.

One of the Narutos says, "Sakura-chan—Ren. Do you guys think maybe . . . ?" They gesture at Gaara, and Sakura and I exchange knowing looks. Chiyo, likewise, averts her eyes.

"Let's get out of this forest first," I say. "It's stuffy in here."

[+]

We take refuge in the field that the forest opens out into, and Naruto sets Gaara down in the grass as Sakura takes a spot beside him after Chiyo insists that she is okay to stand on her own. Sakura looks at me, quirking her eyebrows to see if I want to examine Gaara myself, but I shake my head, saying, "You're as capable as I am of calling this, Sakura."

She purses her lips, but nods and begins her examination, running her fingers along Gaara's torso to feel for life. Her face drops as she goes through the motions, her fingers moving more slowly as she finishes. She freezes, just over Gaara's chest.

"Sakura-chan," Naruto prompts, and she shakes her head, getting to her feet. Naruto blinks at her dumbly, and then turns to me. "Ren? What about—?"

I cut him off with a terse, "No."

Naruto's face falls, like he's wondering why I'm not trying harder to do more. For a minute I feel pressured to try, no matter how useless I know my efforts will be, but I hold my ground. No use giving Naruto a false sense of hope by stepping forward. No use giving myself a false sense of hope, either.

Naruto turns on his heels to look at Gaara again. Naruto's body trembles and he clenches his fists. He sniffles, but doesn't make a move to clear his face as he begins to cry. He demands, "Why was _Gaara_—always Gaara . . . to die like this . . . ! He's the _Kazekage_. He didn't just become _Kazekage_ to—"

"Relax, Uzumaki Naruto," Chiyo says from beside me, and something inside Naruto snaps.

He wheels around, glaring daggers as the tears continue to run down his face, and he shouts, "Shut up!"

Despite understanding how he feels, where his anger comes from as Gaara lies dead in front of us, I have more respect for Chiyo than to stand idly by and let her be attacked unwarranted. So I grab Naruto, pushing him away as he closes in on the old woman. I hiss, "Naruto, _stop_."

"No," he responds, shoving against me, and I can feel the stabbing malice laced in his words. "_No_. Because if you"—He jabs an accusatory finger at Chiyo.—"shinobi of the Sand hadn't put a monster inside Gaara, then nothing like this would have happened. Did you ask Gaara how he felt? What is this _jinchuuriki_ anyway? You just _arrogantly_ made up that word to call them."

He says this all in one breath, one rushing breath that catches up to his tears and makes him choke and gasp. He droops his head, wipes his tears as he heaves for the breaths he had missed, and he freezes like that, bent and defeated and so thoroughly heartbroken.

"I couldn't save Sasuke," he says, his body shaking as he suppresses the coming sobs. I bite the inside of my lip, feeling the tightness in my chest clamp over my lungs as Naruto hiccups. "And, now, I couldn't save Gaara. For three years, I trained desperately. But nothing's changed since then, has it?"

There is a silence, wherein we don't know what to say to Naruto. Kakashi and Sakura pointedly keep their gazes downcast and Chiyo stares at Gaara, her lips pursed together and her wrinkles darkened in the sunlight. I am the only one who watches Naruto, the way his shoulders heave, the way he keeps his teeth and fists clenched like it's taking everything he has not to explode.

I reach out to touch Naruto's shoulder, reassure him, ease his sorrow, but stop midway because I know in this moment when the wounds are still so fresh, words of comfort won't mean anything. Besides, I'm suffering myself. In Sunagakure, Gaara had been my best friend. He had been the one to train with me, the one to get me an apprenticeship under Chiyo, the one who always talked to me when I missed home. He would come to my defense when someone spoke ill against me—and surely, someone always would when we were in the presence of the village officials who eyed me with suspicion. After all, how could they trust a girl whose own village had disowned her?

But Gaara was there. He was always there, and I miss him so much.

This isn't all Naruto's fault. It never is solely one person's fault. Like he couldn't save Sasuke and Gaara, I too had failed in retrieving both. Sasuke, in the forest; Gaara, in the skies above Suna. They had both been so close, and by some error in my calculations, they had both been taken away.

Chiyo grabs my wrist, shoves my arm back to my side, and doesn't explain herself as she stalks past Naruto, a slight jerk to her step, but in one smooth motion she leans down and presses her hands to Gaara's stomach and an ethereal glow encases her hands up to her forearms. The chakra she releases draws the spirits close, pluming out with such ferocity that it ripples the leaves and sends her hair up in a flurry. The spirits simmer around her hands, seeping into her chakra and into Gaara's chest, and I realize what she's doing.

"Sensei," I protest. Or maybe I encourage. Because I know what's going to happen when she finishes her jutsu, and I can't help but feel a maelstrom of sadness and relief raging inside of me. "There is something I must do," she'd said. And this is it. She knows she's already about to die, and now she's expending the last of her life force for a good cause.

This does nothing to ease my pain.

Sakura offers her concern as well, but Chiyo merely glances at us over her shoulder, the faintest grin on her face as she murmurs, "It's fine. Everything will be fine."

"What're you doing now?" Naruto demands, and the insolence that remains in his voice makes me want to whirl around and punch him. But Chiyo, my sensei. Oh, good spirits, my sensei.

I see that retaliating with my anger won't do any good. So I stoop down beside my sensei, reach up to grab the feather that Rei graced me with, and begin muttering to the spirits, asking them to guide Chiyo's spirit through Gaara's and safely return his. I don't know any real prayers, but I know just spilling my heart out to the spirits will be enough. They are always sympathetic to the conditions of humans, that we are fragile and mortal and foolish.

I hear Chiyo chuckle, and say, "Those spirits again. Well, put in a good word for me, Ren."

_I will, I will_, I want to answer, _I always do_, but instead I bow my head lower, mutter faster, more fervently to the spirits for help, for strength, for guidance and blessing. For Chiyo and Gaara, and all of us, everyone one of us.

"What the hell are you doing!" Naruto shouts, and quietly, sharply, Sakura answers, "She's bringing Gaara back."


	61. There and Back Again

**Bound  
Chapter 61: There and Back Again**

This shuts him up.

The spirits quiver for as I smooth my thumb over the length of the feather. The spirits brush against me, calming me, but at the same time they are unsteady as they move. I lift my gaze to see if I can discern what's wrong, but it doesn't take much figuring: The glow of Chiyo's chakra is flickering, a dying flame, and she curses.

"Not enough chakra," she pants, gripping the loose fabric of Gaara's shirt.

"Use mine," I say immediately, reaching out to place my hands over hers, but she blocks me, shaking her head.

"If I do that," she says when I protest, "you won't make it. You don't have enough chakra to walk away from this technique without some of your life force being drained, too."

Naruto crouches down on the other side of Gaara, then, holding out his own hands. "Then use my chakra. Please," he says, leaning forward, all too willing. "Can you do that, old lady? I have enough, don't I?"

Chiyo blinks at Naruto, her eyes fuzzing over as she dives into her memories. I call her name when I feel the spirits tugging, threatening to spill out of Gaara and what parts of him that have been revived die again. We're running out of time. I take Naruto's hands myself and place them on top of Chiyo's. Even then she doesn't budge.

"Keep your hands here," I say, giving his fingers a reassuring squeeze before I pull away. "Focus your chakra into Chiyo's hands, _not into Gaara_. Do you understand? That's the only way she'll be able to manipulate it into the spirit energy needed to bring Gaara back. This is going to take a lot out of you, Naruto. Brace yourself, okay?"

He nods and I snap my fingers in front of Chiyo's face, calling her attention back to the present. "He's ready," I tell her. "On your mark."

She looks down, surprised to find his hands clasped over hers, and then nods as she realizes she can't keep dilly-dallying. "Go ahead, Naruto," she says, and he takes her cue.

His chakra pours out, pressing down the immediate blades of grass around us, and the spirits kick up again, whirling around Gaara. They weave through his body, sowing his life threads back together and unraveling Chiyo's. I can hear her breath go ragged, hear her lungs rattle as her heart loses thread after thread.

"I am glad," she says softly, keeping her gaze on Gaara while Naruto perks up at the sound of her voice, "that someone like you appeared in this world of shinobi that we old people created. In the past, everything I did was mistaken." Her voice crinkles, and I want to advise her to stop speaking, but I think about all the times people have died without saying what they wanted and turned into restless spirits. I think about my mother, and the way she had saved the last bits of her energy to tell me what she needed to say. I don't want Chiyo suffering like those poor souls, like my mother had. So I let her talk, though I know it's going to make it hard on her.

"At the very end," she says with a small smile, "it seems I am able to do something right. I am glad that the futures of the Sand and Leaf will be different from our pasts."

I take a handful of Chiyo's cloak, clenching my teeth at how weak she sounds. It's odd to hear her like this, finally slowing down in her old age in a way I would have never imagined her. Not my sensei, who had, despite the wrinkles on her face, always been the epitome of youth, more blazing and brilliant during my training than I ever was.

"Kakashi told me you have a mysterious power," Chiyo continues as a lump grows thickly in my throat and heart. "A power that may chance the future. So become a Hokage unlike any before, all right?"

"Say yes, Naruto," I whisper when Naruto only stares at her blankly. He jerks at the my voice, the way it breaks as my will to not cry pinches my throat, up to the back of my nose and eyes.

"Yes," Naruto agrees, and Chiyo chuckles.

"And Sakura," prompts Chiyo. "Do not risk your life for an old hag next time. Save that which is important to you. There are not many women like you with chivalrous spirits matching those of men, and in that way you are a lot like me. You may become a kunoichi surpassing your own master."

The spirits hitch. They are sowing the final threads, hemming the last of Gaara's life back into place. From beside her, I can feel Chiyo shaking, feel the effort that it takes her to remain sitting, and I would rather her save her breath than speak to me, though I would do anything to keep her talking, anything to have a way around losing her.

"And you, Ren," she says, and I lean my head onto her shoulder, pressing my face into her scarf, which promptly dampens with my tears. She lets out a rumbling laugh that could pass off as a lung-shattering cough, and leans her head right back against me so that I can feel the vibrations of her voice sinking into me. "You have the right attitude, the right amount of spunk to become all the best parts of me and everything I wish I could have been. You will absolutely surpass me, in all your endeavors. I couldn't have hoped for a better apprentice."

"Besides someone from your own village, you mean," I say, trying my best to keep my tone light, but my runny nose makes me sound bitter.

Chiyo laughs again, and this time she sounds almost normal, somehow revitalized. "No," she whispers into my hair. "Not even then. In you, the Sand and the Leaf come together. Along with Naruto and Sakura and Gaara, you will lead a great generation, one that will set aside their differences for the better. One that will unite. There is no one who I would trust more than you to carry on my teachings, and use them in all the ways I wish I could have."

"Sensei," I choke, gripping her cloak as I feel her energies fading, feel her ready to fall apart as I cry into her shoulder, but she shushes me and says, "Everything will be all right. _You_ will be all right. Do not lament for an old lady who has lived out her life."

This only makes me cry harder, hold on tighter, pray to the spirits louder that Chiyo will have a safe passage, that she will manage to look after me still when she is gone. Because I want her to see me succeed, want her to see me make her proud as I set out with my friends to build the future she hopes for.

"Naruto," she says, and the fatigue is back in her voice. The spirits begin to fade, the last of her life threads seeping into Gaara. "A request from an old hag. You are the only one who can know Gaara's pain. Gaara also knows your pain. So please. Help . . . help Gaara out . . . "

She winces, grunts, and then her eyes flutter closed. "Granny!" Naruto cries as her hands slip out from beneath his and I gasp, "Chiyo!" reaching out my arms and catching her as she falls at the same time Sakura swoops down to brace her.

"Chiyo," I say again, and, god, it hurts to say her name, like I'm losing a part of her every time it leaves my mouth, but what if it wakes her up? What if my prompting brings her impossibly back to life?

"Chiyo-sensei?" I say, sweeping the hair that plastered to her forehead out of her face. The color is already fading from her face, the warmth leaking from her skin. She doesn't stir. "Chiyo-sensei."

"I've got her," Sakura says, but I'm reluctant to let go until she says, "You need to check on Gaara, Ren."

"Gaara," I repeat, and then, with more understanding, "Gaara!"

Sakura nods, reassuring me that she has Chiyo, and I turn around, scooting over as Sakura pulls Chiyo away so that I have more room to examine Gaara. I stop, my hands hovering over his chest as I take in his face, how pale he still is before I lean forward, pressing my fingers to his chest, drumming them down his stomach to make sure his vital organs are all in order. I flatten my hands over his chest, closing my eyes to focus the vibrations on his keirakukei and make sure his chakra flows in the right direction, at the perfect speed.

During my examination of him, I feel the vibrations reverberating in the ground. People are coming—reinforcements arriving at last. Dozens of them, all geared up to fight for Gaara, running toward us as fast as they can.

As I finish up, I hear someone shout, "I've found them!" and listen as the grass rustles beneath the stampede, their voices crashing together in a maelstrom of concern and fear as they see me beside Gaara, who, to their untrained eyes, lies lifeless in front of me.

Only two people fall down beside Gaara as the crowd settles around us, their whispers dying as someone says, "How is he? Ren, do you know?"

I go over the last of Gaara's keirakukei web and lift my hand to place over Gaara's head to make sure his brain functions have also caught up to speed with his body. Being revived must be a shock for his nervous system because his brain struggles to receive the natural operations of his body, but I jump start it, converting my chakra into soft electric shocks and adjusting the chemicals in his brain to their optimal levels. And then every part of him is functioning perfectly. Trust my sensei to work out such an excellent technique.

If only it didn't have such painful consequences.

"Ah, all these people," Naruto mutters, and I smile, thinking back on how I couldn't believe it either when I'd first arrived here and found he was so well-received by the village that had shunned him. But he had proved himself to them—that he isn't the monster they thought he was, that he could care and love and protect them as well as any of the past Kazekage—and while I'm jealous of all the admirers Gaara seems to have now, I'm comforted by the fact that he is one of my closest friends.

And, of course, by the fact that he will continue to be my friend because he is alive.

"Is he all right?" asks Naruto when I open my eyes. Beside him, Temari scours my face for an answer as Kankuro looms over Naruto's shoulder, his eyebrows knotted together as he prepares for the worst. "He's still not moving. Ren, is he—"

I take Naruto's hand, bring it up to Gaara's chest, and hold it against his heart. Naruto startles, and then his lips break into a smile as I say, "He's all right. He's alive. It'll take a moment for him to wake up. Such is a side effect from having just been risen from the dead."

The shinobi lining the inner circle of the crowd hear me and cheer, pumping their fists into the air, and soon the good news has spread completely. There are whoops and hollers and the sound of people high-fiving. Temari lets out a sigh of relief and Kankuro inclines his head to the side, as though he had known better than to be concerned.

I'm in the middle of ordering a shinobi back to the village to prepare a bed for Gaara when someone from the crowd lets out a mangled gasp and says, "Ah! Kazekage-sama!"

I cut off, watching as, sure enough, Gaara pushes himself up. I take his arm gently, helping him sit, and he freezes in my hold, like he can't quite believe that I'm here. Or maybe that _he's_ here.

He raises his eyes to meet mine, and they shine brighter than I remember, and I can't help thinking about how his chakra feels hauntingly like Chiyo's under the mask of chakra that is his, unadulterated, without the slightest stigma of the Ichibi.

Naruto takes Gaara's shoulder, adding to Gaara's surprise, and smiles as he greets the other boy.

"N-aruto," says Gaara. "Ren. I—this," he stutters with eyes wide as saucers as he looks around at the shinobi gathered around him, shinobi who cheer and clap and ask after him to make sure he's truly okay.

"Everyone came running to save you!" explains Naruto, grinning wildly at the sound of Gaara's voice. "You put us through a lot of trouble."

"For sure," Kankuro agrees, leaning down to be level with Gaara. Kankuro smirks, ruffles Gaara's hair, and says, "I never thought you were going to be a little brother I always have to worry about."

"Hey, don't go getting all complacent," Temari says. "Gaara's still the Kazekage, so don't be so cheeky—you're still underlings." Naruto and Kankuro scowl at Temari as she leans forward, pushing Naruto out of the way in the process, to inspect her brother. She asks, "Gaara, how _are_ you feeling?"

In reply, he brings his foot up, testing his legs, and then braces himself on his knee as he tries to stand. Temari and I stop him immediately and Temari says, "You shouldn't be in such a hurry to move. Your body's not back to full health yet."

"Take it from a medic," I say as Gaara tries to wave us away. "A few more moments of rest, and I might just let you walk home by yourself."

"But," he says slowly. "How is it—"

Two girls break from the crowd around us, rushing up to Gaara and gushing something about how strong he is and how they knew he would make it. They shove Naruto out of their way, pressing in so close that the hair of one of the girls whaps me in the face. Temari shoots to her feet and barricades an even more so stunned Gaara from their squeals and blushing.

"Girls," I mutter, brushing my hair from my face as my eye twitches at their protests. "They're the same everywhere. You all right, Naruto?"

Naruto frowns, says pathetically with his wounded pride, "Yeah. I guess _I'm_ still just a Genin."

"Don't feel bad about it," Kankuro comforts, crouching beside him. "Women are always weak at the knees for the cool elite types."

Naruto sighs, saying, "Mm, I remember Shikamaru saying something like that, too."

But the fact that Naruto doesn't get any admiration doesn't bother him for long as he watches Temari forcibly turn the girls around and usher them back into the crowd before they leave Gaara alone. I mirror his expression, rubbing my thumb against Gaara's cheek where dirt has smeared his skin. He flinches, unused to the gesture, and I laugh.

"It's good having you back," I tell him quietly. "Back in the village, I thought I lost you. Imagine the weight on my shoulders, being that I lost the _Kazekage_, and after all you'd done for me. I'm in your debt again, you know. I thought, once I'd saved your life, I would never owe you another goddamn thing."

"No," Gaara says, and we both turn our heads when we hear Kankuro say it at the same time. But Kankuro regards Chiyo, his face sagging with regret, and Naruto blinks at him in alarm. I don't have to think hard to know what they're discussing, and I tighten my hold on Gaara's arm.

"That was no medical ninjutsu," Kankuro says. "It was a tensei ninjutsu. Chiyo is dead."

Slow as ever to understand—or maybe reluctant—Naruto asks, "What—what are you saying?"

"A tensei ninjutsu," explains Kankuro, and I notice, hovering over Chiyo, an old man with the same sunken features, the same crumpled posture like Chiyo used to stand. Even Ebizo has come here, out of his tower at last, and from the way he catches my eye, I think he had a feeling about the fate of his sister. "It restores life in exchange for the user's own. At one time, in the Sand's puppet squad, people tried to research and develop a jutsu that would give life to puppets, and Chiyo led the study. She worked out the theory behind the jutsu, but in the middle of the study, before anyone was able to experiment, she said the risk was too high, designated it a forbidden jutsu, and sealed it away."

"'_I'm just playing dead,'_" Ebizo says as he looks down at his sister, his sunken eyes shadowed by the sunlight. "I keep expecting her to laugh out loud and say that, don't you, Ren-chan?"

I purse my lips, feeling the pain welling up in my lungs again, piercing my throat.

"Such a peaceful expression she has on her face now," sighs Ebizo, and I press my cheek to my shoulder, soaking up the tears I start to cry, sniffling as Gaara gives me a sidelong glance.

"Naruto, you really are a mysterious person," Temari says, turning to look at Chiyo, too. "You have the power to change people. Chiyo-sama was always saying how she didn't care about the future of the village. She wasn't the kind of person who would do something like this for Gaara."

"It was by a miracle alone," I agree, wiping my face, my runny nose, and thinking offhandedly about how much of a mess I must be right now, "that she even took me as an apprentice. But I think I learned a little bit from you about how to deal with stubborn people, Naruto, which helped me sway her enough."

"Chiyo-sama entrusted the future to you and Gaara," Kakashi says. "To the next generation of shinobi. A truly fitting last moment for a shinobi."

Naruto keeps his gaze on the ground, his eyebrows drawn together in sadness. Then he whispers, "The same as Sandaime." He takes a deep breath, one that opens his shoulders, and raises his head. " . . . yeah," he says. "I understand."

"Ren," Gaara says quietly, catching my attention. He offers me his arm, and I nod, helping him stand. He grunts, drawing the concern of the girls who had ambushed him earlier, but I wave them off. Naruto comes to Gaara's side, takes his other arm, and together we lift him up.

Once he's on his feet, Naruto and I let him go, and he approaches Chiyo, regarding her warmly.

"Everybody," he says and my tears well up again. I press my face into the crook of my elbow, feel a hand come down on my shoulder in comfort. "Say a prayer for Chiyo."

[+]

We stay for the funeral, to pay our respects. And then I pack all my things and prepare to go home with my friends.

It's odd leaving the Sand after all this. At the same time, everything is the way it's supposed to be, and I am happier than I have ever been, even with my shishou gone. I know that I will love her more than I could ever miss her, and knowing that she's still alive in Gaara, in the hope she entrusted to me and Naruto and Sakura—I couldn't think of a better way for her legacy to live on.

Still, I linger at Chiyo's headstone, my hand smoothing off the dust that has already gathered from the blowing winds. I pray to the spirits for her, that she finds the afterlife to her liking—not too dull, not too complacent, and that there is a place for her to fish and laugh harder at the irony of her _I'm just pretending to play dead!_ jokes that I'm sure she'll use on the other souls.

A hand comes to my shoulder, jolting me out of my prayer. Sakura is beside me, saying, "Ren. We have to go."

"Yeah," I say, and one last time, I lean down and kiss Chiyo's headstone, whispering, "I hope I make you proud, Chiyo-sensei. Look out for me."

I move away before Sakura does, following after Naruto as he meets up with Kakashi and Team Gai. Kakashi has his arm draped over Gai's shoulders, being that his body can't move after using his Sharingan—I shiver—to such an extent.

I frown at him as I approach, saying, "You'll never learn, will you, Kakashi?"

"Ah, I suppose not," he says, more stricken than usual. Probably because Gai has promised to carry Kakashi home for the whole three day trip, saying something dramatic about a challenge and the metaphorical nature of the fact that he's carrying his mortal enemy or something or other.

I sigh, and then move in to hug Kakashi as well as I can with Gai attached to him. "Thanks, though," I say into his shoulder. "For always keeping us safe, sensei."

Kakashi is stunned as I detach from him, but he grins widely and I roll my eyes as I motion our teams forward, toward the village gates. Sakura and Naruto walk at my side, and I can't help thinking about how familiar this all feels, how glad I am for it. To finally be going home.

"What's with the plant?" Naruto asks me, flicking one of the spindly leaves of the potted plant I've been cradling in my arms and breaking the nostalgia I feel. I kick his shin in retaliation, holding my plant away from him.

"Haru gave it to me," I say as Naruto hobbles around on one leg, griping about how unnecessary my attack was. "As a parting gift. It's a plant that's native only to the Sand Country, so I'll have a piece of it with me always."

"That is so sweet," Sakura coos, clasping her hands together. "I think he likes you, Ren. You know," she says when I raise my brow, "_likes_ you. I kind of noticed it when I went into the greenhouse the first time. He says the sweetest things about you. It makes me wonder if you haven't brainwashed him or something."

I roll my eyes at Sakura sentimentality, and say, "He's fond of the Fire Country and the abundance of flora we have there. If anything, he's attached to me because I'm the closest thing he has to that kind of beauty."

Sakura smirks and says, "That only makes me believe he's in love with you even more."

I shake my head at her hopelessness, although I should have expected that from Sakura, and she laughs and says, "What, is he not your type?"

Naruto makes a gagging noise and crosses his arms, turning his nose up at the subject. "Can we please skip all this girly talk?" he says. "There are men here who need to retain some of their dignity, right, Kakashi-sensei?"

"Hmm? What are you talking about?"

I lean into Naruto as his shoulder slump and say, "Hey, I'm with you on this one."

"Well," Sakura says, waving her hand back and forth as though all the points she's going to make will be obvious and right on target. "I think we all know exactly what your type is, Ren."

"Humor me," I say, adjusting the plant so I can hold it more comfortably.

"You prefer the subtle-type," she says, nudging me with her elbow. "Quiet, but a profound thinker. Skilled and tactful in battle, obviously, but not boastful about it. Borderline _lazy_"—she grins and I scowl, turning from her.—"but responsible when it matters."

"Wait a second," Naruto says and Kakashi peers over at us, suddenly interested. "That sounds a lot like—" Naruto yelps and jumps away from me, shuddering and pointing an accusatory finger as he proclaims, "Ren, you have a crush on _Kakashi-sensei_?"

I laugh as Kakashi sighs at Naruto's idiocy. I say, "I've really missed having you around, Naruto."

"There you are!"

The voice echoes through the fissure that cuts through the village gates and acts as a buffer between Suna and the desert beyond. I recognize the voice quickly, being that I've heard it almost every day since I've been here, and grow weary just as fast, knowing what I have to look forward to when Temari speaks.

"You Leaves!" she says, propping her hands on her hips and scowling as we approach. I sigh, knowing why Shikamaru had express his fear of Temari to me all those months ago. More than anything, though, she's is troublesome in that she always finds some kind of flaw in you to pick on. For example.

"Always slow and inconsiderate to others," she says. "Do you know how long we've been waiting for you?"

"In any case," I say, sweeping my hair over my shoulder. "Thanks for seeing us off."

"I guess," Naruto says, blushing and scratching his cheek, "this is when you normally shake hands and part ways, but I'm kind of bad at this thing, so—"

Gaara offers his hand, cutting Naruto off, but still Naruto doesn't move, apparently too stunned by Gaara's kindness to react. I nudge him to urge him to reciprocate the parting. Even then, he doesn't move until Gaara's sand wraps around his fingers and brings his hands up for them to shake. Naruto smiles at the gesture and I mirror his expression before taking my turn to say goodbye.

I hug Gaara, squeezing him around the shoulders tightly. "Thank you," I say. "For everything you've done for me. I owe you one. Again. I couldn't have asked for a better friend while I was here."

I linger for a few moments, holding onto him because he is the part of this village that I will have trouble leaving the most. Just as I'm about to let go, I feel his arms go around my torso, returning my hug, and hear his soft voice say, "Neither could I. So we're even."

I laugh as I let him go, patting his cheek and making him wince. Temari says, "Hey, what did I say about getting complacent? He's still the Kazekage!"

"I'll tell Shikamaru you said hi, Temari," I say, winking at her, and she rolls her eyes. "See you, Kankuro. Thank you all for your kindness!"

And then I am going home and laughing as Gai struggles to keep up with our pace with Kakashi dragging at his side before Gai decides to swing Kakashi onto his back and race across the Sand dunes. Sakura mutters something about intimacy and trudges after them, looking disturbed, and ignoring Lee as he asks Neji to jump onto his back in order to mimic their master's 'training'. Naruto leans in to speak to me, asking if I think Sakura would be willing to follow in Gai and Kakashi's footsteps with him, an inquiry I quickly shoot down.

Naruto scowls, sullen and disappointed, but then his eyes spark as he notices something. "You're wearing your headband," he says, and I look up, see the navy blue cloth of it sinking down my brow.

I tap push it up and smile, saying, "Of course. I'm a shinobi of Konoha, aren't I?"

Naruto grins ear to ear, and then runs to catch up with Gai, Lee following after him and asking if Naruto would like to help him mimic his master's training.

I readjust the plant again, brushing the leaves so that they aren't crushed against my chest. The plant is a dull green and small buds where flowers are going to bloom have already sprouted, and I hope that I can keep it alive until I get home. I take a deep breath at the thought of home, looking ahead into the horizon where I can see the trail of dust that Gai has left in his wake, like a pathway.

In all honesty: I'm scared. Going home, being with Sakura and Naruto again, remembering what they want and being reminded of what they want, I'm sure it'll bring out the worst in me. Being around Sasuke, even the idea of him, always does that to me. And in Konoha, Sasuke is everywhere.

But now, I realize, I can't escape it. No matter how much I run, I will eventually have to face my demons. It's better that I face them as they come than let them gather their forces, overwhelm me, and then consume me. And better that I fight them with my friends than on my own.

[+]

"Where's Naruto gone?" Sakura asks, pulling off her headband and looking around as we move out onto the terrace of the Konoha hospital, where we've just finished settling Kakashi into a bed after freeing him from Gai upon our return home. We're waiting on Tsunade to arrive so she can check up on Kakashi and so we can fill her in on the smaller details of the mission, namely the part where Sasori had told us where to meet with Orochimaru in the next week.

I have a sense of unease thinking about Orochimaru, but I brush it off quickly as Sakura mumbles, still trying to find Naruto, "He came out right before us, didn't he?"

"He's on the roof," I say, pointing skyward. Sakura follows the point of my finger and, sure enough, there is a bright streak of orange bustling about on the edge of the rooftop. "Must still get a kick out of seeing the village after all this time, huh?"

Sakura sighs like Naruto's childish behavior can't be helped and says, "What about you? Don't you want to see it?"

"I was only gone six months," I say, shrugging as I lean up against the railing that burns hot in the sun. I'm careful to keep my sleeves between the metal and my skin as I look over the at the crooked buildings in the village. "Besides, it's more _people_ I want to see than anything."

Sakura smiles at me knowingly and is cut off from speaking before she even starts by the husky voice of the most powerful woman in the village. Tsunade steps onto the terrace with her hands on her hips like she's bracing her back to bear the weight of her enormous chest and says, "We'll get to that in another second, won't we? For now, we have more pressing matters at hand."

Sakura and I stand straighter, but Tsunade waves us down and comes up beside me. She leans against the rail and takes a deep breath, inhaling the village like it's the secret to keeping her young, and says, "How did you like your time in the Sand Village, Ren?"

"Brilliantly," I say. "Except I can tell you I prefer the climate of the Fire Country much more."

"Of course," says Tsunade as though that isn't even debatable. Turning to face us, she props her arms on the rail and asks, "Now, then. What is it that you need to tell me? Team Gai says you've found leads to Orochimaru."

I stiffen, exchange a look with Sakura. She gives me a look that says _go ahead_, but I wish she would have taken the lead. I say, "Before Sasori of the, uh, Sand was defeated, he revealed that he has a subordinate in Orochimaru's ranks. He told us when and where he and his subordinate were going to meet next to share information, and we think the subordinate might be able to give us Orochimaru's—whereabouts."

The mere sound of Orochimaru's name wears me out. Not a day back in the village and already I'm being barraged by concerns about Orochimaru and Sa—

I clear my throat and Sakura gets the cue to take control of the conversation. "In six days," she says, "Sasori is going to meet with his spy at the Tenchi Bridge in Kusagakure. This would be the perfect chance for us to infiltrate Orochimaru's ranks and find Sasuke."

Tsunade frowns, pursing her lips. "And what if it's a trap?" she asks. "With Orochimaru as bait, Akatsuki could be waiting at the bridge to ambush you."

"You think the possibility of an ambush would deter kids who willingly rushed in to an Akatsuki hideout in the Sand?" I ask with a scoff.

"That was different."

The voice takes me by surprise, but the indignation in the voice does not, once I realize who's speaking. It's Shizune, Tsunade's right hand woman. She's a practical lady, always knocking down our brash ideas in favor of her more calculated ones, and because of that, she comes off as snobby and uptight. Not to mention, in our first conversation with each other, Shizune and I got off on the wrong foot, and so I avoid looking at her as best I can.

She has her eyes narrowed at me as she speaks. "You had Chiyo of the Sand to guide you then," she says, and my breath catches at the sound of Chiyo's name. "Not to mention, you had previously encountered one of the two Akatsuki members while trying to save the Kazekage, didn't you? You had basic knowledge of both before entering your respective fights, whereas, at this bridge, you'll be barreling in blind."

"Regardless," Sakura says. "If it is a trap, we'll fight. We'll manage."

"You say you'll fight," Tsunade says, "but the two of you have seen Kakashi. As medics and his pupils, you should know he'll be on bed rest for at least a week. There are only six days until the meeting. We'll have to form a new team."

"Tsunade-sama," Shizune says, stepping forward. "You should just send a different team to investigate. Even if you send Sakura and—Ren, you must leave Naruto-kun out."

I scowl at the way she says my name, like I still can't be trusted, and Tsunade eyes me like she's hoping I won't notice Shizune's tone. I ruffle my hair for something to do and listen as Tsunade says, "Shizune, I am definitely sending Sakura's team on the mission. Like you, Sakura is one of the few shinobi I can trust in."

"Wouldn't it be the same if my team went, then?" Shizune protests.

"No, it wouldn't," she says. "Both Sakura and Naruto are desperately chasing their old teammate, Sasuke. They strongly believe more than anyone in rescuing him. Those convictions will bring the mission to success. That's what makes you and Sakura different."

There is a notable lack of reference to me, but I don't mind. Since I don't choose to interject, however, Sakura watches me carefully, like she expects me to smirk and say, "Did you actually believe me when I said I'd help bring Sasuke back?"

That's not the case. I intend to help. But I don't need to let everyone know where I stand just so I can prove my loyalty. It's a true test of trust, I think. If this village believes I'm as reformed as Gaara has reported, then they won't think twice of sending me on this mission with Naruto and Sakura, despite how much animosity I still harbor toward Sasuke.

"Understood," Shizune says reluctantly. "But for this mission, Naruto-kun—"

"Well," Tsunade says, inclining her head toward the sky, "now that you've heard all of it, what do you have to say?"

Naruto appears at the edge of the rooftop, grinning widely as he stands with his feet apart and arms crossed. He says, "I'll go looking for members right away!"

He flips off the roof, lands on the rail beside Tsunade, and then leaps across the rooftops, going god knows where. I frown at him as he shrinks in the distance and say, "Idiot. What's he think, that _he's_ going to be team captain on this mission? I'm not going under his lead."

Tsunade complains about Naruto always rushing off before she can finish speaking, but by the look on her face, I can tell she finds Naruto's actions endearing. She says as she pushes off the rail, "I'll find the replacement for Kakashi. Tell Naruto."

"I'll handle it. I should probably pick up my plant from Kakashi's room first, though. He got so nervous when I set it down on his nightstand, like he thought I was giving him a potted plant to tie him down to the hospital forever," I say, and Sakura laughs just as someone else steps onto the terrace and says, "Tsunade."

We turn and I blink as our village Elders stand in front of us, framed by the doorway. Their faces are wrinkled and severe, and I wonder if they are the same age as Chiyo and Ebizo. And then my stomach turns and I promptly stop thinking.

Their eyes skim our faces, locking on mine. Their frowns deepen and they raise their chins, looking down their noses at me. As they open their mouths to comment, however, I jump over the rail of the terrace and drop into the streets below.

Tactless, I know, but I don't want to deal with them, especially when they were the ones who had helped Tsunade decide to banish me. Even though, in the end, I made my own decision to leave the village, I don't need to hear their snarky remarks about how the black sheep of the village has returned with a murky coat of grey—not quite the model citizen they were hoping for, but acceptable enough they supposed.

It's the condescension that I wanted to get away from more than anything. It takes too much to change people who have been snobby for as long as the Elders have been, though. It's never enough for them.


	62. Compromise

**A/N:** Something to keep in mind: Ren and Sasuke are bound by a bond thicker than blood; they are always together. Always. Their time will come.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy and have a fantastic week. And thank you so much for reading.

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**Bound  
Chapter 62: Compromise**

I have a harder time finding Naruto than I would have liked. I don't know where to begin, for one. But I figure that if I start walking in a general direction, I'll find him somehow.

There is so much more to look at in Konoha than in Suna. Not to say that Suna was all heat and sand dunes and houses made out of dirt. They had shops draped with pretty, colorful, intricately designed banners, streets full of people hustling and bustling about like here. They were alive. But sand and cloth can't beat the aliveness of trees in a cool breeze, their songs wafting the fragrances of the earth in your face and humbling you. The Sand doesn't beat the colors available to us with the flowers and fruits our trees and brush bear. The Sand doesn't beat home.

I'm so distracted by the trees and birds and aliveness, in fact, that I don't watch where I'm going and bump into someone who lets out a dainty little yelp and begins to apologize immediately, despite the collision being wholly my fault.

"It's all right," I say, rubbing my shoulder where I had rammed into the girl. "I wasn't—Hinata!"

She looks up with a jerk, her face flushed pink, and gapes in surprise. "Ren-san," she says, blinking at me rapidly, as though waiting for me to disappear. "You're back."

"That's right," I say with a grin. "How have you been! I've missed training with you, Hinata."

She turns a deeper shade of red, taps her fingers together out of force of habit, and says, "I—I've been well. And you? You must have gotten much stronger after training in the Sand for so long."

And there it is: the half-truth we had told my friends to get me out of the village. Why does it seem like, whenever I return to the village, another excuse has to be made up for me? So much hiding. So many lies.

They're finally getting to me.

"I'm going to meet with Shino-kun and Kiba-kun right now," she says, pointing the way from which I'd just come. "We're meeting for a mission. Do you want to see them as well?"

"Why not?" I say with a shrug. "I'm looking for Naruto, anyway. What are the chances he's nearby? Have you seen him? Ah—hey, Hinata!" I shout when I notice her paling and swaying slightly. I take her shoulder and fan her, examining her eyes as I ask, "Are you all right?"

"N-N-Naruto-kun is back?" she stutters, gripping my arm. "B-but when? I-I—"

"_That's_ what you're worried about?" I say, sighing at her hopelessness. I take her around the shoulders and lead her in the direction she had pointed and say, "Don't fret, Hinata. Remember, during our training, what I said about being cool and confident? And you're prettier than you've ever been! With your hair all grown out, I'm sure Naruto will—"

We hear shouting up ahead and stop mid-stride. One of the voices I can make out sounds like Kiba, and when I hear a howl following after, I'm sure of it. "Sounds like Kiba's causing a ruckus, as always," I say, peering around the corner and catching sight of the boy and a massive dog of creamy white standing beside him. "And, hey, looks like Shino's here, too. Come on, Hinata."

I urge her into the open as she's apparently still too in shock from hearing about Naruto to move on her own. I'm about snap and tell her to man up before she lets out another yelp and then ducks back behind the fence we've just rounded.

"Hinata!" I say, my patience wearing. "What are you—"

"Ren!" Kiba yells, waving me down, and Akamaru bounds up to me, his tongue flailing as he prepares to pounce. I brace myself for the assault when I notice a brilliant blob of orange standing beside Kiba and manage to say, "Naruto?" before Akamaru tackles me and pins me to the ground.

I groan in disgust as Akamaru licks my face, and then start to laugh as he nuzzles his nose under my neck. "Akamaru, hey, just—_off_ won't you? I'm here for Naruto!"

Akamaru lets out a whine and steps off of me as Naruto and Kiba jog to my side, pulling me to my feet. Shino follows at a much easier pace, and I greet him as Naruto asks, "What'd you scream for, Ren?"

"That wasn't me," I say, wiping my face of Akamaru's slobber. I point to Hinata, who is still taking cover behind the fence, and Naruto slips up next to her, demands, "Hey, Hinata, what are you hiding for!"

I'm petting Akamaru and asking Shino how he manages to see his blind spots with clothes that cover so much of his face when I hear a _thud_. Hinata has crumpled to the ground, her face a dangerous shade of red, like she's blistering from being out in the sun too much, and Naruto kneels down, fanning her and saying, "Hey, Hinata! What are you falling over for! Hinata!"

"Why do you always faint when you see, Naruto?" asks Kiba, scowling as I push past him to help Hinata up.

"You mean you _knew_ she was going to faint and you didn't bother trying to catch her?" I retort. "She could have gotten a concussion!"

"Naruto," Shino says severely. "You recognized Hinata right away, too."

"Oh, no one could recognize you underneath that kind of cloak and with your shirt pulled all the way up to your nose," I say as Kiba crouches down to help brace Hinata. I pull her to her feet as she comes to. "Are you all right, Hinata?"

She stutters something that, when put together, I'm sure is, "Fine," and avoids everyone's eyes as she continues to blush. I grab Naruto by the wrist and drag him away from Team Kurenai before he causes any more damage, waving to them in the distance as I say, "That girl is hopeless. What were you doing bothering them for, anyway, Naruto?"

"I wasn't _bothering_ them," Naruto says, frowning as he crosses his arms. "I'm trying to recruit people to Team Kakashi so we can get to the Tenchi Bridge as soon as possible. But Team Kurenai is going off on a mission today, so none of them can come."

"Recruiting people," I repeat, scoffing. I stuff my hands into my pockets as we walk and roll my eyes. "That's technically Tsunade's job, you know. I suggest you leave it to her being that we're going to need a _captain_ for our team, not another cell member."

"I could be captain!"

"Says the only Genin left in our group."

"Ah, that's right," he says, less offended than I'd expected. "You're a Chuunin too, aren't you, Ren? That's it!" he says, pounding a fist into the palm of his hand, before I can answer. "I know who to ask!"

"Naruto, leave it," I say as he runs ahead of me. Indefatigable, this one, despite having just returned from a three day journey across endless desert and forests. "Tsunade is just going to assign us a new captain anyway. Naruto!"

I sigh and run after him, dodging prospective buyers and vendors with their trolleys and side-stepping children who chase each other. It isn't until we reach a more serious part of town, where a few ninja administration buildings are scattered around that I wonder who Naruto could possibly have in mind. At least he's thinking more along the lines of recruiting a team captain, instead of taking the lead himself in this mission. As much as I trust Naruto to do the right thing, I'm not sure I would be totally comfortable under his leadership in such a fragile mission.

Which begs the question of whether I'm truly going to go. Shizune had seemed reluctant enough to mention me, even hypothetically. If she had her way, neither Naruto nor I would get to go on the mission. But Tsunade was adamant about Naruto, that much I could tell, and it's only convenient to bring me along. That way, they won't have to search for another member of the team or worry about disrupting the balance of Team Kakashi further by adding another unfamiliar member.

I catch up with Naruto at last in front of a building labeled 'Chuunin Exam Preparatory Committee'. He's arguing passionately with a man who huffs and then stomps off, leaving the door open. Naruto leans in, peers around, and scowls. He steps away and looks around this part of the village, obviously not very familiar with it, and I ask, "Do you even have any idea what you're doing?"

Naruto jumps like he's surprised that I had managed to follow him this far. He says, frown deepening in annoyance, "Of course I do! And I'm looking for a cell leader to replace Kakashi-sensei, just like you said."

"Is that so? And who exactly are you—ahhh," I say as boy emerges from the building just then, his hands shoved into his pockets and his shoulders slumped as though he can't be bothered to look presentable. He looks between Naruto and me for a second, and then does a double take when his eyes land on me.

"Shikamaru!" I say, gathering him up into a hug that causes him to stumble slightly. I have to stand on my toes to reach over his shoulders and nearly lose my balance in the process.

"Ren," he says, stunned, pressing a hand to my back to brace me. "You're home."

I laugh at the surprise in his voice, at the mere _sound_ of his voice, actually, and hold him tightly, breathe deeply, close my eyes and smell the unadulterated scent of Shikamaru, and, yes, I am home.

"I came home from the Sand with Naruto and Sakura just this morning," I say as I release him, my face pocketed by the buttons on his flak jacket. "I figured it only made sense to return with them when they came to the Sand."

"To get to the point," Naruto says, shoving me out of the way. I curse at him as I stumble on my own feet. Shikamaru holds his hand out to stop me too late and I crash into the side of the building, shaking the sign overhead. Naruto doesn't notice. "Shikamaru! Do you want to become an honorary member of Team Seven and go to the Tenchi Bridge in Kusagakure to intercept an Akatsuki spy, track down Orochimaru, and bring Sasuke back? Kakashi-sensei is on bed-rest, so we need a cell leader to replace him."

Shikamaru blinks at Naruto, frowning at the string of nonsensical requests coming out of his mouth, and then turns to me as though to reaffirm what he's heard. I say, "He's not joking. That's really the plan. What?" I say, furrowing my brow when Shikamaru continues to stare at me like he still doesn't understand.

"_Well_?" Naruto prompts, waving his hand in front of Shikamaru's face to get his attention. "What do you say? Come on, Shikamaru, we could use your brains for this mission!"

Shikamaru huffs, irritated, and says, "Like I told you before when you first came home: It's troublesome, but I have to sort out the entrants for the Chuunin exam. I know we have a sort of friendship thing—" I laugh and Naruto makes a sullen face at Shikamaru's aloofness. "—and I'd like to help you out, but I can't," Shikamaru says, shifting on his feet. "If it makes you feel any better, I can't do what _I_ want either. It's that Godaime. You'd think I get enough nagging from my mother."

"Still being bullied, huh, Shika?" I say, flicking his nose. He flinches and whaps my hand away. "Don't worry. Now that I'm back, I'll protect you."

"So who's supposed to come with us?" fumes Naruto. "We're running out of options here."

"I'll give you a hand."

Shikamaru quirks his brow and looks over Naruto's shoulder as Naruto and I turn to find Chouji with a bag of chips in one hand and a neatly wrapped bento box in the other. He holds the bento out in offering. I beam at it as he says, "Shikamaru, here's the lunch your mom asked me to bring you. Hmm? Ren, is that you?" he asks as I sweep in and take the bento from him.

"That's right," I say with a wink. "Nice to see you again, Chouji. And thank you for the food. I haven't had anything but all that nasty dry stuff in the shinobi packs. Not to mention Yoshino-san's cooking is gift from the gods."

I begin to unwrap Shikamaru's lunch, much to his dismay, as Naruto brighten at the new prospective member of our team.

"Chouji," Shikamaru says, eyeing me as I lick my lips and drop a rice ball into my mouth. "Are you sure you can commit so easily? Don't you have a mission with Asuma-sensei and Ino?"

"We can't just ignore Naruto's request," Chouji says. "I'll try to talk to Asuma-sensei about it."

"That's what I like to hear," Naruto says, giving Chouji a wink and a thumbs-up that is almost reminiscent of Gai and Lee's pose, although it's considerably lackluster. "Thanks a lot, Chouji!"

"Even if you ask, Asuma-sensei," Shikamaru sighs, "he'll still say no. He has Tsunade-sama standing over him, too, after all."

Chouji shrugs as he dips his hand into his chip bag and starts to snack. Naruto laughs at the familiarity of it and starts to say something that I don't listen to because I feel the vibrations pick up. Small amounts of chakra being released at one end of the street. I turn, but don't see anything out of the ordinary. I'm about to dismiss the feeling when, from down the street, I see a mass of black moving toward us. I step back, alarmed, and, catching my movement, Shikamaru and Chouji glance my way.

Swiftly, Shikamaru tackles Naruto to the ground. Chouji throws his bag of chips aside as his fist triples in size and I leap up, jumping onto the rooftop in time to avoid an inky black tiger that pounces at us. Chouji swings his fist forward, crushing the tiger's face and causing it to explode in a flurry of black water.

I groan as I realize I've dropped Shikamaru's lunch, but I don't have long to lament because another tiger pounces on me. It pins its paws on either of my shoulders and snaps, but I bend my knees and kick it off, thinking how lucky it is that I've trained with Akamaru so many times that I'm used to be pinned to the ground as such.

"Incoming!" I shout over the roof, and peer down in time to see Chouji squelch the thing in his fist. Naruto and Shikamaru have regain their bearings and crouch on the ground, glaring down the road where I had felt the vibrations buzz. I squint to see a figure sitting on top of a building, apparently focused on us.

"I've never seen him before," Naruto says. "And it looks like he's wearing a Konoha headband."

In that case, it doesn't make any sense for him to attack us. Unless Naruto has managed to piss him off somehow, which wouldn't surprise me in the least, but Naruto had said that he didn't recognize the boy. Then again, Naruto isn't the most attentive person in the world. He could have bumped into someone, muttered something inconsiderate, and effectively annoyed them, scausing them to attack us as the boy at the end of the street is.

There'll be no reasoning with any of them, though. They're already barreling in, Shikamaru with his shadows and Naruto halfway down the street, jerking to a halt as six more tigers leap from the stranger's lap. Shikamaru shouts for Naruto to duck as he pulls his shadows up from the ground and pierces the tiger's torsos. They explode, just like before, sending a shower of black water on Naruto, who jumps onto the rooftop. He extracts a kunai only to blocked by the stranger's baton.

I drop down from the roof, landing breezily beside Shikamaru while keeping an eye on Naruto and the other boy. I can hear Naruto shouting, make out his demands, even from this distance. Without giving much of an answer, however, the boy hops back, out of the reach of Shikamaru's shadow that has followed Naruto up to the rooftop, and disappears in a swirl of black.

"What was _that_?" Shikamaru mutters, relaxing from his defensive position.

"Gone for nearly three years," I say and cross my arms as Naruto continues to stare into the space the mystery boy had vacated, "and still, he attracts the oddest people in the world. Honestly—"

"Chouji!" a girl's voice interrupts. I know who it is before I even turn around. Six months away isn't long enough for me to forget this nagging voice, and I brace myself for the full force of Ino as she approaches us, waving Chouji down. "I thought I'd find you here. Asuma-sensei's angry that you still haven't shown—_Ren_? Hey, it _is_ you!"

She throws her arms around my shoulders when she's close enough and I grunt at the impact of her body. "Hey, Ino," I say, brushing the strands of her hair that have gotten too close to my mouth away and pushing her off. "Long time no see. Your hair has really grown out, hasn't it?"

"As if you should talk," she says, taking my hair between her fingers and giving it a small tug. I wince, stepping behind Shikamaru, who frowns, to shield myself from Ino.

Chouji apologizes for his lateness, although it seems Ino has forgotten about it as she goes on about my hair, only gaining Ino's attention again when Chouji says, "Some weird guy just started attacking us."

"Weird guy?" she asks, making a face and standing on her tiptoes to look over Chouji's shoulders. "A weird guy, huh? Hey, is it Naruto?" she asks when she spots him on the rooftop at the end of the street. "Naruto!" she calls over Chouji's stuttering. "It's been a while!"

Chouji tries to explain that Naruto isn't who he was talking about, but it seems futile as Ino continues to jabber on and ask questions about when Naruto had come home and when _I_ had come home and how it was in the Sand Village. I ignore her, obviously, because as I think about the boy who had disappeared moments earlier, I think: He can't be a bad guy. He'd had a Leaf headband, too.

But then I think about Sasuke and how he had had a headband, and how he had abandoned it beside Naruto the day he left. I think about how it sits in my dresser now, beneath all my clothes, hidden and a burden, forever on my shoulders. I think about how I should probably go home, take care of things that need to be taken care of, maybe restock my fridge if I can scramble up the money for it. And I think about how quickly I've fallen back into step with the way things are going despite my six month absence. Coming back to the village is like falling into a time hole. I may be older, seemingly wiser, but everything is still the same. I'm still stuck.

I tap Shikamaru's shoulder, pulling his scowl away from Ino, and make plans to visit him later for dinner and to catch up with him and his parents.

"Just curious," Shikamaru says before I leave. "When Naruto was trying to recruit me for this mission earlier, he brought up Sasuke."

"Yeah," I say. "It might have been the way he said it, but it's not as crazy as it sounds. That's really the plan."

"That's not it," Shikamaru says, and then lowers his voice, leaning in while Ino is still distracted and says, "You haven't told them about the bond yet, have you?"

I jerk away from him, surprised by the question. And then I laugh nervously, running my hand through my hair. "I forgot that you knew," I explain, shaking strands of hair that I've managed to pull free out of my hands. "Sorry. Used to no one knowing at all, and all of a sudden—but no, I haven't," I say.

Ino interrupts then, demands to know if we're whispering because we don't want her to know about a date we're planning, and subsequently blurts something about planning a reunion dinner herself. I dismiss her with an easy wave, say goodbye to Chouji, and approach Naruto, who still stares after the boy we had encountered.

"Hey," I say, and Naruto turns, again surprised by my appearance, like he can't believe I'm here at all. "What's the matter?"

Naruto's eyes shift back to the rooftops. He says, "That . . . guy." He shakes his head and says, "Never mind. I guess it was nothing."

"Yeah," I say, following his gaze to where the boy had disappeared quickly, in a wind of darkness. "Chances are, you'll never even see him again. Don't worry about it. What a day to be back though, huh?" I ask. "First running into all those people and then being attacked. Never a dull moment with you, Naruto."

He grins, clasping his hands behind his head, and before he can say more, I hear my name called. I expect to see Shikamaru being hassled by Ino to lure me back so she can plan her reunion dinner, but Ino and Chouji are gone, and Shikamaru stands with another man who waves me down.

"We just got a call from the Hokage's office," the man says, his hands cupped around his mouth to amplify his voice, though I could probably hear him just as well with the vibrations if he spoke normally. "No idea how she knew you were here, but you're to report to her immediately, Kagiru-chan!"

"I didn't do anything this time," I reply to Shikamaru's frown. "What's she want? Did she say?"

The man shakes his head and retreats into the building. Shikamaru's shoulders deflate and he gives me a half-hearted wave as he follows the man inside.

Naruto says, "What do you think she wants?"

"Dunno," I say. "But I have a feeling I'm not going to be very happy about it."

[+]

Tsunade has her back to me as I enter her office. She stares out the windows at the sky despite the lack of clouds, and I wonder if she's even heard me enter. I knock on the door one more time, and she says, "Come in already." So I do.

"What's the problem now?" I say, getting straight to the point as I close the door. "This has to do with those Elders, right? Do they want to reestablish a curfew for me or something along those lines? Bastards," I mutter as Tsunade sighs and faces me.

"The good news is," she says, leaning back in her chair. "It's neither of those. Bad news: I doubt you'll be any happier about what I'm going to say."

I blink at her, and say, slowly, "Uh, no? No, I think I'll be good with whatever you have to tell me if it's nothing like that. But, uh, it is, isn't it? Considering the look you're giving me."

She rubs her forehead, and when she meets my eyes, she stares at me for a minute. Unnerved, I clip my hair behind my ear, and then freeze when she says, "You won't be accompanying Team Kakashi on this mission. The elders won't have it, and it was one of the concessions I had to make in order to allow Naruto to go on the mission."

"I . . . what?" I say. "They—they made you _pick_ between me and Naruto?"

"Not exactly," she answers. "You understand where the Elders stand when it comes to Naruto. As a jinchuuriki, they don't want to risk him being captured like the Bijuu, and the immense power he carries to be turned against us. To them, the Nine-Tails' power is our greatest military asset. If it were to get into the wrong hands—you get it," she says when I tense. "I, however, believe that Naruto is useful in other ways. He has another power about him, as you may have noticed."

"A mysterious power," I murmur, remembering Chiyo and her last words. "Yeah."

"I believe it'll be useful for him to be on this mission," she says. "So you should also understand why I made the decision I did. It was either I let the Elders choose a member to join the team in addition to the shinobi I chose to replace Kakashi or have all of you stay behind."

"Well," I say with a shrug. "It's because of Orochimaru, isn't it? And . . . inevitably what—or _who_—I might run into. You can just say so. I understand. I mean, admittedly, it ticks me off a little but—whatever. I understand."

Tsunade eyes me curiously and then smirks. "That time in the Sand Village has done you well," she says, resting her head in the palm of her hand. "Maybe we should send all our delinquents there."

I laugh. "I don't know what that would do for our relationship with the Sand," I say, "but I'm sure if everyone you send over is as charming as me, the people of the Sand won't take it so badly. Anyway, I was in good hands."

Tsunade hums, shifting papers on her desk. She says, "Still, I'm surprised you're not putting up more of a fight about this. Sakura told me about the deal you made with Naruto in the Sand Village, how you promised to kill Sasuke if he hurt your friends more than he already has. What if he does something during this mission to hurt Sakura and Naruto?"

"This is his one free pass," I say. "Next time—and I'm sure there will be a next time—I won't fail. Can I ask, though, what you're going to tell Naruto and Sakura?"

"The truth. Well," she says when I look at her nervously. "As much as the truth as possible. That the Elders don't feel comfortable sending you on big missions just yet and that you'll be returning to your teaching position at the Academy. Apparently, some of the new Genin have been asking after you."

"Uh, really? That's—odd," I say, scratching my head. But I breathe a sigh of relief at the fact that we're not going to lie to my friends. Keeping up with lies, trying to hide everything: It takes too much effort.

A smile spreads across Tsunade's face like she knows what I'm thinking and is happy that I have realized as much and, with a nod, she says, "You're dismissed, Ren."

I give her a small salute and say, "Hokage-sama."

As I'm leaving her office, she says, "I'll put in a good word for you. Next time there is a mission like this—and, as you said, I'm sure there will be—I promise you'll be able to go and lend your support for your team."

I wonder if, by 'next time', she means to say that she doesn't think Naruto and Sakura will be able to retrieve Sasuke this time around. That's what I had meant. In my heart of hearts, I don't believe Sasuke will be any less dense than he was three years ago or any more willing to return to this village, especially not after all the training he must have endured under Orochimaru. He must believe he holds every power in the palm of his hand currently. He wouldn't give that up for this.

I shiver thinking about him and when I consider how well I still seem to know him. Even after three years apart, I feel that, on the off chance that he did come back all merry happy and reinstate the bond, I would be able to fall into step beside him without wavering.

Which another reason why I am relieved to not have to go on this mission. To have to find Sasuke again, to have to face him after everything he's done, after having him gone and then confronting him again and then maybe having to face him forever once he's home—it's almost too much for me to wrap my brain around. I can't so easily forgive him for what he did. I'm not so kind as Naruto and Sakura. But I know that I would. Because, ultimately, the bond is still intact, and I am still his.

[+]

From there, things become relatively quiet. I pick up my plant from Kakashi's room, much to his relief, and retake my teaching position at the Academy immediately. Indeed it seems as though the kids have missed me as they swarm me on my first day back. I visit Shikamaru whenever I have a break from teaching, taking him out to lunch despite his moaning that Tsunade will have his head, and I watch the clouds in the park, just like I used to.

Everything is perfect.

It doesn't take long for Naruto to stir things up again, though. Upon discovering that I'm not going to be on the mission, he arrives at my house, storming about the injustice of it. He tries to get me to pack my supplies and come with him to the team meeting, but I explain that my exclusion can't be helped, that it was decreed by the Village Elders and there's nothing we can do to change it. He pouts at this and says I am as much a part of Team 7 as him or Sakura or Sasuke, and it's our duty as comrades to be there for each other, especially on a mission like this.

I don't know whether he says all this to make me feel better, but it works. Immensely well.

Sakura is with him. Occasionally, she bites her lips and frowns at Naruto's ranting, but otherwise stays quiet until he says, "And, Ren, remember that jerk who attacked us the other day? He's been assigned to our team!"

"What?" Sakura says, looking between us. "Sai attacked you?"

"Already, I really can't stand him," Naruto says without acknowledging Sakura. "That Sai is an asshole! We didn't need him anyway, not with you! Even if the Elders didn't want you going, three people would have been enough for Team Kakashi!"

"Four members is the traditional cell size, though, Naruto," I say, flicking his forehead. "Even a shinobi like you can't deny that this is protocol. Besides, this Sai kid is probably just picking on you to see how much he can get away with."

Naruto continues to rave about how much he hates Sai, how this new teammate could never replace either me or Sasuke. Again, warmth fills my stomach and I want to squeeze Naruto until he bursts with all the happiness I feel.

Sakura makes an offhanded remark about how Sai reminds her of Sasuke. Naruto is quick to shoot down the comparison, insisting Sasuke is all around a better person, which makes Sakura beam. I smile, tight-lipped, during the exchange, wherein they agree that Sasuke is a much better teammate than Sai.

I say, as they finish their conversation, "I'm kind of tired. If you guys don't mind, I think I'm going to go get some rest now."

"What?" Naruto asks, but Sakura is able to read between the lines and ushers him out of my house quickly, saying that they need to go prepare for the mission anyway. I wish them luck as I see them out, and as Naruto clomps down my front path, Sakura stops on the edge of my porch.

"You're okay?" she asks, foot half hanging over the step. And then, more carefully, she asks, "Haven't changed your mind about Sasuke yet, have you?"

I don't know how to answer, so I recreate my tight-lipped smile and avert my gaze, clipping my hair behind my ear. "See you, Sakura," I say. "I hope Naruto doesn't cause you too much trouble."

"I'll put in a good word for you!" she says as I start to close my door. "To Tsunade-shishou, that is," she clarifies when I pause. "To see if I can still get you on the mission. Tsunade-shishou will understand after I explain to her."

"That's not necessary," I say, and when she stares at me in disbelief, I explain, "On a mission like this, where espionage plays such a big part, the fewer members you have, the better it'll be. Besides, you and Naruto are more than capable of handling Sasuke. I believe in you two to bring him back."

"But," she argues, her voice climbing octaves and catching Naruto's attention. "Ren, when it comes to Sasuke, you're a lot like Naruto. I know you hate it when I say that, but I mean it. You and Sasuke understand each other in a way that not even Naruto can begin to fathom. I don't know what it is but—"

"That's gone," I say with a wave. "I've told you this, Sakura. All that went away when Sasuke left."

"But if you just—"

"Enough," I say sharply. I take a deep breath, centering myself. Then, more calmly, I say, "That's enough. I meant it when I promised you that I would help you bring him back, but it's not up to me now. It's the decision of the Hokage and the Council and I'm not going to cause problems when I've just come home. I don't need that."

Sakura is stunned into deference, and I dip my head apologetically. "I really am sorry," I say, and shut the door in her face.

I wait until I hear her leave before I breathe again. From there, I move into my kitchen, which I had been cleaning before Naruto and Sakura had arrived. The conversation with them has worn me out, though, so I collapse into one of the chairs around the table and massage my forehead.

The plant Haru gave me sits as the centerpiece on my table, and I flick one of the spindly leaves. It wobbles before falling off and I sigh, sweeping it off the table. I pick up the plant and place it on the windowsill above the sink, knowing it will probably need as much sunlight as it can get out of the day, being that it's from the Wind Country.

As I adjust the pot and move it away from the sink to keep it as dry as possible, I think about what this mission might entail for Sakura and Naruto. I really should be making a bigger fuss about not being able to go with them, but—the longer I can delay meeting with Sasuke again, the better.

I bite my lip, going back to sit in my chair and fiddling with the feather. It comes loose after a moment, and I stare at it, wondering how it had come undone so easily. On a whim, I drag my ink pot over and dip the quill, pulling one of the napkins free from the holder and smoothing it flat. Tapping off the excess ink, I start to draw on the napkin, creating wavy patterns across the border that turn into swirls of wind and the the swirl of the Konoha leaf.

I draw until the ink runs out and then frown. I weave the feather into my hair, sighing at the ink I've wasted on folly, tracing the waves and loops with my eyes as I make sure the feather is secure. As I scoop up the napkin and start crumpling it to throw it away, I notice a set of patterns along one edge of the napkin. Squinting, I make out words that cause me to drop the napkin, sending it fluttering down to the table.

I blink at the words for so long that they are burned into my eyelids. I go to sleep with them haunting my dreams. It's a simple statement, but it's monumental.

_I'm coming._


	63. Revisited

**A/N:** Thank you for your reviews last chapter, and also thank you to Akkiii02 for kindly correcting me on my honorifics usage! You're right—I'm incredibly inconsistent with the way they're used because I don't know the technicalities of how they're used. I'll try to keep them all in line in the future, but if you notice any more mistakes, please correct me!

So far as Ren using honorifics goes, you guys have probably noticed that she doesn't use them—and hasn't really until the past chapters because she's a brat—so sometimes she forgets and they just slip her mind, like a few chapters ago when she switched between calling Chiyo by simply her first name and then by -sensei. I figure little things like that would happen in real life because people are inconsistent and sometimes they just get lazy or else force out politeness and then forgo it completely when they talk to themselves. I figure Ren would be the type of person to do that. I appreciate the insight and I see your point—after all, in English, it's not like we call our teachers Mr./Mrs. out loud and then call them only by their last name in our heads—and if you have anything else you'd like to add, PM me because I want to keep the story polished.  
Thank you for your comments/critiques, and I hope you enjoy the story!

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 63: Revisited**

The napkin sits on the table through the night and the next morning. It stays on my mind, an inky black stain, throughout my morning routine, but it isn't until I see it again that the full reality of what it means hits me. I lose my appetite and end up consuming only large quantities of water for breakfast before heading out, figuring that teaching will help take my mind off the message.

It doesn't. At the Academy, I make it to lunchtime before I ask Iruka to shoulder the rest of my lessons. After explaining that I'm not feeling well, Iruka allows me to go with a small lecture about taking care myself better. I pretend to take his words to heart, and then I'm free.

Except, once I'm free, I'm all jitters and my mind reels with the message: _I'm coming, I'm coming,_ rolling in a marquee across my eyelids every time I blink. No matter how many times I press my fingers against my eyes to try to rub the words away, they remain there, hot and gleaming.

I decide to visit Kakashi in the hospital. While conversation with him will inevitably lead to Sasuke, I would rather talk about it with Kakashi than think about the feather and the message and what will inevitably follow that. Besides, talking to Kakashi about Sasuke is different from talking to Naruto and Sakura about Sasuke. Kakashi is sensible for one, and understands my situation for another.

When I enter his room, he's sitting up in bed, reading a familiar bright orange book. He notices me come in but doesn't put down the book. I grin, taking a seat beside his bed, and say, "Doing better, I see."

"Yes, well, being confined to a bed really limits your options," he says. "And the nurses help, too."

I don't know whether to be disgusted or amused by his comment, so I press my lips together and shake my head in resignation.

"Sakura and Naruto are gone on the mission, then?" he says, and I confirm, describing the newest member of the team, Sai, to him. He nods occasionally, but also flips the pages of his book, making it hard for me to tell if he's registering what I'm saying. When I finish speaking, though, he says, "Even as disagreeable as Naruto may be with this Sai, by the end of the mission, I'm sure one of them will have changed their minds about the other."

"Well, yeah," I say. "You know how Naruto gets."

"Yes," he says softly, and I can hear the endearment in his voice, the same kind of adoration Tsunade had used regarding Naruto. "In the meantime, they're in good hands. The captain who was assigned to their team is an old comrade of mine, and one of the most capable shinobi in the village, especially in this case."

"What is the Hokage's mindset behind choosing these people?" I ask, and Kakashi glances over the top of his book questioningly. "What I mean is, where does she get these people from? This Sai—he's our age, but I've never heard of him before. If he had graduated with our class, any one of us would have recognized him, right?"

Kakashi stays quiet, eyes focused but unfocused on his novel. He turns a page and says, "From what Godaime has told me, the Elders chose Sai for the team themselves, at the request of . . . a man named Danzo."

"Never heard of him either."

"Just as well," says Kakashi, and shifts in his bed. He holds out his hand and I wonder what he means to demonstrate, but then he says, "Could you pour me some water, Ren? I'm a little thirsty."

I frown, slapping his hand away. "I might be a medic, but I'm not your nurse," I say, indignant. "Besides, you can't possibly drink anything with that goddamn mask over your face!"

Kakashi reaches up and rubs his mask-covered chin like he's only remembered that he wears it. He lets out a sigh and sits back in the bed as I prompt, "So what's the deal with this Danzo guy? You didn't sound very happy mentioning him."

Kakashi hums. He says, "Danzo went up against Sandaime for the position of Hokage. His militaristic agenda wasn't favored by the Village Council however, and, obviously, he was overlooked for the position. It's evident by his speech and remarks that he harbors a deep resentment toward the teachings of Sandaime and the way the village is run currently, so it's hard for me to believe that Godaime has allowed one of Danzo's shinobi to join the team. But if I had to guess, I would say she was pressured by the village Elders to do as much."

"That's what she said when she spoke to me," I say, sitting straighter as Kakashi's story begins to coincide with what I know. "She said the Elders didn't like the idea of me going out on the mission, so she had to pull me from it, otherwise Naruto and Sakura wouldn't have been able to go at all. Isn't that bullshit? I mean, I understand the decision she ultimately made, but, you know," I add, fiddling my thumbs. "I would be lying if I said I didn't want to go."

"I almost wish you would have been able to go on the mission," he says, laying his book over his lap. "Just to see what Sasuke would have done. What _you_ would have done."

To be honest, I'm curious to know how things would have played out, too. Would the bond wake up after seeing him? Would Sasuke even restore the bond when he saw me? Would I have been able to convince Sasuke somehow? Doubtful, but despite its improbability, it was a possibility. What was more likely to happen if I had gone on the mission was Sasuke reviving the bond and ordering me to come along with him.

I wonder if I would have been able to resist.

"_Almost_ wish I would have gone on the mission," I say instead of mentioning any of the above. "Why only _almost_?"

Kakashi shrugs. "I don't think you would have been able to help yourself when it came to Sasuke," he says. "For all we know, the moment you saw him, you would have wrung him around the neck before we got a chance to bring him home, which would be contrary to the purpose of our mission."

"Sounds about right," I say, and Kakashi chuckles. "In all seriousness, though, I wouldn't have been kind to him, that I can assure you."

"No," he says, "I wouldn't have expected that. But, I suppose, we'll see soon enough how everything will play out when Naruto and Sakura return."

I note the lack of _Sasuke_ in his statement and wonder if he thinks Sakura and Naruto will be unsuccessful in their endeavor. Like Tsunade, his statement and tone are too neutral for me to really tell, and I could be reading too much into it, but for a moment I hope I'm not the only one who believes this mission won't work out the way we plan.

I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but—here's my reasoning.

From what I gather, Sasuke will have been in isolation with Orochimaru for these pass three years, training and obsessing over his strength, which is fueled by his desire for revenge. A dark desire, a terrible one that only serves to further corrupt a person's heart. And undoubtedly, over these years, Orochimaru will have encouraged that darkness to make Sasuke stronger for his own reasons.

All Sasuke's anger and resentment would have built up, turned his heart to stone, made him apathetic to everything and everyone. After all this time, he will care less than he ever did, so what are a few pleas for him to return to a village that couldn't and wouldn't have made him as strong as he must be now?

And, surely, all Naruto and Sakura will manage to do after meeting with Sasuke for the first time in three years is plea.

"Something on your mind, Ren?" Kakashi says, closing his book and shelving it on his nightstand.

"Not really, no," I say, clearing my thoughts in case Kakashi manages to read everything in my eyes. "Just trying to estimate how far they would have traveled. The meeting on the Tenchi Bridge is set for two and a half-ish days from now."

"They should have more than enough time to get there," he says. "But I don't think that's what has you concerned."

"Don't know what you mean," I say, and flip my hair out of my face. "Anyway, I should get going. Hope you feel better soon, Kakashi."

"I wonder," he says, as I hop off the seat. "When are you going to tell Naruto and Sakura about the bond? I heard Shikamaru approached Asuma about it a few days after you left for Suna."

So he asked someone after all. Something about that fact comforts me. "I'll get to them eventually," I say with a wave. "It's always this way with me: Shikamaru first, and then everyone else. I'm getting there," I say when Kakashi lets out a sigh. "That's what matters, isn't it?"

Kakashi agrees and, with a last well wish, I leave.

Even before Kakashi mentioned it, I've been thinking about how to explain the bond to Sakura and Naruto. Having them not know about it is becoming more inconvenient than it used to be, like, the other day, when Sakura had tried to make the argument that Sasuke and I had this inexplicable connection.

Boy, did we ever.

The thing is, I can't find the perfect moment to tell them. The bond isn't something I can mention offhandedly. I'd have to sit them down, pick my words carefully, and I doubt they would handle it as well as Shikamaru did.

All things considered, I still have at least another week to think about how the conversation can go before Naruto and Sakura return from their mission. Even then, if Sasuke manages to come back—I don't know.

Maybe we'll tell them together.

[+]

In the meantime, I go about my business teaching at the Academy, bothering Shikamaru, volunteering at the hospital, and training with Hinata's team at the Hyuuga compound when they return from their missions. Everyone is impressed by my ability to manipulate my element of earth so well, although when they discover my affinity for it, they say they aren't surprised, which puts me off.

Anyway, all the teaching and bothering and volunteering and training manages to clear my head of the napkin note—which I'd gotten around to throwing away when I got home from visiting Kakashi at the hospital. That is, until one day, I come home with an armful of groceries to a door that's already wide open.

This has only happened one other time: I'd just returned from the Land of the Waves to have the Hokage tell me he hired out a team of Genin while I was away to do the cleaning for me. This time, however, I doubt whoever had broken into my house is as innocent as a team of Genin. In fact, I have a good idea of who it might be, and they are guilty of more than breaking and entering.

_I'm coming_, she had sent. And this must be her. Here at last.

I go in as quietly as I can, feeling the vibrations as they reverberate through the floorboard. Someone is shuffling around frantically in my kitchen while two other pairs of feet drag off into the greater part of my house. None of them seem to sense me as I come in, and just as well: I keep my chakra low and the vibrations relaxed, so that any slight shift will seem like a coincidence.

All my precautions don't keep Rei from slamming my kitchen door open as I approach it. She lets out a shriek of glee, the blue paint that cuts through her left eye squelching together into one straight line as her face contorts in her excitement.

"Ren!" she greets, throwing her arms over me, crushing my groceries between our bodies. "Oh, it's been too long. How I've missed the days when I teased you and you scowled and it was just happiness all the time. Well. All things considered."

"Rei," I choke, wriggling out of her hold. "Eggs. I have eggs in my arms, and you're probably breaking them."

I tumble backward when she lets me go and bump into someone standing behind me, making me jump. It's a boy I recognize as Rei's teammate, although I can't remember which one of the two he is. He doesn't apologize and I don't apologize—because they've broken into _my_ house, after all—so we stand there, staring each other down and frowning until I think to ask, "Who the hell are _you_?"

Rei stops in the middle of her rant on how precious I am still living on my own and beams when she sees the boy in the doorway. "Ah, _Nao_!" she says, clapping her hands together. "Ren, you and Nao haven't been properly introduced, have you? Just that one time in the Forest, and—well, that was a doozy of a day, wasn't it?"

"I'll say," Nao grunts. He slips past me as I drop my groceries on my kitchen table. Immediately, Rei swarms in and starts to rummage through the bags.

"What have you got?" she asks, upturning one of the bags. Vegetables, fruits, and bread clomp over the table, and I can only be thankful my eggs aren't in the bag. "Oh, _dinner_. We haven't had a decent dinner in ages, have we, Nao? Speaking of _we_, where's Hiro-kun?"

"I'm here," Hiro says, emerging from the other hallway. His scruffy brown hair stands on ends and he's wiping dust from his shirt. "Sorry, I was cleaning up in the back."

"_Cleaning_?" I echo. "Cleaning what? You can't just go through my things."

"Oh, Ren," Hiro says. He gives me a crooked smile and a small wave as though we see each other like this every day. "You're home. Is that dinner?"

"Dinner!" repeats Rei, holding up a head of lettuce and grinning ear to ear.

"Hey, wait a minute," I say, collecting the fruits that roll off the table. "You can't just show up at my house without warning and then _eat my food_. That's poor etiquette!"

"I did give you warning," she says, juggling strawberries, which Hiro snatches from her with a sigh. "Feather in your hair, remember?"

"I mean actually coming up to my door and _knocking_," I say, "like _normal_ people, instead of breaking in every time. Which is my way of saying _don't_ make this a regular thing."

"Normality," Rei says, chuckling as Hiro hands Nao the strawberries and grabs Rei's wrists before she can pick up any other groceries and perform circus tricks with them. "Who needs it! Anyway, can't be bothered by technicalities like that. I have a very important message to pass on to you."

"I would hope so," I say, and Rei raises an eyebrow like she doesn't understand. "It's been three years," I explain as Hiro leads her to a chair and presses her into it. She shrugs him off of her and crosses her arms like a child being disciplined. "And over all that time, you never once sent me an update through this feather."

"I did _so_. They just never went through. But it may have been that I just forgot," she admits as I catch Nao rummaging through my cupboards despite what I'd just said about going through my things. "I may have held out on you, but that was for your own good."

"You leaving in place of me was supposed to be for my own good," I say, and Nao snorts.

"Yeah, and lot of good that did," Nao says, extracting a bowl and dropping the strawberries into them. "All that time, wandering around for nothing."

"Not nothing," Rei corrects, holding up a finger. "Don't say stuff like that, Nao. You'll scare the life out of her. Ren, we found things, don't worry. Didn't I say I had an important message for you?"

"So what is it?" I say, and Rei takes a moment to gather her thoughts before she answers. It's the first time since I entered my house that I've been able to get a good look at Rei and her teammates.

They've grown taller over the years, which is understandable being that they're at the prime of their youth. While Rei still beats me by a mere two centimeters, Hiro and Nao both stand maybe six or seven centimeters taller than Shikamaru. Rei bundles her whirly hair on top of her head, loose strands of it curling against her neck and sticking onto the side of her cheek, and Hiro's hair looks shaggier than I remember it. Nao—well, Nao is Nao, I suppose. I was never able to really _look_ at him before, so, aside from his height, I can't tell how much he's changed.

But, like in the Forest of Death, the three of them look considerably well-groomed for people who have been, supposedly, travelling around the five nations looking for a way to break the bond. I wouldn't put it past them to have used my shower to wash up before I came home.

"You might want to sit," Rei says, pushing out the seat opposite her with her foot. "It's _that_ kind of news."

I sit, and Nao pushes the bowl of freshly washed strawberries in front of us. Hiro gathers the groceries and starts setting them away as Nao starts to dig through another cabinet, looking for pots and pans by the sound of the clatter.

Rei smiles at them and says, "Aren't they dears?" Either Hiro and Nao don't mind being lap dogs or they ignore her because they don't react as Rei goes on to say, "I have them trained so well. How have you been, Ren? Ten minutes together and we haven't done any catching up at all!"

"You know, you're good at stalling," I say, propping my head on my hand, "but can't we just get to the point this time? I waited three years to hear from you and then have to sit by while you and your little henchmen rummage around my house. I think I deserve as much."

"But where is the fun in that?" she asks, emphasizing her words by tapping the table. "I think you lead an interesting life, considering you have a blood oath and not many people have a blood oath. So how has that been going for the past three years?"

"Can't you just speak to the spirits and get the entire story?"

"No," Hiro interjects. Nao's gaze shifts over us like he doesn't know what to expect as Rei's eyes shine and she drums her fingers. But Rei only laughs and I'm left confused by the exchange.

"You are a sweetie, Hiro-kun," she says, blowing him a kiss that is caught by the soap bubbles he's filled the sink with. "Hiro-kun's right, though. Hearing a story through the spirits isn't as riveting as hearing it straight from the horse's mouth. Go on and tell me, Ren, pretty please? Hiro-kun and Nao would love to hear it, too ,wouldn't you, boys?"

"Absolutely," they drone in unison.

"Well-trained indeed," I mutter, glaring at them. They go about their business without a glance backward. "If you honestly want to know: Things were okay for a while, and then they started to go downhill. After I was promoted to Chuunin—"

"_Chuunin_," Rei gushes like she can't believe it, and I don't know whether to be offended by her tone. "Go on."

"Uh, right. So, after I was promoted to Chuunin, I started volunteering at the hospital and the Academy because I wasn't getting good missions, but then things got a little crazy and I ended up getting thrown out of the village for a couple months."

"You _what_?" says Rei, eyes wide with wonder and amusement. "Slow down a bit, Ren, I want the whole story, not just an overview."

"I—wait, what's that smell?" I say, turning around in my seat to find Hiro hovering a saucepan over the flame of my stove while Nao collects herbs and spices from my cupboards. "Are you—are you guys actually _cooking_ something?"

"Don't mind them," Rei says, grabbing my face and pulling my attention back to her. "Why were you thrown out of the village?"

"I made some bad choices, tried to run away a few times," I say, slapping her hands away and keeping an eye on Hiro and Nao in my peripheral. "And I'm exaggerating a bit. I wasn't kicked out, really. I mean, that was the initial plan, but then I volunteered to leave because I couldn't stand it here anymore and so I went to stay in Sunagakure. That's where I've been for the past six months, training under Chiyo, an elder of the Sand. Only just got back, like, a week and a half ago."

"Scandalous," Rei says, rubbing her chin. "Very, very scandalous, all of it. Much more interesting than everything we've been through, which was only an awful lot of running. And discovery!" she adds quickly when I frown. "Lots and lots of discovery."

"All right then, your turn," I say as she pops a strawberry in her mouth. "Tell me of your discovery."

She grins, prying the strawberry flesh that gets stuck in her teeth with her tongue. "Sure, sure," she says, arranging the strawberries in the bowl into a pyramid. "You should know you're an _awful_ storyteller, by the way. Now, where even to start?"

Rei kicks her feet up on the table, almost knocking the bowl of strawberries into my lap. I snatch it out of her way just in time, and Hiro sighs from the stove and I swear I hear Nao snicker. As I get up to put the strawberries into the fridge, Rei says, "After we left you, Nao, Hiro-kun, and I headed back home to see if I could steal some of the scrolls my family hordes in our basement. With Nao and Hiro-kun's help, I read through most of it and, when we were caught, I was able to steal a few of them and a really nice cape with my family crest on it."

"More to the point," I say.

"Right, right, I digress. The scrolls ended up being a bust, so we travelled to the Wind Country, since everyone in and around the Sound Village was told by my family to shun me. They have that kind of leverage," Rei says when I regard her with disbelief. "My family has a lot of influence back in my home country because of all the magic they can do."

"By which she means, they curse people," Nao says, sidestepping the loose floorboard he notices just in time. "Voodoo and all that stuff."

"Hush," says Rei, but she grins like she thinks it's amusing nonetheless. "I don't know if our time in the Wind Country ever overlapped with yours, but we stayed there for quite some time. I managed to find a few shaman there, actually, although if you asked me exactly where I found them, I wouldn't be able to tell you. It was more like _they_ found _me_, to tell you the truth."

"And?" I prompt, leaning against the fridge. My heart is pounding in my ears, and I will for it to slow down so I can hear what Rei has to say. I've waited too long for this. My hands jitter as I close the fridge door and my chest gets tight. I try to massage the air back into my lungs, but it doesn't help and, soon, I become dizzy, bracing myself against the counter for support.

"Hey," Nao says as Rei opens her mouth to continue. He bends slightly to meet my eyes, which I blink rapidly to try to clear my vision of the black dots that start sprouting up. He asks, "Is something wrong?"

When I try to answer, I choke, coughing to clear my pathways, but it doesn't help and ends up hurting my lungs even more. Nao swoops in to help me as I double over, fall to my knees, and I take his hand without thinking, squeezing it to alleviate the pain that burns through my lungs and veins, straight to my heart which pumps it through my whole body until my insides are all on fire.

He says my name. Soft and urgent, and endearing and sweet. Nao, I mean, but—Sasuke? The whisper of his voice rings in my ear, echoing in my head behind Nao's. "Ren," he says. They say. I can't discern which one I'd rather hear.

Sasuke.

In flashes, I see the bright afternoon, much like the one here in Konoha. A crater, littered with rocks that jut into the sky like claws. Four people, standing in the midst of the debris, looking up at me, like I am an angel descending from the heavens. They revere me. But I'm just Sasuke, and they're just Naruto and Sakura, and a boy and man who had replaced people I used to know. They can't offer me anything.

"Ren," he says again, and my heart leaps and the bond triggers and I can't breathe. Really, I can't breathe, and I start to panic, hyperventilating, even though I know that's only going to make it worse.

I don't know how this is happening. Why am I seeing him, seeing Naruto and Sakura staring at him with wide, wonder-filled eyes? The bond, is it waking up? But it can't be, he had severed it, Sasuke—

"I'm bound to her through bonds thicker than blood," he asks, and the mention of the bond simultaneously explains everything and wipes away my every concern. "Has she told you about it yet?"

I press my hand to my mouth, horrified and sick, ready to throw up as I realize what he's saying, who he's talking to.

He can't do this. He can't tell them about the bond without me. It's my burden and he can't take this away from me, too.

_Sasuke,_ I think, hard as I might as Nao faintly asks me what's wrong, places his hand on my back, and tries to soothe me. _Sasuke, stop! Please, stop._

A flicker. Sasuke lifts his head to the clouds, as though receiving a message from God, and then shuts his eyes, letting out an exasperated sigh. There is a note of understanding and resignation. Then, at the same time, he and Rei say, "Ren," and I retch at the way their voices blend.

There is a garbled reply, sharp and angry. I wonder why I can't hear the voice, why I can only make out Sasuke's words. I close my eyes tightly, shutting out Nao as I try to get closer to Sasuke, try to worm back into his thoughts through the bond, but there is still something there, something that slams me out of Sasuke's consciousness, and I gasp, the force of the shove like a knife in my gut.

Someone hooks their arms under my legs, behind my back, lifts me off the ground as I continue to hyperventilate, growing dizzy as too much air enters my lungs. I take the fabric of their shirt, wanting to ask them to put me down, but I can't form the words.

"Ren nor I can help," Sasuke says, and I realize I've only heard the second half of the sentence because of the inflection of his voice, the fragmentation of his lines. This connection is only triggered by my name, it seems. I wish he would say it more. "But I did it anyway and severed my bond with her, too. But it's never truly gone. Not really, not with Ren. Much to her dismay."

They lay me gently down on the couch, kneeling beside me. It's Rei, her face scrunched with this hardness I can't interpret. She reaches out to touch my forehead, test my temperature, but I intercept her hand, pushing it away.

No distractions. Just—_Sasuke._

Disgust roils through my stomach. I can feel him about to make a move against them. He intends to hurt them and my anger swallows his disgust and I wish I were there to crush his bones with my own hands. I'd promised to protect them, but my chance to do it is stuck here, in the village, locked in place by the old ball and chain of distrust.

Electricity jolts through my system, locking my muscles, but I push through it, pulling myself up. Rei jerks back in surprise, gives a shout of protest as I roll off the couch and stumble clumsily to my feet. She grabs me by the shoulders before I can get far and shakes me, saying, "Ren, what do you think you can do! _You're not there._ Keep that in mind: _you are not there._"

"He's going to kill them," I say. My breaths still hurt when they come and go. "I can't let him do that."

Rei takes my face, squeezes my cheeks, leans in so close that our noses bump and I can smell the faint scent of jasmine on her breath. "You can't go there," she says carefully, slowly like I'm hard of understanding. "Ren, listen to me: you _can't_ go there. But that's exactly what he thinks," she says, and I startle, looking into her murky eyes. At this proximity, I can see the green flecks interrupting the deep brown, the way they gleam with mischief. "Concentrate. Focus on the bond, throw him off his game. He thinks you can't reach him, but you can! You have to focus. _Remember_," she corrects. "Remember the way the bond used to feel, the way it would burn deep in your gut. _Remember_ and concentrate on that."

Rei's thumbs press into my cheekbones, her breath makes my skin prickle, and it's moments like these that remind me of her complete disregard for personal space.

_Concentrate_, I remind myself, and ignore her calloused hands on my face, ignore her radiating body heat making me uncomfortable. Instead, I think about the bond, and how it used to pull me around, yanking on my brain and heartstrings, and how the overwhelming mixture of emotion and logic would storm inside my stomach, trying to beat each other out and decide between _Sasuke, I must help Sasuke_ and _Sasuke, I cannot give into Sasuke_.

But then I always did because of the unyielding power of the bond, the way it would forcibly draw me out of whatever mentality I had set for myself that week, the way it would break down every barrier I created when I couldn't do the same to Sasuke.

_Sasuke_.

The air around me shudders and I pull in a ragged breath of icy cold and Rei moves her hands off of my face as my eyes snap open, expecting to see her disappointed that I couldn't reach through to Sasuke. Except Rei's not there. And I'm not in my living room. Or my house. Or even _Konoha_ for that matter, not from what I can tell by the darkness around me.

The only light I can see bubbles up from beneath my feet, which are planted on water that ripples into miniature waves out into the endless expanse before me. I don't need to maintain a chakra flow to keep myself afloat, and I wriggle my bare toes against the water, watching as the light continues to rise, collecting in an orange glow somewhere behind me.

"Rei," I say, so softly that its swallowed up by the hollowed darkness. I continue to watch the ripples at my feet, leaning down so I can see them as they roll out, despite the fact that I've stopped moving, and I wonder with a tinge of fear where I could possibly be.

The air shudders and all the hair on my body stands on ends. I whirl around on the resonating water to flinch in the bright orange glow that has collected not two or three meters from where I stand. There, in the hazy darkness, I see Sasuke and Naruto, staring down the light, which I realize now is a huge manifestation of the demon fox. The Kyuubi. My skin crawls as its chakra bristles and it bares its teeth at Sasuke, whose fingers brush its nose without even a flicker of trepidation.

Naruto doesn't see me. He's half-hidden behind Sasuke, too busy glancing between the fox and his old friend to notice a girl in his peripheral. Sasuke, on the other hand, stands straighter, as though he's purposely trying to block me from Naruto's line of sight. Sasuke narrows his eyes at me, and I can feel him about to shove against my consciousness, push me out of this—whatever this is. But the fox's ears twitch, its snarling hitching as it jerks its head toward me, noticing my presence. It shrieks, "Who is _that_? Another one of the Uchiha? I can feel her blood, tainted and ruined—"

"_Ren_?" Naruto interrupts in his shock, and I step away from him, from Sasuke, who watches me with dark, blank eyes.

He's so much older, more mature than anything I could have imagined. The power he emanates is, likewise, beyond my comprehension. In just three years, how could he have become like this, to the point where he's able to hold off the power of the Kyuubi with just one hand?

And those Sharingan.

"Sasuke," I say, and it's the only thing I say before the tomoe in his eyes swirl and my vision goes black and I'm knocked to the ground, sinking in the water that vibrates against my skin. I take deep gulps of breath, preparing to sink below the surface of the water and drown, but instead a light streaks across my line of sight and everything disappears.

I feel a tightness around my arms, the dampness of my hands pressed against floorboards for too long. I hear voices, and when my vision clears, I'm back in my house, in my living room, surrounded by Rei and her teammates.

"Get it together, Ren," Rei is saying. Her hands are clamped around my arms and she's trying to shake me out of my stupor. Hiro grasps her wrists and says, "Nao, come here," and Nao comes to my side, takes my shoulders to brace me as I sit up and Hiro detaches Rei from me.

"Breathe," Nao says. "It's always important to remember to breathe. For some reason, that's always the hardest part."

"Yeah," I agree, and my voice comes out croaky, like I've been strangled. I message my throat as Rei begins to pace my living room and Hiro watches her carefully, as though expecting her to jump out the window and run. "Thanks for taking care of me."

Rei hones in on me as Nao dismisses my thanks. She nudges Nao rather forcefully out of the way and leans in close to me, her nose coming within centimeters of my face. I push her away and say, "I'm fine, Rei. Give me some space and I'll be fine."

Rei makes a noise of indignation and starts to go off on one of her tangents. I press my forehead into my hand, effectively blocking Rei out with the wall of my hair that tumbles over my shoulders and curtains me in so I can think about Sasuke and what I saw and what I heard.

He's hinted too much about the bond. When Naruto and Sakura come home, there will be questions I'm not ready to answer. But, I suppose, they are questions I will never be able to answer, so it can't be helped.

I close my eyes, sigh heavily. And in that quick moment, I hear his voice again, a whisper this time, barely leaving a trail in my head as it comes and goes.

"Ren understood that," he's saying. "My intentions, what I'd hoped for by abandoning the village and severing these bonds. You could learn from her."

"I'm gonna go out for a minute," I say, interrupting Rei mid-rant and swinging my feet off the couch. Rei freezes where she's pacing as she realizes that I haven't paid attention to a single thing she's said in the interim. "Uh, to get some air and, uh. I don't know. Air."

Rei looks prepared to put up a fight, but Hiro takes her by the shoulder and Nao shakes his head. "Fine," she huffs, and I decide I like her infinitely better when she's with her teammates than by herself. "Go get some air and we'll stay here and make dinner. I hope you like water ferns."

I don't know what she means to say by that, so I make a noncommittal sound and leave.


	64. The Best Policy

**Bound  
Chapter 64: The Best Policy**

I only make it as far as the porch steps before I have to stop. I had the intention of going to the park and trying to clear my head there, but my legs are still shaky and I'm having difficulty breathing and moving at the same time. The air outside my house isn't bad, though, and at least I can hear Rei in the kitchen, ordering Hiro around as they prepare dinner. I don't know what they're making—something with a lot of water and sugar and vinegar by the sound of it Rei's directions.

I drop my head in my hands, ruffling my hair as I hear someone approach, the door creaking open and close behind me. I don't look up when they sit beside me, and even when they say, "Rough day?"

I recognize the voice. Nao. I scoff, rubbing my face down. "You have no idea," I say. "And everything was working out fine before Rei got here."

"She has that effect," he says, and I turn to him and find Nao placing the plant Haru had given me on the other side of the porch. I'm able to take him in fully before he notices me: He's all sideburns and shaggy hair. If I hadn't known any better, I would have discounted him as a boy with no drive. His pale blonde hair gives him that kind of aura, like he's a delicate boy that needs and is used to being taken care of.

He catches me watching him and says, sounding embarrassed, "This plant is native to the Wind Country, isn't it? In that case, you should put it outside instead of on a windowsill, especially during the drier season. The moisture that'll get into the air over your sink could kill it."

"Oh," I say, smoothing down my shirt. "I didn't know. Haru—the gardener I worked with back in the Sand Village who gave me that plant—said I had a green thumb, but I guess I must have left that back in Suna. How'd you know it was from the Sand?"

"I travelled with Rei and we spent an extended amount of time there," he says vaguely. "It gave me time to familiarize myself with some of the herbs around the country. This one is particularly potent when you're feeling unstable. Emotionally, I mean."

"Huh. I wonder what that says about me that someone would feel this would be a suitable plant for me," I say. "Rei, on the other hand. I bet she could eat this plant up and it wouldn't make a difference."

Nao smiles and leans back on his arms as he stares out beyond the treetops, his silvery blonde hair glowing in a halo around his head. I shift uncomfortably at the image, remembering Sasuke and how he saw himself. How I saw him.

Nao doesn't notice my discomfort. "I don't know about Rei sometimes," Nao says. "She's gotten better since she stopped messing with the spirits, but she still manages to throw me off."

"All things considered, you and Hiro do well for yourselves," I say, glad to have a conversation that draws away from Sasuke. "What do you mean by 'she stopped messing with the spirits', though? Isn't that what she does as, like, a shaman or whatever?"

Nao appears uncomfortable with answering my question. He gives the kitchen window a sidelong glance to make sure Rei isn't poking her head out and listening, but we can hear her and Hiro arguing about how hot the flame should be to cook whatever they're making. Still, Nao scoots closer to me, keeping his voice low when he speaks.

"I don't know if she ever explained to you how the spirits work for her," he says. "It's different than when someone like you or me try to reach out to them. The spirits are willing to come and comfort our souls or listen to our prayers, but they can't reach _through_ us like they can through Rei. So when she so much as meditates, the spirits converge on her all at once, trying to use her as a medium to ease _their_ souls. You know humans," he says, shrugging. "They die burdened by all the things they never said and spend the rest of their immortal lives wallowing in their regret. They figure Rei can help them out, but they don't realize the strain it puts on her mortal body."

"She told me once," I say, "when she came to visit me a few years ago, that the spirits make her unstable. Is that what you're talking about? Why she had to stop?"

"Unstable is underselling it," Nao says, sounding tired. "Yeah, sometimes Hiro and I would wake up and have no idea where she'd gone, but she'd always come back, so we never worried too much, you know? But then she started blacking out while we were walking or having these visions that would cripple her and we'd have to stop for days on end to wait for her to recover. And that was the thing: It was like she never recovered. Because even though she was well enough to walk and talk and drive us crazy with her mood swings, she was always pale and upset and every time she breathed it sounded like it would be her last breath. At that point, Hiro started carrying her everywhere we needed to go, much to her annoyance, but it wasn't like she could fight it. She was never strong enough."

I twist my hands together, wondering if Rei had gone to these lengths just to find out how to break the bond for me or if this was a regular occurrence among shaman because of the powers they possessed. From what Nao is saying, though, it doesn't seem like Rei's downward spiral was anticipated by either him or Hiro. Granted, I don't know how long they've been friends that either of them could have anticipated as much. They have to be close, otherwise how else would they be able to stand Rei to such a degree? No one _I_ know would be loyal to a girl like Rei after their first encounter.

"And this," I say, treading carefully, "was all because she kept communicating with the spirit world? To try to find a way to the other shaman? To . . . help me break the bond?"

Nao says, with a scoff, "If you're trying to blame yourself for the condition she was in, don't try it. Rei knew exactly what she was getting herself into, and it was her own fault for not telling Hiro and me how bad it was getting. We could have helped her, but she's one of those people who thinks they can manage themselves better than anyone else could because they are them and everyone else is everyone else."

I laugh. It comes out sharp and defeated. "Sounds like someone I know," I say.

Nao watches me until I give him what I can only assume resembles a reassuring smile. He goes back to watching the sun descend over the horizon and says, "You probably can't tell because of the way she treats me and Hiro, but that's because Rei thinks being kind to a few people makes up for her being rude to the majority of the population."

Again, I laugh, but this time it's genuine because it _is_ the kind of mentality Rei would have. Nao brightens at my restored mood and continues to make jokes at Rei's expense, until she hears us from the window she's opened to allow the sharp smell of vinegar to waft out of the kitchen. From there, she pulls herself onto the counter and starts to throw utensils at us, at which point Hiro grabs her around the waist and yanks her back inside.

Nao and I collect the utensils scattered on the porch, slightly alarmed that there is a butter knife in the mix. Nao offers to take the utensils into the house for me, tells me to take my time clearing my head and that dinner probably won't be ready for another hour and a half, maybe, and I thank him for his kindness.

"Seriously," I say when he waves it off. "You had me back in the kitchen when I—you know—and then out here. I can't believe Rei has managed to have friends like you and Hiro."

Nao shrugs, adjusting the silverware in his hands so that he has a better grip over it. "Not to sound like I've been brainwashed by her or anything, but when Rei is happy," he says, "everyone is happy. When you hang around her long enough, she becomes the kind of person you hope stays happy forever, you know? I think it has something to do with how close she is with the spirits, personally, but being around that kind of person, you try a little harder to make everything seem like it's going to be okay so that it will be."

"That's very sweet," I say, and Nao laughs, says, "You're mocking me, aren't you?"

I deny it, but he rolls his eyes like he doesn't believe me and says, "Anyway, I'll tell Rei you want some more time alone. It won't buy you much time, so I suggest you get out of here before she comes out and drags you in against your will. Because you and I both know she'll do it."

I thank Nao and, with a last smile, he goes back into the house. I'm sufficiently cheered up, considering the circumstances, and I remember how lovingly Rei had spoken of Hiro and Nao the last time I saw her. The whole time, I thought she only spoke kindly of them because she knew she was a handful and was grateful to have people who tolerated her, but it seems like Nao and Hiro do more than tolerate Rei and her quirks.

They take care of her. They understand her mentality, and while they may not be able to talk her out of it, at least they stand by her to catch her when she falls from grace, and that's all she could ask for. In return, she trusts them with all her secrets and true intentions and to travel with her across countries.

It's the same way with me and Shikamaru.

I decide to go find the boy in question before Rei can hustle me into the kitchen for a dinner I'm not quite hungry enough to eat. It doesn't take long: I find Shikamaru sleeping in one of the parks we frequent. Or _trying_ to sleep, anyway, because he opens his eyes as he hears me approach.

"Hey, Shikamaru. Why aren't you home yet?" I say. "You've been off of work for a while now, haven't you?"

He grumbles, irritated, "Women are good at multitasking. That being the case, my mother likes to nag me while she makes dinner. No one wants that after a day of work."

"Well, don't you sound all grown up," I say, and then, after scrutinizing my face, he frowns, sits up, and says, "Are you all right?"

I laugh, sitting down beside him. "You can tell I'm not just by looking at me? We've been friends for too long."

"That's not it," he says, and I have a feeling _that's not it_ is going to be just as regularly occurring as his mantra of _troublesome_. I feel a prickle of annoyance toward Shikamaru, always having to refute me, but it doesn't last long. "So? Everything okay?"

"Yeah," I lie, trying to remember and finish piecing together what I had planned on saying to him. Shikamaru is the only one of my friends to know about the bond—explicitly, at least—and I thought I might find comfort in telling him about what happened earlier. Now, faced with the prospect of telling him, my hands go clammy and my lip gets a good gnashing as I chew on it. I say, "I mean, as good as it can be. Just, uh. Something came up that really threw me off. Like, you know how Naruto and Sakura are away on a mission right now, trying to, uh, bring Sasuke home?"

Shikamaru nods, and from there I'm not sure how to go on. This conversation went a lot better in my head. He raises a brow, waiting for me to answer, and I decide to stop beating it around the bush and say, "Well, they found him. And, funny enough, I know that because I felt it. I felt—the bond today. I felt something from him. Sasuke, I mean, and. God, you know. Thought I should tell you."

"Wait," Shikamaru says, and takes my shoulder so that I face him. "You—you _felt_ it? But I thought—"

"Yeah," I say again, and laugh. "Me too. But, today, I guess, the bond got the better of him. He thought about me too hard or for too long or whatever and whenever he said my name, I heard everything. Naruto and Sakura caught up with him. They found him and fought him and—lost him, again. They lost him, and now they're coming home. Without him. Obviously."

"Ren," Shikamaru says, and he grips my shoulder tightly. I already know what he's going to suggest before he speaks. I can see his intentions in the way he has his face set: serious and sharp and observing, like he thinks he can see in my eyes whether the bond can still reach Sasuke. "You need to tell someone."

"I _am_ telling someone," I say, and pull my hair back, wishing I had cut it already, especially at a moment like this when it feels like a suffocating curtain of dead skin cells I just can't shake.

Shikamaru rubs his hands over his face, letting out an aggravated sigh. "Someone higher up," he says gently, and I can't help but laugh again, shaking my head as my nerves start to act up and crawl into my throat. "You need to see if you can track it somehow."

"But I can't," I say, and wipe away a strand of hair tickling my face. Only my fingers come away wet and I wipe my cheeks furiously, tears coming off with each stroke, and Shikamaru's face softens and he says, "Hey," and I sniffle and cry harder, saying through my hiccups, "Shikamaru, I can't. I can't—_sense_ him or _feel_ him and—every time I think about him—I can't—pinpoint—_anything_. I've tried. You have to trust me: _I tried_. If I go—to someone higher up, they'll just—they'll look at me and they'll—be so disappointed, and I can't—I can't."

Shikamaru rubs the back of his neck and says, "Ren," and sighs as I keep wiping my face and crying. Because I can't disappoint anyone anymore. I can't keep giving people the false hope that I might be able to get through to Sasuke because I can't, and then everyone would hate me, and I can't.

I can't.

When I stop crying, Shikamaru invites me to his house for dinner, but I laugh and tell him I'm okay, that I think I've put him through enough for the evening. He isn't reassured, I can tell, but he lets me go with an, "Okay. But if you need anything."

The kitchen light is on in my house when I get home, which leads me to assume Rei is still hanging around. Sure enough, as I clomp up the porch, the front door swings open with gusto and Rei points an accusatory finger at me.

She demands that I tell her where I've been, what I did, why I look like I've been crying, but her pestering is put to a stop by Hiro and what I've come to recognize as his Warning Voice. Rei pouts, but gives in, sitting down at the table, and orders us to eat as though we don't have an option.

I'm wary about the dinner at first: despite Rei's best attempts, the kitchen is still filled with a punch of vinegar coupled with herbs in a multitude of orange baskets lining the table; there is the normal mint and cilantro, and then another herb that smells faintly of fish. The baskets sit beside plates of small white patties that look a bit rubbery, and when Hiro senses my reluctance to try this dish, he says, quietly so as not to upset Rei and send her off on another tangent, "Trust me. It tastes a lot better than it looks."

And it does, which is a pleasant surprise. I end up eating twice as much as I'd been anticipating, although that's nowhere near as much as how much Nao and Hiro eat alone. It reminds me of my time in the Land of the Waves, when Naruto and Sasuke were participating in a kind of competitive eating that resulted in them both throwing up on their shoes.

"Daydreamers don't get anything done, Ren," Rei says, pulling her seat beside me as Hiro and Nao start to clear our dishes. I thank them, wondering if, as hostess, _I_ should be doing these things or at least making more of a fuss about having them do it for me, but I'm so worn out by my day that I don't have the will to fight it. Besides, Rei would insist on their behalf anyway, and no one is winning unless Rei is winning.

I flinch when Rei reaches up to brush the feather in my hair. She sighs, running her finger down the length of it before she withdraws, crossing her arms over the table. She doesn't say anything, only stares at it for a few more moments, and then takes a long drink out of the glass Hiro has left in front of her.

"D'you want it back?" I ask, unraveling it before she has a chance to say otherwise. Once I have it free, I turn in my seat and start to work it into her hair. Throughout the process, Rei sits placidly, and it's the calmest—and stillest—I've ever seen her.

When I finish she takes a deep breath and says, "Thank you," so quietly I wonder if this feather means more to her than I had suspected.

But as I sit back in my seat, I have this overwhelming sense of sadness, a loneliness that I haven't remembered since—well, since Sasuke left. It burns between my lungs, like it can't find a place to settle.

I swallow thickly and ignore it, saying, "How did it do that anyway? Send me those signals to tell me you were coming, I mean. Or _words_, rather."

Rei adjusts the feather and clears her throat, uncharacteristically uncomfortable. She says, "I've explained this to you before, haven't I? This artifact is directly linked to me by some shaman rituals you would have a hard time understanding. But, essentially, it's an extension of my shaman soul. It's what really connects me to the spirit world. Like, for example, when you were wearing this feather, did you ever feel oddly closer to the spirits? Like you had an unusual affinity for the spirits that you never had before?"

She taps the feather, taking my silence for agreement. "That was this," she says. "All I had to do once you had this was send some of my chakra through the spirit realm. This feather would act as a kind of antennae, then you would receive my transmission."

"It does more than that, doesn't it?" I ask when I notice Hiro eyeing Rei warily as he passes.

Rei grins like she had been expecting me to notice, and leans in closer so that Hiro can't see her face as she speaks. "Being a shaman is tricky business," she says. "Remember how crazy I was the last time I saw you? Well, I don't mean to brag but that was nothing compared to how I was without this feather. This artifact helps mute the spirits when I contact them, so the spirits don't barrage me all at once with their regrets and remorse and shit."

"You shouldn't have given it to me. If it meant that much to you."

Rei shrugs, turning the cup in the ring of perspiration it leaves on the table. "You needed something to comfort you, Ren. That much I could see. And, technically, it's my duty to help you in every way possible."

I give a small _hmph_ and listen to the clatter of Hiro and Nao washing the dishes and putting the leftovers into the fridge while Rei sits in front of me, biting her lip and twirling her thumbs. She mouths words every so often, though I can't read lips very well, and she's careful to not let a single vibration of her words slip through her breath.

Finally, she says, "I found out how to break the bond, Ren."

I laugh, smile glumly at her. "Yeah. I figured you had."

"Don't you want to hear it?" she says after a pregnant pause.

"Of course."

"It's not going to be good."

"I figured that, too, given the way you keep stalling."

"Never without purpose," she says, patting my hand. "Like I said: I'm here to help. But the ways I've found to break the bond don't sound like they'll be able to help you. That's why I'm hesitant about telling you anything."

Rei's body droops forward with her sigh, and she squeezes my wrists, on the verge of continuing when Nao says, "Sorry to interrupt, but could the lady of the house tell us where she'd like us to set up for the night? I can't speak for Hiro, but I'm dead tired."

Rei lets me go gather bed sheets, blankets, and pillows for them and I have them set up in my parents' room, which I'd cleaned out in the first few days of my return. I'd repacked all the boxes as best as I could and shoved them into the weaponry room down the hall, turning my parents' room into livable space. I'm not sure why I did it—it's not like I want the room for myself. That would be too creepy. But having it empty was better than having it cluttered so I'd taken it upon myself to clean it, especially after how I had rampaged it before after Sasuke left.

Hiro and Nao start to lay out their blankets on the floor. I assume Rei will take the bed. I point them to the bathroom so they can wash up and then go back to the kitchen, preparing to turn off the light, only to find Rei still sitting at the table, staring into her cup of water.

"I should tell you," she says, turning around in her seat just as I'm about to ask her if she's going to go to bed. "About how to break the bond. Right now before I lose heart."

"Rei, whatever it is, I'm sure it can't be as bad as you think it is," I say, shifting my weight on my feet with impatience. Seeing Hiro and Nao prepare for bed has made me tired by extension. "I'm sure I can handle it. But for now, we should go to bed."

It takes Rei a moment before she heaves herself out of the chair and slips out the door, careful not to touch me in the slightest. As she leaves, she flicks off the lights, enveloping us in a darkness that is only softened by the moonlight coming in through the window.

She says, eerily quiet, "If you really think so."

I don't know why she has to say it like that. It makes me sigh and say, "Why wouldn't I? What could be so terrible that would make the inimitable Rei would lose her nerve?"

Rei glances at me over her shoulders. She says, "When it comes to breaking this bond, you only have three options. Three. And they are all equally as terrible as the first. Well, I take that back. The first is loads better than the last two, but still. Those three options," she says, enunciating each of her words with a stab to the air, "are all you have. And they suck. Hard. But I know you'll go for all of them."

"You don't _know_ that," I say, and she scoffs.

"I do," she says, "because you want to break this bond, Ren. Badly. You are desperate to break this bond, especially after what happened earlier. I know because of _that_," she says when I look away. "What you just did there. So the fact that you only have three options and those options are all terrible and that you will absolutely choose one of them despite my warnings—that's what's so terrible."

"You don't know that," I repeat like a broken record.

"Right," she says. "Well, if I'm being honest, I suppose I don't. But I'm tired, so good night. See you in the morning."

[+]

I slip out my window in the morning, effectively _not_ seeing Rei. Shows her for being shaman-y and thinking she can tell the future and shit. When I come home from teaching at the Academy, Nao and Hiro are in my living room, sitting at the table and watching TV. Hiros tells me Rei has been in bed all day, recovering from their trip.

"Since she has the feather back, she's stabilized," Hiro says as Nao flips through the channels. "All she's doing now is reorganizing the spirits so they know she's back in charge."

"Where were you this morning?" says Nao, tossing the remote to Hiro, who catches it deftly. "D'you sneak out the window or something? Hiro and I didn't see you at all."

"Something along those lines," I say, and leave it at that. Rei stays in her room for the rest of the day. And the next. And the next. Hiro brings her meals to her, and I hear Nao complaining that she takes too long in the bathroom, but I never see her going in or out or walking through the halls.

Maybe she's avoiding me just as much as I'm avoiding her.

Occasionally, I get these pricks like she might be watching me, but every time I turn around, she's not there. I shake it off, dismissing it as an odd draft that had put me off or a trick of the light that had caught my eye. When it starts to happen as I'm walking through the streets of Konoha, though, I can't ignore it, even though I still can't place the feeling. I end up spending most of my time at home, drumming my fingers on the tables and countertops whenever I sit down, trying to figure out what this feeling is.

A knock comes on my door the one afternoon I have off. Nao looks up from the sink where he's cleaning the dishes, surprised, and I press my finger to my lips, shushing him before he gets the chance to say anything.

"My friends were on a mission and were supposed to be home a day ago," I whisper, pushing him away from the kitchen window. "That's probably them. Stay here. And if Hiro or Rei come out, tell them to _stay here_."

I shuffle to the door as the knocking becomes a pounding and swing the door open in a flourish to make it stop. Naruto's fist almost comes down on my face, but I dodge it just in time.

"Yeesh, Naruto," I say, affixing my hair behind my ear. "Just because I didn't answer right away doesn't mean I didn't hear you. One knock is enough. Anyway, I figured you guys would be home soon. How did the mission go? Is—Sasuke—?"

I know the answer to that question, but I have to ask to avoid suspicion. Still, Naruto's brow knots together like he knows I should already know, and he lowers his gaze.

"No," he says, his hair bumbling into his eyes without his forehead protector.

"Oh," I say, feigning disappointment, but the relief in my voice is unmistakable. I muss my hair to try to hide it. It doesn't work.

Naruto purses his lips, searches my face for something, and says, "Sakura-chan and I are going to go visit Kakashi-sensei in the hospital; do you want to come? We'll tell you everything that happened, too."

[+]

" . . . and the whole time, the kid who was assigned to our team, Sai, he made these dick-y comments," Naruto says, hooking his hands behind his head and scowling. "Actually, maybe that isn't the best way to say it."

I laugh, leaning back on the fountain in the square where we're waiting for Sakura to show. Naruto has been telling me about the mission for the past few minutes, but he's dwelling on the unimportant things, like the characters that are Sai and Yamato, the man chosen to replace Kakashi. I assume he's waiting to describe his encounter with Sasuke when we're all together again, but the way he keeps rambling has me thinking otherwise.

I go along with it, commenting and smiling in all the right spots. I listen until he doesn't have any more to say, and then we sit without speaking, waiting for Sakura.

Naruto sinks deep in thought, his hands tightening around the edge of the fountain every now and then. I can guess what he's thinking about, what with the way his eyes keep flashing toward me. I pretend not to notice his suspicion, but when I do say something, Naruto jumps considerably.

"There's Sakura," I say, standing as Naruto gathers himself. I wave at the girl approaching us who reciprocates my greeting with a smile. Trailing behind her, a slender boy with short black hair watches the exchange with curiosity, as though he's never seen such a spectacle.

I feel another prickle like during the days before, and slap my hand to my neck. I pull away to find bug guts splayed across my fingers and I wipe it off on my shirt as Naruto scowls at the sight of the oncoming boy and says, "What the—what is Sai doing here?"

"I ran into him at the library," Sakura says, gesturing to a book she has clasped in one hand, "so I invited him."

"At least this works in favor with my plan," says Naruto, shuffling closer to me. He lowers his voice and says, "Ren, distract Sai while I take Sakura on a scenic walk to the hospital, just like a date!"

I scoff and decline as Sakura says, indignant, "Don't try to draw a woman in a steady, healthy relationship into this!" which makes me roll my eyes. "If you have time to have stupid ideas like that, then you should go study ninjutsu or something."

"Studying, right," Naruto huffs. "How can you two stand it at the library? It's so uncomfortable there."

"Just because you're not used to keeping your mouth shut," I say, knocking him upside the head, "doesn't mean other people don't appreciate it when it happens."

"You'd do well to go once in a while, Naruto," Sakura adds as Naruto glares at me, rubbing his new injury. "Training involves the mind just as much as the body. I mean, you're _so stupid_ as you are."

"Sakura-chaaan," he groans, and I laugh, "that's going way too far!"

"Aw, he's right, Sakura," I say, wrapping an arm around the boy's shoulder and petting his head. "Naruto's poor brain wouldn't be able to take all that knowledge at once anyway. He needs to take baby steps. Why don't you tutor him privately? You could call them dates and he'd get a real kick out of that."

I laugh as Naruto cheers in agreement and Sakura starts to protest when we're interrupted by a small cough. We turn toward Sai, who blushes and lowers his eyes in embarrassment.

"N-Naruto, Sakura," he says, his tone soft and formal. "Would you mind if I join the conversation as well? Ah, er, I read this book about . . . getting to know people and stuff, and it said that I should drop name suffixes or use nicknames and such. By doing so, it creates a feeling of closeness, allowing people to become friends quickly."

I raise my brow and lean into Naruto, whispering, "I thought you said he was an, and I quote, 'ass-face'."

Naruto grins widely, hooking his hands behind his head as Sakura elbows my gut. "What did I do?" I mouth, but Sakura just shakes her head as Naruto says, "He _was_. But, you know, I guess people change. Sai, I didn't think you actually cared about that stuff."

"So that's why you were reading all those books," Sakura says, impressed.

"You mean you went to the library to learn how to be friends with people?" I ask. "That is the definition of a man who has spent too much time—ow!"

"I think it's _admirable_," says Sakura through her teeth, telling me with a punch to my shoulder that I should think before I speak.

"But," he says as I sulk and take cover from Sakura on the other side of Naruto, "as I thought about it, I couldn't think of any good nicknames for you, so I just dropped the honorifics."

"Nicknames aren't something you think about," Naruto says. "They just happen naturally."

"If you're going to give a nickname, then you can use someone's characteristics," Sakura offers, gesturing to Naruto. "Like, here, take Naruto. He would be 'Stupid Naruto' or 'Idiot Naruto'."

"Which are both terrible and not good examples," I say as Naruto objects to the degrading nicknames. "Really, really horrible. I wouldn't even take offense to them if I were you, Naruto. Not even worth it."

"And Ren would be 'Disagreeable Ren' or," Sakura says, continuing with her streak of lackluster nicknames, "more simply, 'loser'."

"You know what, I take it back. Naruto, Sai," I say. "Don't take lessons from Sakura. She is an abhorrent teacher. Worse than me even, and that is saying something."

"Whatever," says Sakura. "Even if those were bad examples, you can't say they weren't spot on."

"Er, thanks anyway," says Sai with a sheepish smile, and Sakura regards him happily, pleased that someone appreciates her stupidity. "But I think I got the hang of it—Ugly Dog."

There is a pause wherein Naruto and I exchange wary glances before turning to Sakura to see her reaction. She doesn't seem to register her nickname at first, but then as the realization dawns on her, her face contorts with rage. She lets out a fierce cry, her hands clenching into claws as she lunges at Sai. Naruto intercepts her just in time to protect Sai.

"You were much more creative, I'll give you that," I say to Sai as Naruto tries to convince Sakura to calm down. "But I think I would be careful if I were you. Most people don't like hearing the truth about themselves like that."

Sai blinks at me, confused, and in the moment he lets his guard down Sakura manages to swing her arm past Naruto's head and clip Sai's jaw. He stumbles and I say, "All right, Sakura, I think you got your point across! No more trying to give people nicknames, okay?"

"I don't believe I got your name," Sai says, straightening up, as Sakura stomps off, still fuming, and Naruto follows after her sullenly, wiping the bruise forming on his cheek.

"Ah, that's right. Sorry," I say, and hold out my hand. "Kagiru Ren. Nice to meet you. Naruto's told me a lot about you. And also, I was with him when you attacked us that first time, so we're off to a good start, you and me."

Sai hums as we shake hands, and I can see him racking his brain for something to call me too, but I just smile, the vein in my forehead twitching, and say, "Don't try it."

[+]

When we get to Kakashi's hospital room, he's sitting up in bed, reading his novel. I make a comment about how it's a wonder he hasn't already read through the entire series, being that I don't recognize the title of the novel although it's indubitably from the same series as the other bright orange books, and Naruto tells me, "That's a new one I got for him, actually. It turns out Ero-Sennin writes those books, so he gave me one to give to Kakashi when I came home."

"Why would you encourage that kind of habit, Naruto?" I ask as Kakashi greets us, setting down his book only long enough so that Sakura can introduce him to Sai. "He needs to find himself a _real_ girlfriend, not keep drooling over—" I shudder and wave away the notion, saying, "You know what? Forget it. I don't even want to think about what kind of girls he reads about in those books."

Naruto makes a noise of disinterest. "They're not that great."

I hope Naruto's comment doesn't mean what I think he's implying, but thankfully Kakashi asks how we are and Naruto becomes serious. He says, "Kakashi-sensei. Our last mission, it—"

"I've already heard everything from Yamato," Kakashi says, glued to his book still. All these years, he still can't seem to give us his full attention. If it weren't for his soft manner of speech, I would have gotten the impression that he doesn't care about us at all. "He told me about Sasuke as well."

At this he looks up, looks right at me, and I purse my lips. Our exchange doesn't go without notice by Sakura and Naruto, who watches expectantly for either of us to say something revealing. But I shift on my feet and clear my throat. I say, "Well, I wasn't on the mission. So what were you able to figure out?"

Naruto's hands tighten into balls. I wonder if he's frustrated by me or by the reminder that he's lost Sasuke again. I wonder when the questions about the bond will start.

"We don't have time left," he says. "At this rate, it won't be long before Orochimaru takes Sasuke's body, and with where we are right now, we aren't strong enough to bring Sasuke back. He's become too powerful."

"In that case," Kakashi says with an easy glance at Naruto over his book, "you only need to become stronger than him, right?"

"You say that as though it's so simple," says Sakura with a scoff. "When I saw Sasuke," she says, and my nerves jump, rumbling goosebumps up my arm, "it was clear that the speed at which he'd gotten stronger wasn't normal in the least. After consulting Tsunade-sama, she told me it's possible he's been using forbidden jutsu or was given drugs during his training. With a medic like Kabuto working with him, I certainly wouldn't put it past them. I probably can't hope to learn anything about how people who experiment on humans think from books like these," she says quietly, tapping the book she has pressed to her stomach, "but it helps to stay informed."

Performance enhancing drugs. _Sasuke, you cheat,_ I think as Kakashi makes the unreasonable suggestion that we'll just have to become stronger at an even faster rate. To think Sasuke would sink so low as to resort to techniques like that in order to become stronger. The Sasuke _I_ used to know would never have done that. But I suppose that's one of the things I need to realize:

The Sasuke I used to know doesn't exist. Not anymore.

Listening to Kakashi go on about training Naruto at a rate that will allow him to surpass Sasuke's power and eventually develop a new technique solely unique to Naruto, I can't help but interrupt, and say, "That's all well and good, but if you're able to do what you're suggesting, you should consider the circumstances of your situation. For one, just by looking at you, I can tell you shouldn't be getting out of bed if you can help it for at least another two days. Even then, you shouldn't be expending chakra. Whatever technique you used back in the Sand went way beyond your level of endurance. You shouldn't stress your body like that. _And_, on the subject of stressing your body, you can't imagine what kind of strain it will put on Naruto. Would it be worth it to develop a technique so quickly at the cost of your health? More importantly, we shouldn't emphasize solely on Naruto's training. After all, we're not going to let Naruto burden the weight of overpowering Sasuke on his own. We should think about combining our strength to bring Sasuke back," I say, meeting each of their eyes, "not how things will play out if we were to encounter him individually. It would be easier, we wouldn't have to spend as much time training, and we could be prepared in—in two weeks time!"

"But you should consider what it will come down to," Kakashi says, his book resting in his lap. "You know as well as Naruto or Sakura or I, maybe even better, that we won't all be able to face Sasuke at once, however ideal that situation would be. We can't be so simple minded about this."

"With a bit of planning," I say, "I'm sure we could think of _some_ way to corner him. It's four against one."

"Three," Kakashi corrects, "if you want to get technical."

Naruto and Sakura cast Kakashi questioning looks before turning to me. I ignore them to glare at Kakashi, wanting to wring my hands around his throat. To bring up the subject of the bond , no matter how subtly, is not his place. I told him I would explain everything to Sakura and Naruto when I had the chance. He's just inducing it now because of his own impatience.

He doesn't appear too bothered by the fact that he's taken away my personal right. Just like the bastard, always thinking he knows what's best for us.

And then, of all the people to ask, Sai looks between the four of us and says, "Why only three?" like he believes this is a truth we're all in on except for him because he wasn't part of the original team.

"Ren," Sakura says as I open my mouth to snap at him. She twines her hands together, the library book nearly slipping out of her grip. "There is . . . something Naruto and I would like to ask you about. Something about . . . Sasuke that came up while we were on the mission. You seem to know him best, so we thought we'd ask you."

Is that their clever way of asking about the bond? I suppose there's no way to avoid it now. And I did promise that I would tell them. It would be easier if I told them, I remind myself. Like how much easier it was with Shikamaru after I told him. But it's Naruto and Sakura and I can't forget the kind of relationship they have with Sasuke. Shikamaru might have wanted to bring Sasuke back for the sake of our village, but Sakura and Naruto want him back for themselves. And that's why it's so much worse with them.

My skin starts to itch again, but when I rub down my arms, I realize that it's more of an ache in my muscles. So many things irritating me at once, and no way to make them all disappear. I press the heel of my hand to my forehead, thinking I should just get on with it, and say, "Yeah? What was it?"

"What is it between the two of you?" says Naruto without pause, and I flinch at the harshness of his voice. "You told me, when we were in the Sand, that your families used to work together, but there's more to it than that, isn't there?"

"My family worked _for_ the Uchiha," I say. "That's an important part of it that you shouldn't ignore. It's a—loyalty thing, I guess. Besides, I don't know what you mean by what's 'between the two of us'. _You_ used to get along with him just as badly as I did."

"Ren," Kakashi says, reprimanding, and my anger flares in my stomach. I'm not ready. He shouldn't have done this. I can't tell them, not now. "Naruto, Sakura, maybe there's a better way to approach this. Ren, why don't you explain to them what you understand they might be asking you about."

I take a deep breath, rubbing my hands over my face. "I think they're making it pretty clear, actually," I say into my palms. "I just don't want to answer."

"He asked after you," Sakura blurts, and I drop my hands.

_I know. Why do you think he did? Do you think he thought about me at all these past few years? Do you think it's because he cares?_ I stop myself from asking aloud, but I'm sure she can see it all in my eyes because her brow folds together with sympathy.

"He mentioned something," Sakura continues. "When Sai brought up the bonds between Sasuke and Naruto that Naruto treasures so deeply, Sasuke said there was only one he cared about, and that was his hatred which bound him to his brother. But then—then he asked after you and whether or not you had told us about the bond he shares with you. A bond that neither you or him could help, but that he still managed to sever for the sake of his revenge."

I swallow thickly. Brushing my clammy hands off on my shirt, I stammer, "I don't—"

Be honest. All I have to do is be honest and say it. But, looking between Sakura and Naruto, seeing how their eyes shine with this desire to know, their mouths sagging with disappointment as I find it so hard to tell them, I don't know how to form the words. I try to remember how it was when I told Shikamaru, why it was so easy, but I can't. What had possessed me to tell Shikamaru in the first place, and why isn't it possessing me now? It seemed natural when I told him, like how it feels to confess a long kept secret that has been crushing you: all relief and happiness and trust that the other person will not leave you if they had been able to sit through the whole horrible story and still not call you crazy or look at you like you were crazy or even give the slightest indication that they thought you were crazy.

I know Sakura and Naruto won't think I'm insane. No, they'll see me as worse: A gateway to Sasuke, the foolproof plan to bring him back to them.

And there it is, the chain keeping me from telling my secret.

"I saw you there," Naruto adds when my moment of pause has gone on for too long. "In—my head. With Sasuke when he was trying to suppress the power of the Kyuubi that was breaking out of me. How did that happen? How were you there?"

"_That_," I say, pointing at him like it'll help me make my point. "I have no idea how _that_ happened. I didn't even know _Sasuke_ could do that, much less myself, but—I—there's—"

"Ren," Sakura says, her voice breaking as she speaks over my stammering, and I stop, folding my arms over my chest to protect myself. "What is it you're not telling us?"


	65. Cold Comfort

**Bound  
Chapter 65: Cold Comfort**

"I just," I say, holding up my hands in defense, "want to make it clear to the both of you: What I am about to tell you _does not change anything_ between Sasuke and me. Okay? I need you to understand that I _do not hold any power over him_, despite what I am about to tell you. Okay? Is that—do you understand? Kakashi," I say when they only continue to blink at me. "Tell them to answer."

"Naruto," he says softly. "Sakura. Agree with her."

Slowly, they nod their heads.

"Okay," I say, crossing my arms. "Because Sasuke and I share a bond, one that has bound his family and mine for over a century, and that's why I always ran to help him, Sakura. You noticed, didn't you, in the Land of the Waves, in the Forest of Death, during his fight with Gaara? And—during those two and a half years you and Naruto were under your apprenticeships. Essentially, he's the reason I was kicked out of the village. Because I wanted—_the bond_ wanted—to find him again and revive itself so that Sasuke and I could be together forever, but it's gone," I say. "He broke it. He said it himself: He severed it for the sake of his revenge. It's gone."

I realize I'm staring at the floor when I finish my sentence and will myself to look up at Sakura and Naruto. Sakura's eyes bulge out of her skull and Naruto looks at me in a way that I can only describe as horrified. I wince. Although I suppose I much prefer their silent, stunned reactions than angry accusations, I'm unable to hold onto that comfort for long.

"How does that work, then?" snaps Naruto, stepping forward as though he means to threaten me. "If this—if it's broken like you say it is, how did you manage to get inside my head with him?"

"I don't know," I say. "For whatever reason, during that time, whenever he said my name, he drew me into the conversation. The bond can do that—allow me into Sasuke's head and vice versa—at least when it was still intact. I'm not sure what triggered it back to life this time around, but it wasn't because _I_ wanted it to happen. Sasuke has all the control. Like I told you, Naruto, when we were saving Gaara: My family worked _for_ the Uchiha. So far as this bond goes, I am Sasuke's dutiful servant. Me getting into his head a few days ago was—luck, if you want to call it that. But I haven't felt or heard anything since."

"All this time," Sakura whispers, the book crinkling in her hands. "You and Sasuke—" She leans against Kakashi's bed, her gaze unfocused on the hospital room floor. "Before," she says without looking at me. "How was the bond for you before? You said this—bond is why you came to help him, but how did you know he needed help? Are you implying that there was some kind of telepathic communication that took place?"

"Uh," I say. "Well. Yes. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but, if Sasuke were ever in excruciating pain or undesirable circumstances, the bond would kick in and send me these signals so I could find him and take care of him. That was the purpose of Kagiru, why all the women were trained medics. For the women affected by the bond especially, the medical training was rigorous, which is why I knew so much in the beginning. And it's always this pairing: a Kagiru woman and an Uchiha man, bound together by this, er, psychic connection. Once the pair dies, the bond gets recycled into the family by some mystical means. That's how it stays alive."

"All things considered," Kakashi says, propping his chin in his hands. "I think it was best that you didn't go on the mission. If the mere mention of your name triggered the bond that easily and you were hundreds of miles away, imagine if you had seen him. We may not have been able to stop you from joining him."

"I know," I say, feeling heat creep across my face, embarrassed to admit the amount of control Sasuke has over me. "Not that I would have readily joined his ranks, but, now that I see what could have happened, I think it was a concern that was deftly handled by the village elders, although I'm sure they couldn't have anticipated the degree of it. But the bond had that kind of power over me, which is why I resent it, why I want it broken. Because, despite what Sasuke says, it's obviously not _completely_ gone, if I could hear him talking about me."

Sakura eyes me like I'm crazy, like she doesn't understand why I want to break the bond when it's the last connection we have to her darling dearest. I flinch and look away because those were the exact eyes I never wanted to see from her or anybody, why I never wanted to tell anyone about this bond.

Kakashi hums, his fingers tapping his jaw line. He says, "During the time when you could hear Sasuke talking about you, were you able to get inside his mind at all, see what he and Orochimaru have been doing?"

"Uh, no," I say, sheepish. "It came as such a surprise that it didn't occur to me to do anything like that."

"Understandable," Kakashi says. The disappointment in his voice is subtle, but I catch it.

"You guys are talking about this so normally," Naruto says and I grimace, making a point to avoid his gaze.

"It's my life," I say, fidgeting. "Most of the older Nin in the village know about the bond, so Kakashi, obviously, Asuma, Gai, all the Jounin team leaders. I think, if the massacre hadn't happened, you guys would have known about it by now too. But, because my family died and I resented the fact that they had been killed, essentially, _because of _the bond, I never told anyone. So far, only you two—three," I say, motioning to Sai, who stands awkwardly in the corner of the room, "and Shikamaru know about the bond. So if you guys would please, _please_ not tell anyone about it."

Sakura glances down at the book she holds, smoothing her thumb on the cover. "Why," she says, "didn't you tell us sooner?"

"Honestly," I say, "I thought it would have been broken by now. I've had some help trying to find ways to break it, but blood oaths are tricky things, apparently, and the methods of breaking it aren't exactly . . . safe from what I've gathered. But keeping it around is just as bad, I think, because I can't—the way it is right now, I can't find Sasuke like I know everyone expects me to. The connection isn't there anymore for me to do that."

Sakura closes her eyes, massages her forehead. Then she asks, "Did you know he was going to leave? . . . Ren?" she prompts when I don't answer. "Did you?"

I bite the inside of my lip, uncomfortable under Naruto and Sakura's scrutiny. Because I _had_ known that Sasuke was going to leave, but Sakura had known just as well, hadn't she? That's why she waited for him on the park bench all those nights.

Of course, I knew much sooner than she did. Weeks sooner.

I start stuttering, eliciting disheartened sighs from Naruto and Sakura. I'm saved from giving a real answer when the door slides open with a forceful crack. I whirl around as a sharp voice says, "Asuma-sensei, you're supposed to knock first!"

"Hello," Asuma greets with a grin as Ino scowls at him. "How's the body doing, Kakashi?"

I step aside, giving Asuma and his team room to come in. Shikamaru waves to me before he notices Sakura and Naruto. He motions toward them and I wave him to go on and speak to them without me. I stay close to the door while everyone talks and I watch them smile and laugh and reassure each other. This is how I should be with them. No secrets, no discomfort, but the bond coupled with Naruto and Sakura's love for Sasuke makes everything wrong.

No matter what, I will always hate sharing the bond with them.

Shikamaru trudges up to me as Asuma is saying something about yakiniku. I offer Shikamaru a weak smile and he quirks his brow, somehow managing to look concerned and too tired to be concerned at the same time.

He says, "If it's any consolation, that Sai who replaced you is odder than you by far."

I roll my eyes, and say, "That's not what's bothering me."

"I know," he says and lowers his voice, adding, "Naruto asked me about the bond. So you finally told him?"

"Both of them," I say, crossing my arms. "_And_ Sai. Wasn't my choice, though. Kakashi kind of forced it out of me. Still, it was about time, right?"

"Is that why you've been standing in the corner this whole time?"

"No. I also don't want Ino trying to get me to land her a date," I say, gesturing to the way the girl giggles and flutters her eyelashes at Sai. Sakura even shakes her head as she watches Ino's display of hopelessness. Sakura and I meet eyes for a brief moment, but I'm the one to cower away.

"So, what's this about yakiniku?" I say. "Is it Ino's clever way of getting a first date with Sai? Is she going to pull us all aside right before we head out and tell us to not show up so it seems like a coincidence that she and Sai are the only ones available?"

"I don't think so," Chouji says, appearing at my other side. "Asuma says he's paying for it, and Ino's not one to take advantage of him like that. Besides, I really want to go. Are you coming, Ren?"

"Depends," I say, looking between Naruto, who is frowning at Kakashi as Kakashi tells him they'll get to the training later, and Sakura, who is scowling at Ino swooning over Sai. "Do you guys know of any ways I could get out of it?"

"I'm gonna go help my dad collect antlers today," Shikamaru says. "Do you want to come?"

"I think we have a winner," I say, and pat Shikamaru's cheek endearingly. He swats my arm away. "Sorry, Chouji, but I have to go collect some antler for the advancement of medicine and all that. So I'll see you around."

"Before you leave," Kakashi says as everyone starts to file out of the room. Sakura, Naruto, and I stop, drawn to the sound of our sensei's voice like sheep. Kakashi looks between the three of us, observing us in a way that unsettles me, and says, "Ren, I'll need you during Naruto's lessons, so I'll call on you when we can get started."

Scowling, I say, "What if I have plans?"

"Cancel them," he says, grinning, and then waves us off.

Annoyed, I follow Shikamaru out of the room, accidentally bumping shoulders with Naruto. He blinks at me in surprise, and I apologize. He says, "Don't worry about it," looks away quickly, and I wonder how things have backpedalled so badly. Just when I thought things were getting better, everything goes to hell and becomes awkward again, and I hate this.

I take a deep breath and grip Naruto's sleeve, pulling him aside.

"Naruto, please understand," I say. Sakura notices us over her shoulder and slows, her ears twitching as I speak. "This was something I couldn't talk about. For the longest time, I thought, if any of you knew, you would try to use me to get to him, and then I'd be nothing more but a liaison between you and Sasuke. I didn't want that. I wanted to be a girl who could have friends and be appreciated for just, you know, _being_, and I didn't think I could do that if you knew. Because you put Sasuke on this pedestal. And I knew, whatever I said to try to convince you otherwise, you would never believe me if I told you he can't be helped. So I didn't want to tell you about—the bond," I whisper, "and have you guys think I held any kind of power over Sasuke because it doesn't work that way. It doesn't."

Naruto says, "It's okay, Ren. I get it."

And then he smiles at me and I squeeze his hand, comforted.

"Thank you."

[+]

I think I know why Naruto responded to me the way he did. After all, he had been hiding the Kyuubi all these years. He should know what it's like to harbor a secret that can change the way people see you, and know the fear he must have felt when he was finally able to trust Sakura with the secret in the Sand.

So, I mean. I hope he understands.

Coming home from collecting antler with Shikamaru, I'm flustered from the heat of the afternoon. During the collection, Shikamaru had talked me out of my panic about having Naruto and Sakura know about the bond. "Do you think you'll tell everyone else now?" he asked, and I laughed, shaking my head and saying over and over, "God, no. _No_. No. Absolutely not. No."

"That kind of thing takes time," I said after Shikamaru scowled at me and told me, all right, he got the point, I could stop saying no. "Took me most of my lifetime to tell _you_, and another six months for me to tell Naruto and Sakura, and even then that wasn't by my own planning. I think I'll wait," I said, and Shikamaru rolled his eyes. "For everyone else, it's not so much a need-to-know basis, anyway, right?"

Shikamaru didn't agree, but he didn't disagree either, which I thought was encouraging.

I know I'll have to tell everyone someday, though. Otherwise, when they do find out, it won't be pretty. Worse-case scenario, the day they discover the bond will be the day I betray them one last time to be with Sasuke again.

Like hell I'll let that happen, though.

When I enter my kitchen, Rei is sitting at the table, sipping a hot cup of tea. This is the first time I've seen her in days, and the lack of Hiro and Nao around serves to make me nervous, like she has planned this ambush and I'm not going to make it out of this room alive. I rub my forearms which ache from holding so many antler for so long and ask, "Where is everyone?"

"Out," says Rei, pouring tea into a second cup. "Groceries. Sit. Tea."

"_Why_ are you talking like that?"

"Getting to the point," she says. "Faster this way. Come. Sit."

"Please don't talk like that. You're not one to get straight to the point, so it's weird. Actually, it's weird in itself. Just stop." I take the seat across from her and she pushes the cup of tea my way. I say, declining the cup which she insists on me taking anyway, "Do you think it's a good idea to have Hiro and Nao wandering through town? What if someone notices them?"

"People see strangers around the village all the time without a second glance," Rei says, filling my cup to the brim, despite the fact that I haven't taken a single sip. "What difference will Hiro-kun and Nao make? Besides, we're out of food and I'm hungry. _And_ I wanted to have a little talk with you. Alone," she says, licking her lips, and I think, _I knew it_. I itch to get out of my seat, but Rei keeps her eyes steady on me, and asks, "How was your day?"

I frown, but Rei takes a gracious slurp of tea, smacking her lips for taste, and doesn't take notice of my reluctance to tell her anything. She leans forward in her seat, grinning in anticipation.

"I think you'll be happy to hear Naruto and Sakura know about the bond now," I say, remembering things are easier when they go Rei's way. "With a little shove, Kakashi got me to spill the beans and now, in addition to Shikamaru who I told about six months ago, they are the only ones in my immediate circle of friends who knows about the bond. Also, the Kazekage knows, but that's because the Hokage told him when I was sent to live in the Sand for six months."

Rei freezes at the news, leans over the table, and eyes me with suspicion. She sets down her cup of tea and says, taking my face in her hands and squeezing my cheeks, "That. Is. Fan. Tastic! They might be the only ones who know, but they are by far the most important people. I can now say with the utmost confidence," she says as I push her hands off of me, "that I believe you'll truly be able to break this bond. Maybe without my help."

"Ah, yeah, but I would definitely _appreciate_ it if you did help, considering you already have the information, right?"

"That's not important."

"No, I'd say it's important."

"Not important."

"Seriously," I say, exasperated. "What could be so bad that you won't tell me? You'd think after days of avoiding each other we would be past this."

"Days of _you_ avoiding _me_, you mean," Rei says. "I was honestly recovering from the trip here. No amount of medicine, however potent, can protect a shaman's mind from the assaults of the spirit world. That's what I get for lending you my artifact though. Besides, I'm not the one who snuck out the window. I heard you sneaking across the porch," she says, giving me a pointed look, and I sigh. "For someone who handles the vibrations, you are the loudest person in the world. Feet like lead, I tell you."

"I do _not_," I say, bringing my feet up under me.

Rei shrugs, mutters, "Whatever," and I say, "Maybe that's just _you_ and your hypersensitivity, because a few years ago, an old man told me my steps were feather-light. Downright insulted me about it, actually. He said I should learn to be more relaxed."

"Well, then," Rei says. "Maybe your lead feet are more like progress than a retrograde. Although I would recommend that you only walk like that at home, not on missions or any kind of situation dealing with espionage."

I turn my teacup in my hands, tracing the faint outline of myself in the murky brown water. " . . . yeah," I say, thinking about the Third Hokage's words. "I think that's what he meant."

"What's that?"

"Nothing," I say. "To get to the point: you were going to tell me about the bond and how to break it?"

"I wasn't, actually," she says, sweeping her hair up into a tousled bun and I frown. She sighs again, her shoulders sagging, and says, "But if you insist."

"I do."

Rei downs the rest of her tea in a way that makes me wonder if there is something other than tea in her cup, and leans her forehead on the heel of her hand. She says, slurring slightly, "I _have_ known how to break the bond for a while now. About a year after I left you, I found a wonderful old shaman lady in the more barren parts of the Wind Country. She lived all alone in this cave on the side of this cliff—very daring and all. Turns out she was _also_ banished from her village for disagreeing with the greater shamans on some issues, so she warmed up to me quick and was more than willing to share with me everything she knew about blood oaths."

"What took you two and a half years to come back, then?" I ask, and Rei ruffles her hair like she'd been dreading the question.

"Without my feather, the spirits got a little feisty," she says. "Nao must have explain bits and pieces of this to you, right? The spirits attacked my soul and nearly split it into millions of little pieces, but I'll tell you: This shaman woman fixed me up real good. She took care of us for the greater part of the years I was gone and trained me too, so I am, like, Super Shaman now. More to the point," she says when I roll my eyes. "Even when I was rested after the old lady healed my spirit, the things she told me about the bond put me off, so I didn't want to tell you anything. I knew, if you heard about your options, you would freak out about them and do something dangerous or stupid. Especially in the state you were in during this time, with all the running away. I heard all about it, you know. That feather isn't just a window into the spirit realm. It connects to me, remember, bound right into my very soul, so when your emotions got all riled up, I felt them. By the time you decided to leave your village, you must have been calmed enough where I couldn't feel you anymore. Either that or I was particularly on edge that day because of the spirits."

"Why did you need me to tell you about my life when you first arrived then," I say, "if you already knew everything?"

"I'm always up for a good story," she says as though it's a universal truth that everyone should enjoy storytelling.

"So what did the shaman tell you about breaking the bond?" I say, irritated. "What was so bad that you kept the truth away for more than a year and keep stalling?"

Rei blinks at me, frowning so hard I'm sure her lips will fall right off her face. "Like I said before: _none_ of these options are ideal. I hate them all. And, to tell you the truth, it is bad luck that you have to resort to these. Like, if you thought you were cursed before—" She whistles, shaking her head. "—even if you don't believe in fate or the like, you'll definitely think there is some greater power in this world plotting against you when you hear the only options available to you."

Admittedly, it's in Rei's nature to over-exaggerate and lie and rile people up because she gets a kick out of it, but the way she keeps emphasizing the terrible lengths to which I'll have to go to break the bond unnerves me. Plus, without Hiro and Nao here, I can't be certain that what she says is the absolute truth.

Clairvoyant as always, Rei looks at me through her eyelashes and smirks. "Oh, ye of little faith. I will tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me god, tonakai," she says.

I get up from the table, stacking our teacups and taking the kettle to set it back on the stove. I empty the cups in the sink and leave them on the counter for cleaning later, and lean over the sink, not feeling any more comforted than before.

No matter what she says, no matter how terrible or difficult the methods of breaking the bond are going to be, I have to remember: This is my only chance to take my life back. I have to do this. I have to believe that I can do this. I have waited too long to do this to give up.

"Are you ready?" she says, the lilt of her voice like a lullaby, a sick twisted song to hypnotize me and make me forget that breaking this bond matters to me more than anything else.

I turn on the faucet, splash my face with icy water that freezes my logic. Wiping my face off on my sleeve, I say, "All right." I go back to my seat, face her unblinkingly. "I'm ready."

Rei still has the sly smile on her lips, a smile I haven't really seen since the Forest, when I was sure she was an enemy that needed to be eradicated. _Are you sure you trust me?_ the smile says, her teeth glistening like razors ready to cut me down.

And for a second I'm not sure I do.

"There are three options," she says without ado, causing me to jump. She gives me an odd look and smoothes her thumb along the edge of the table. I wonder if this is a nervous tick of hers, if she's as anxious about this as she says she is. "Let's start out with the best option first. The one I would prefer, but probably the most difficult to follow through with. So, if you have the blood oath—"

"Which I don't."

"Which is ultimately the problem with this plan. But, if you _find_ the blood oath," Rei corrects. "We can take it to an elder shaman and see if there are any loopholes that we can work through to unravel it."

"Unlikely. I don't even know where it _could_ be. There isn't a single mention of it in my mother's diary and I've been through every nook and cranny of this house. _And_ Sasuke's house. I haven't seen it anywhere."

"Like I said, it's my favorite of the three options." She pushes herself back in her seat so that she's balancing on the rear legs. Then she gets up and starts to pace the room and gesticulates like there are bugs around her head she's trying to swat away. "To be honest, Ren, these last two options are not preferable. By no means. But—" She heaves a sigh and pulls herself up on on the counter. "If you want to hear it, which by the looks of it, you do, I'll tell you. Just brace yourself. Okay?"

Rei breathes deeply as though it's going to pain her to say this. She shudders, and says, slowly, "There _is_ the option of . . . purifying yourself. But, uh, the process of it would be . . . soul-wrenching, to say the least."

"Then say more," I say, "because I don't get it."

"Exorcism," she says plainly, wincing as though the word itself had caused her physical harm. "You see, basically, what you are now is a reincarnation of all the women who have been afflicted with the bond. A bit of Mei, the original Kagiru servant, runs through your veins and soul. Sasuke, in respect, is the reincarnation of all the men who inherited the bond as well. It only takes the exorcism of one soul to break the bond, being that once one stops existing the other will invariably break or become obsolete. And this _is_ something I could do for you—all shaman have training to do it—but it would be my first and I would rather bring you to a more experienced shaman because exorcisms are like heart surgeries: you don't want an amateur screwing it up because, worst case scenario, you die. Another thing about exorcism is it rips apart your soul in order to eradicate whatever was dwelling there before, and as a shaman, I'm against anything that could damage you in the afterlife."

"You know, I think I could deal with that," I say, and Rei scoffs.

"A shaman probably won't though," she says. "Any shaman in their right mind wouldn't perform an exorcism if they could help it. And they always can. Or should, anyway. But that's my personal opinion."

"Can't you keep your personal opinion out of it?" I clasp my hands together to stop myself from strangling her. "Remember, this is my _life_, Rei. I don't care what your opinion is. Whatever needs to be done to break this bond, _I will do it_."

"Which is why my reluctance to tell you this last option reaches monumental heights," she says, reaching up to brush the feather in her hair for comfort. I mirror it, wishing I had a feather of my own.

My movement doesn't go without notice. Rei blinks at me, surprised by my gesture, and hops off the kitchen counter. She comes to my side and reaches into her pocket, extracting a small bead on a leather cord.

"Here," she says, tying it around my neck for me. "This is a charm of red agate that's infused with the spirits. Not as closely as my feather is, mind," she says, her corners of her lips turning up in the faintest smile. "So it won't connect you to the spirit world as much as before or receive messages from me, but it should be effective on a normal human like you. It promotes calm and inner peace, which I think you'll need a lot of after this."

"And you just," I say as the leather smoothes against my throat, "carry _charms_ around with you, is that it?"

"There was a particular draw I felt to this one," she says, standing back as she finishes tying the cord off. I pick if off my chest, rolling the tiny stone between my fingers. It's varying degrees of red, like a fire raging yellow, deep red, and orange in the middle of a storm. "Funnily enough, a property of the stone itself is to heal the blood."

I snort, tucking the stone under my shirt. "Right. And I'm sure that had nothing to do with why you chose to give this stone to me."

"I just thought it would come in handy," she says, shrugging. "Honestly, I didn't think you'd take it. Thought you would scoff and say, 'That's bullshit. I don't need any of that mystic psychic-y stuff.'"

"Ha! Not after the years I had with that goddamn feather," I say, ruffling my hair. She winks, twirling the feather around her finger, and laughs.

"It does do something to you," she says, crossing the kitchen to search through my cupboards. I bite my thumb as I watch her pull out plates and listen to her talk about how Hiro and Nao are going to be home soon, and what do I want for dinner? Because she can can make pretty much everything and, if I don't know what I want, I can always list off random things I'm craving because she's always been good at improvising meals. She talks about which herbs are her favorite and which dish she hasn't had since she left home because she couldn't stand the low quality of rice that wasn't grown in the rice paddies of her village, but she suppose she could always try making it if I was interested enough.

"Rei," I say, interrupting her. She peers over her shoulder, a smile still wide on her face, but when she sees my expression, her good mood slips right off. "What is the last option to break the bond?"

"Ren, really," she says, admonishing. "Don't spoil—"

"You can tell me," I say, and she tightens her grip around the plates so much that I hear one of them crack. "Whatever it is. I really . . . _really_ need to break this bond, Rei. If I don't, it'll just hang there like a loose thread, forever, and if Sasuke does something—if he does something to hurt my friends more than he already has, I have to be able to stand up to him. Please," I say as she pushes the dishes onto the counter. "What's the last way to break this bond?"

Rei turns to me. Ringlets of her mahogany hair curl onto her cheeks, sticking like curlicues of muddied tears. She swipes them aside, her fingers pressing against the feather for a split second. She takes a deep breath, meets my eyes.

And then she says, "One of you has to die."


	66. Fix You

**Bound  
Chapter 66: Fix You**

"That's it?" I say. "That is totally a much better possibility and probability than the other two options. What?" I demand as Rei lets out a groan of frustration and shoves the plates farther back on the counter so that they crash into the wall. If they hadn't broken in her grip before, they were surely broken now.

"Just, consider Sasuke's position," I say. "It's likely _he's_ going to be the one who's taken down first, right? So I don't have to worry about _me_ dying. I know," I say over her slamming my cupboards, "that sounds terrible, but—Rei, you can't deny that if he's caught conspiring against this village in a big enough way, even if he _is_ brought home, he'll probably be sentenced to death for, like, treason."

"That's not my problem here." Rei turns on her heels and crosses the kitchen in two easy steps, slamming her hands on the table and leaning in so close her hair whips my face. "You talk about life like it's so easy to take away," she says. "Even for criminals, who's to say rehabilitation won't work? Therapy? A good group of friends? Just because someone has wronged you in the past, no matter the severity, death should never be a justified means of punishment or revenge."

"You're a shinobi," I say. "Death is a justified means of everything."

"With that kind of thinking," she says, "what makes you any better than Sasuke?"

She shoves against the table, causing it to creak against the floorboards, and cut into my gut. I let out a grunt of pain just as feet clomp up my front porch and Hiro's voice cuts through the wood.

"We're back," he says, sounding like he's struggling with groceries. "Could someone open the door for us? Our hands are kind of full."

"Rei!" shouts Nao, sounding much more disagreeable than Hiro. "You put too much on that goddamn shopping list! We do _not_ need all this food!"

"That's what you say until you start eating," Rei snaps, swinging the door open for them. "And then it's, 'Rei, is there more for seconds? Rei, are there any leftovers? Rei, we're out of food again!' And by then, it's only lunchtime on the next day!"

"Ren," Hiro says, heaving two overstuffed bags of groceries onto the kitchen table. Nao works to kick off his shoes without the use of his hands in the foyer, though he could just place the bags of groceries on the ground and make it much easier on himself. "Hey, back from your team meeting already? How did it go?"

"Good," I say, getting up from the table. "I'm gonna go lie down for a bit though. Uh, don't bother coming to get me when dinner's ready. I had a big lunch at Shikamaru's house earlier."

"Please," Nao says, his eyes wide and begging. "Please don't leave me with Rei and Hiro. I didn't tell you this before, but it is un_bearable_ being around them when they're together. They're always making eyes at each other and Rei is _always_ trying to cop a feel on Hiro, and in a kitchen-setting, that is really not appropriate."

"Quit being such a whiner," Rei says, reentering the kitchen without a glance my way. "If she doesn't want dinner, she doesn't want dinner. More for us."

Hiro suspects there has been an argument between me and Rei, given the way he keeps glancing between us. Rei notices his suspicion and frowns. She takes his arm and leads him to the stove, telling him to prepare the saucepans she'll need for her dish.

"Out of the way," she says to me, laying out the new groceries on the table. "I thought you said you were tired."

"Rei," Hiro says in warning, and Nao takes her by the shoulders and steers her to the other boy.

"She's right," I say. "I'll leave. Have a nice dinner."

I go to my room and slump into bed, face first into my pillow, thinking about the three choices Rei had given me. Unravel the bond at its source by finding the blood oath, purifying myself via exorcism but possibly ripping my soul apart in the process, or dying. The easiest option is obvious here. In essence, I'm already dead as it is. Being bound to the Uchiha is no life. The bond will die with me anyway because there's absolutely no chance I will procreate if I can't break the bond.

Besides, given Sasuke's way of life, he has a much better chance of dying than I do. I've vowed to take him down by my own hand if he takes another step out of his already wayward line. Of course, with Sakura and Naruto in the way, that probably won't happen. But, like I told Rei, there is the very likely chance Sasuke will mess up so badly even Naruto and Sakura won't be able to deny what needs to be done to keep our village safe. And then the bond will be broken.

The problem with either Sasuke or me dying is it won't come soon enough. I'll need to lie in wait until there is an opportunity for me to kill Sasuke myself or for him to screw up on his own in such a way that his death is guaranteed before I can be freed, because I'm not going to just off myself. That would be a waste.

I wouldn't mind being exorcised, personally, but Rei won't budge on the matter and I can't find shaman in hiding without her help. So that leaves me with Rei's first and favorite option: Finding the blood oath.

I've lost count of the times I've tried to find the blood oath. First, right after the massacre, when I looted Sasuke's house and then my own. Then again, I returned home from those five years running around the Wind, Fire, and Sound Countries, one of which hadn't even been developed yet. Then a number of times after the effects of the bond became so overwhelming that it started to slowly drive me crazy. And then during Sasuke's two and a half year absence. I stripped this house, all but pulled the floorboards out trying to find the bond.

There was nothing.

Which is not to say I've never seen it. Once, when I was young, a year or two after it was revealed that I was bound to Sasuke, I was rifling through my father's desk in the living room. I shouldn't have been, and got the spanking of my life for it afterward, but when I was going through one of the drawers, I found a false bottom that hid a piece of parchment too old for its time. I reached for it, and when my fingers brushed it, it was like electricity. Everything was so clear and bright, but it hurt, and I gasped and pulled away. I replaced the false bottom in the drawer and slurked away until the next morning.

I went through the drawer again, then. That time, when I touched it, I got the same jolt of lightening, but I was prepared for it and so I picked it up with ease. I slumped against the wall and turned the parchment over in my hands; everywhere it brushed my skin, pinpricks of clarity and electricity raced through my body and awakened something in my head. I smoothed my thumb over the red wax seal that had the Uchiha and Kagiru family crests imprinted over the other: The iconic Uchiha fan overlaid with Kagiru's elliptical band, reminiscent of a link in a chain.

I clipped my finger under the seal, ready to break it and read the contents of the paper. But then my mother came in and saw me. She gave a little shriek and I dropped the parchment, and she picked it up and cradled it against her chest like a baby. My father came in, saw the way my mother held the parchment, understood without my mother explaining what had happened, and thus ensued the worst spanking and longest lecture on privacy in my life.

It took me until after the massacre to realize what that parchment was. When I went to go look for it again, though, it was gone. My parents had hidden it somewhere else. But why they would have hidden such a thing was beyond me. It seemed more likely that my family have it framed or put on a shrine for everyone to see, but I guess something that valuable—to my family at least—could become incredible leverage if it ever got into the wrong hands.

I wonder where the bond could be hidden, whether it's been slipped behind an old photo or maybe hidden in one of the Uchiha's many secret family rooms. I'd overheard Sasuke talking about them once, and he'd scowled at me afterward like I didn't deserve to know about it because it was an Uchiha thing. It wasn't _my_ fault he didn't keep his voice low enough. Lousy bastard.

I close my eyes, reaching into my shirt to rub the stone Rei had given me. It's amorphous, with sinuous bumps that sink into the flesh of my thumb and leave indents. There is a chip along one edge of it, and it scratches my finger every time I run over it. As I imagine the swirl of red and yellow and orange, I think, _heal my blood, heal my blood, heal my blood_, as if it were so simple.

[+]

Nao is kind enough to bring me dinner that night anyway, and the next night, too. Which is not to say I've been cooped up in my room for days on end—I've been going out for breakfast and lunch, being that I have to teach at the Academy still—but at night I prefer to stay in my room, mostly because Rei still isn't speaking to me and I can only handle tiptoeing around her so much. It's sad that I have to hide in my own home from a girl who is hardly welcome.

It's not so bad with Nao bringing me dinner each night. He needs to get away from Rei and Hiro as much as I do, he says, and sits with me to eat and talk. It's odd: When I first saw Nao, in the Forest of Death and then bumped into him when he first arrived at my house, my impression of him had been that he was a stoic guy who rolled his eyes at jokes. I thought the closest he would ever come to laughing was a scoff. And certainly, around Rei and Hiro, he seems that way, but when they're distracted or occupied with each other, Nao is the opposite. I think it has to do with the fact that he's put off by Hiro and Rei's behavior, how he always ends up being a third wheel. With me as the honorary fourth member to their team, however, he doesn't have to be.

"Nao, if you don't mind me asking," I say the second night he brings me food, "are you guys here legitimately? Like, did you pass through the front gates, or did you sneak through?"

Nao, who sits beside me, his back pressed up against the wall with his own dinner in his hand, blinks at me and says, "What?"

"I've been thinking about it, recently," I say, motioning to my near solitary confinement. "Haven't had much else to do around here. It's been bothering me, though, because, I think, the last time Rei came through the village, you know, when she drugged you and Hiro—"

"Don't remind me," Nao says sullenly.

"—Rei managed to sneak through the borders somehow. So, did she make you guys do the same thing this time?"

"No, we came through legitimately," he says, a smile of amusement breaking across his face. "Once we lost our ties to our village, it was easy for us to go in and out of countries and villages, which worked out conveniently for us. No one has a problem with rogue nobodies. If we had showed them our headbands on the other hand." Nao laughs and pops a shrimp into his mouth. He shakes his head. "Good thing Rei thought to get rid of those things. I hated Orochimaru anyway. Made me feel dirty being under his regime. He was a bad guy, through and through."

"He can't still be in control of the Sound Village, can he?" I say after recovering from hearing his name so unexpectedly. "There's no way the other shinobi villages would have allowed that after what he did to us."

Nao shrugs. "Don't know. After Rei's aunts kicked us out, we abandoned everything about the Sound Village. Good riddance, too, I say."

"It was that bad of a fall out, huh?"

"You can't even imagine. I didn't think we'd get out alive for a second with all the spirits charging at us. It was the Chuunin exam preliminaries all over again." Nao shudders and I laugh.

"I missed out on your fight," I say. I had been gone, taking care of Sasuke, and, incidentally, run into Orochimaru for the second time. I push the memory of that away. "All I remember is coming back and seeing you at the mercy of Rei's arrow."

"God knows how she even pulled that thing out in the middle of a fight," Nao grumbles, and runs his hand through his hair. "I still don't understand when she got the chance. Be glad your friend didn't have to fight her. I don't know if his wits would have been a match for the spirits."

"He would have been fine," I say, rolling my eyes. "How does that work, anyway, Rei fighting with the spirits? When Shikamaru tried to explain it to me, all he said was that it didn't make sense."

"It probably wouldn't for someone who doesn't know what he's up against," Nao says. "But once you know she works with the spirits to predict your next move and slip you up, you start to feel the way the spirits move and you can use them against her."

"Huh. That makes absolutely no sense," I say, and Nao shrugs.

"Maybe we'll train with you sometime," he says. "Fighting against the spirits is definitely something you should try once in your life. And I'm sure Rei will be more than willing to fight you, especially when you guys are at odds like this. What did you say to upset her so much?"

"Oh, you know," I say. "The usual things that go against her shamanistic code.

"Ah. So you really hit home, huh? No wonder she keeps badmouthing you behind your back," he says with a laugh, and I'm affronted. He gathers our bowls and stands, saying, "Anyway, don't worry about it. This will all blow over soon enough. Rei still has things she wants to talk to you about, otherwise we would have left a long time ago. Although, I can't say I'm complaining. Your house is the nicest place we've stayed since Rei dragged Hiro and me into her life."

"How did you guys meet?" I ask, and Nao takes a deep breath, blowing his hair out of his eyes.

"It was just one of those things," Nao says, shrugging. "Hiro and I wanted to get out of the country and Rei gave us the chance. _She_ came to _us_, to tell you the truth, a year or two before the Chuunin exams. Started spewing something about being able to sense our lust for adventure and that the spirits had mandated our meeting." Nao grins as I shake my head, amazed Rei's odd behavior has transcended all these years. "I thought she was crazy at first, but after travelling with her, I can't say I don't believe that it was destined that she come to us. Everything happens for a reason, right?"

I scoff as Nao slips out of my room, winking at me through the last sliver of open door before it closes. "I don't believe that," I say, jerking my window open to let in fresh air. I look out into the inky black sky, watching the stars as they blink. One has the audacity to burn brightly and then fall out of the sky, like a teardrop falling to Earth. I reach out, folding my arms over the edge of my window, and lean against the frame, muttering, "Sometimes things just happen."

[+]

The next morning, I'm passing through town after finishing with a morning lesson at the Academy. I'm looking for a place to eat lunch when I hear children gasping and pointing to the sky. I follow their tiny fingers and see a squad of Nin hopping over rooftops toward the main village gates. They pass closely over our heads, and I watch them as they jump neatly from shop to shop, landing without so much as a jolt of the vibrations.

I feel a prickle of familiarity run up my spine as I stare after them and wonder what team has been sent out. I wonder whether I know them, but am distracted by the shout of my name. Naruto waves me down from the ramen stand, reenergized as he always is after a bowl of ramen. Kakashi is beside him and appears to be smooth-talking another man into paying for the meal.

I return Naruto's wave, turning back to the group I had seen moving out. They're long gone, but I can't stop thinking about them. Only a week and a half inside the village and already I'm antsy to get out again. The prickle of familiarity becomes a stinging desire, and I rub my arms to make it go away. In the meantime, as Naruto bounds up to me, taking my shoulder and telling me about the progress he's made with his training, I hope for the team's safe return. Even if I don't know them, they are friends of someone, and I know I would hate it if my friends didn't come home.

"Hey, Ren, are you listening to me?" says Naruto, waving his hand in front of my face.

I smack it away and say, "I think everyone up and down the street heard you, Naruto. Come on, get off. I want to get home."

"Not so fast, Ren," Kakashi says. The man who had paid for the meal strolls up beside us, looking satisfied with himself. He has wide, almond eyes and shaggy brown hair that is kept back by a mask-style forehead protector that frames his face in a slate grey. "I don't know if you've met, but this is Yamato. He replaced me on Team 7 while I was incapacitated."

"Ah, that's right," I say, shaking the man's hand. "Hi. I'm Ren. I was replaced by Sai while the village was questioning my allegiance. Good to meet the man the village trusted with Kakashi's duties!"

Yamato's grin falters slightly at my statement, and Kakashi looks embarrassed by my outwardly bitter attitude. Naruto, on the other hand, disregards it all and says, "Enough of that! Ren, come watch me train!"

"Uh, I could think of a handful of things that would be more interesting than that."

"Actually," Kakashi says, stopping me. "I was about to ask you the same. Remember when I told you that we were going to need a medic on hand and I would call you? Well, Naruto's training actually started yesterday, but I decided to give you an extra day of rest. But, you see, Naruto's about to reach a particularly difficult part in his training, and I think it would be helpful to have a medic around in case anything goes awry."

"Like I always say: If there's a chance of things going awry during training, you're doing it wrong," I say. "Why can't you guys just mediate or something?"

"I'm developing a new jutsu," Naruto says, glancing around to make sure no one else is listening in. "It beats meditation to a pulp! And, and it turns out I have a wind nature chakra, so I'm going to use it to create the ultimate jutsu."

"Wind nature," I repeat as Naruto takes hold of my wrist and starts to drag me down the street. "Hm. Figures. Naruto, _let go_. I have better things to do!"

I wrench free of Naruto's hold only to have Kakashi take my shoulder and say, "I don't think so. You're done with lessons at the Academy for the day, aren't you? And Shikamaru is out on a mission with Asuma, so you may as well come with us."

So I'm suckered into watching Naruto try to incorporate his wind element into his signature Rasengan. Mostly, it's a hundred Narutos being thrown around as he loses control of his jutsu. At one point, one of the bunshin Naruto has created as part of his accelerated training starts to fold in on itself and bubble with the red chakra of the Kyuubi. I call Kakashi's attention to it, but he's already noticed and waves down Yamato. Yamato, from his station, releases his chakra and sends the nine dragon pillars that circle him weaving through the air. Their jaws drop as they zoom forward. The ones that can grab onto the tails sprouting out of Naruto, and then one grabs Naruto himself around the waist, pinning him to the ground, where the dragon head proceeds to suck out the Kyuubi's chakra.

"Is that what this set up is for, then?" I ask, eyeing the pillars with uncertainty. They begin to retract in slow, jerky movements. "Controlling the Kyuubi?"

Yamato nods, breathing heavily. "It's a technique of the Shodai Hokage," he explains, wiping his brow. "One of the only ways of containing the Kyuubi's power and why I was picked to replace Kakashi-taichou on Team 7. However, if we continue doing this, Naruto may end up—in any case, I can't promise that I'll be able to suppress the Kyuubi every time."

"This is our only option," Kakashi says, and motions for me to go check on Naruto.

He's okay by my estimate. A few hours of rest and he should be ready to restart his training. I turn him over on his back and have the vibrations swirl around him as I unzip his shirt to keep him cool. I pull his zipper down to his chest when I notice a crystal resting crookedly around his neck. I pick it up and smooth it between my fingers. Its color is reminiscent of the sky, and as I turn it over in my hands, a voice says, "That was given to him by Godaime, before she was Hokage."

Kakashi crouches next to me and I lay the necklace back on Naruto's chest. I say, "He's been wearing it for that long? I haven't noticed."

"He keeps it under his shirt most of the time," Kakashi says, "but he's always wearing it. The necklace used to belong to Shodai Hokage, and enhances Yamato's ability to control the Kyuubi's power. It's lucky, really, that Naruto has it."

"Naruto never fails to impress me with the connections he has to the people in this world," I say, shaking my head. "Anyway, he'll be fine. I would recommend that he rest for a few hours, but if he wakes up sooner than that, he'll probably insist he start training again right away. Mostly, I would recommend that he try to spread his bunshin out more. All that body heat clustered together isn't good for him."

"Noted. Thank you, Ren."

I hum in reply, brushing Naruto's hair out of his face as he sleeps. Naruto has never been one to dillydally during training like Shikamaru is, but I would say that is more detrimental than progressive. If Naruto doesn't start learning how to train in moderation, he's going to damage his body so badly that he won't be able to be a ninja for much longer. That he would do this to himself every time he trains frustrates me to no end.

As though he can hear what I'm thinking, Kakashi says, "You know why Naruto does this."

I purse my lips, say, "Hmph. Because he's a fool." But I know what Kakashi means. I sigh and say, "All this work just to bring Sasuke home. Naruto acts like it's his sole responsibility to do this, but he still has me and Sakura to help him. I wish he would keep that in mind."

"Yes, but like I said earlier: Remember what this may come down to." Kakashi pats my head, and I scowl at him. He says softly, "You might believe that, once everyone knows about the bond, they will look at you and see nothing but a gateway to Sasuke, but there are other bonds that are much more powerful than the one you have with Sasuke. Like the one Naruto shares with Sasuke, and vice versa, although Sasuke would never admit it. Or like the bond you share with Shikamaru. And those bonds, ultimately, are what will determine the outcome of these battles." Kakashi heaves himself to his feet, presses his hands into his pockets.

"The next time we are face-to-face with Sasuke," Kakashi says as I look up at him, "I have no doubt in my mind that it will be Naruto who fights him—alone. I think Naruto knows that just as well. That's why he does this. And as much as we may not like the idea of Naruto fighting on his own, it's undeniable, and the best we can do in the meantime is help him become stronger."

"I understand," I say, glancing at Naruto again. His eye twitches and he turns his head away from the sun. The vibrations still swirling around his head make his hair flutter in the faux breeze. "But it doesn't mean I won't fight it."

Naruto wakes up not long after that. He jumps back into his training as I'd anticipated, and I sit watching him beside one of Yamato's pillars. Despite his determination, however, he doesn't make progress, even after another two hours of work, by which time the dark grey clouds have started moving in overhead.

The somber lighting suits my mood. After my conversation with Kakashi, I've been thinking about the things I could do to help Naruto and Sakura 'rescue' Sasuke. I should try to start believing that he needs to be rescued in the first place. But, no matter how hard you try, you can't save someone from themselves.

Sasuke won't stop until he gets his revenge, and he doesn't believe he can do that without Orochimaru. Orochimaru's usefulness must be waning, though, considering the years. Orochimaru can only hold a vessel for so long before he has to find a new one, and he'd been planning on having Sasuke serve as his next host. So how much longer until Orochimaru has to move bodies? Would Sasuke let Orochimaru do that even if he hasn't fulfilled his revenge?

I have a feeling the answer is no, but maybe Orochimaru will say that he'll kill Itachi for Sasuke once he has Sasuke's body. And maybe Sasuke will go for it.

I close my eyes, resting my head on my knees as I think, feeling the vibrations fluctuate with Naruto's chakra. There's only so much we can do for Sasuke, so much he will let us do for him. And we have been going about it all wrong. Sasuke doesn't need to be rescued.

He needs to be helped.

There's a crash of thunder and then the rain starts. I look up, scowling at the sky even though I know it's useless. There's something off about this rain, something about it that makes me uneasy in a way that it hasn't ever before. I hold out my hand to catch it, to get a better feel of the spirits in the water and what they can tell me, when I hear shouting. I turn to where the Narutos are training and see, as the bunshin clear the way, a bright chakra consuming one of the clones and turning it into a feral and primitive form of the Nine-Tails. Its shelling of chakra bubbles with the malice of the Nine-Tails, and just as it seems the affected Naruto is going to charge, Yamato's wooden dragons spring out of the ground and pin him down, muffling the chakra of the Nine-Tails just in time.

I watch as the bunshin disappear and Kakashi approaches the real Naruto to see if he's all right. I shake my rain out of my hand and figure that's why I was uneasy. The Nine-Tails' chakra never feels good.

Still.

"Are you leaving, Ren?" Yamato asks when I get up from my spot just outside of his circle.

"Yes," I say, threading my fingers through my hair which has already become matted from the rain. "Unlike Naruto over there, I fear for my health in this kind of weather. Tell Kakashi I'm going home. Good luck to you both."

[+]

I'm soaked through by the time I get home. I leave trails of water in my wake as I go to the bathroom to dry off. I hate the rain and everything about it, the way it makes the vibrations buzz like a nest of bees in my head and the way the leftover rainwater muffles the vibrations afterward so that I can't sense anything.

I'm making my way to the living room as I towel off my hair when a hand tightens around my shoulder. I jump, dropping my towel and swinging my foot up to hit my offender's face, to see Rei ducking under my attack and saying, "Whoa, chickadee! You need to relax!"

"Don't," I say, holding a hand to my heart, "sneak. Up. On. Me. When it's raining! I can't sense you; the vibrations get all jumbled with the rain falling everywhere."

"Yikes, how was I supposed to know?" she asks, walking past me to the kitchen. "Where were you for so long? I expected you home for lunch so I made extra only to have it go to waste."

"With Hiro and Nao's appetite, I'm sure nothing went to waste," I say, swooping up my towel and following her. "I went out to eat and ended up getting sucked into watching Naruto train for a bit. Then it started raining so I decided to come home."

"Aww," Rei says, throwing her arm over my shoulders. "You know what I just realized? You're talking to me again. I love that!"

I shrug her off, saying, "_You're_ talking to me. I just told you not to sneak up on me."

"Whatever the case, I'm glad our fight blew over." She swings the fridge open, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she rummages through the food. "I was getting bored talking to boys all the time. Hiro-kun and Nao are my best friends, but it doesn't compare to when we have _girl talk_, you know?"

"No," I say, "because we have literally never had any kind of 'girl talk'. I don't even know what that means."

"Sure you do!" Rei closes the fridge with a flourish, making the dishes inside quake in time with the rumbling thunder. She shoves a dish of neatly wrapped dumplings at me and goes to the stove to place a pot she had extracted. "It's when you gush about the men in your life and I gush about the men in mine, and then we talk about how much we hate other women. This has been conditioned into the genetic code of every woman since before time."

"That," I say, putting the dumplings on the counter, "sounds ridiculous. And sexist."

"Well, do you have any better ideas?" Rei starts up the stove, which hisses and then clicks to life. She frowns at it and turns the gas all the way up so that the flames plume blue. "Nao and Hiro-kun have been gone all morning and I'm going crazy here by myself."

"What do you mean they've been gone all day? Where could they have gone?"

Rei freezes and then straightens, saying, "Shoot. I wasn't supposed to tell you until they got home. But, I suppose, since it can't be avoided: We're taking leave."

I gape at her, and then sputter, "Bu—Nao said—you can't—you still have something you want to tell me, don't you?"

Rei frowns at my question, propping her hand on her hip. "What has that boy been telling you? And here I thought Hiro-kun was the blabbermouth, after what happened in the Forest of Death."

"They're _vouching_ for you," I say, rolling my eyes. "That's not the same thing as blabbing. Anyway, what do you mean? Why are you leaving?"

"So many questions!" She claps her hands together and uncovers the dumplings, dropping them one by one into the broth she's heating up in the pot. "How about we talk over a nice dinner? Get out your fancy dishes and dim the lights. Bust out the candles and I'll explain—"

"Listen," I say over her rambling. Rei powers down, loses her smile, and slumps. She blinks at me, dread filling her face as I say, "It doesn't _matter_ why you're going to leave, okay? In fact, it works out perfectly because I have a plan. You're probably not going to like it, but it's all I can think to do to break the bond and bring Sasuke home at the same time."

"I'm not going to _kill_ anyone," she says, holding up her hands. "Spiritually or physically. I thought I made that clear."

"That's not what I had in mind," I say, and then I explain.

* * *

**A/N:** Thank you for reading! Please review!


	67. Carefully Laid Plans

**A/N:** One of my favorite chapters. I hope you enjoy it as much I do. Thank you for staying with me into another year. Please review!

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 67: Carefully Laid Plans**

Rei doesn't _hate_ the idea, which is all I could ask for. I mean, she doesn't _approve_, but that's not important. What's important is that I have her on my side because I need her help for my plan to go through.

"The only flaw I can see is," she says, sliding me a bowl of soup she's warmed up. The dumplings float at the top of the broth, swimming among green onions and cilantro. "No one is going to be okay with you doing this, Ren. Because I'm assuming you're not going to get approval."

"I'll get approval," I say, and then pause. The rain has stopped so the silence that settles around us is comforting. "Well, I'll _propose_ it like I want approval. But either way, I think this has to happen."

Rei plops down opposite me with her own bowl of soup. She's scowling and her hair loops into her face, half shielding her eyes. "I think so, too," she says, and I'm so thrown by her answer that I drop my spoon into the soup. It slides down the edge of the bowl and sinks into the murky water. "That's why I was leaving, to tell you the truth. I didn't like the option we had left and thought you would be able to manage on your own with the choices I gave you. I shouldn't be here to direct your life, after all. I'm a shaman, not a spirit guide."

"But, I mean," I say, shrugging. "I appreciate it. Your help, that is. Wouldn't have thought of this plan if you hadn't come back."

Rei smiles, leaning her chin onto the heel of her hand. And then she straightens, the smile dropping off of her lips. "Someone's coming," Rei says, her eyes darting to the front door. I feel the vibrations buzz a moment later with slow, easy, seemingly reluctant footsteps, and Rei says, "I'll come back at another time to talk to you more."

"Wait," I say, grabbing her wrist. "Whoever it is, I'll just explain to them who you are, why you're here. Everyone knows about the bond now, anyway, so I may as well—"

"Just," she says, slipping out of my grasp. "Trust me, Ren. You're going to want to deal with this on your own."

"What?" I ask before there's a knock on my door. "Coming!" I call over my shoulder, and then turn back to Rei only to find her gone. I've forgotten how stealthily she can move, without even disturbing the slightest vibration. I let out a peeved sigh and skulk to the front door, and am pleasantly surprised by my visitor. Rei was right: I do want to deal with this alone. Because it's Shikamaru, home from his mission, and seeing him has reaffirmed just how much I've missed him, despite the fact we've only been apart for a few days.

"Shikamaru!" I greet, grinning widely. "You're back! Kakashi told me you were on a mission with Asuma."

In response to my enthusiasm, he offers a small smile that is forced more than anything and dropped as quickly as he had put it on, which only serves to dampen my mood. I notice the way his shoulders sag especially low today; it's unlike the way he usually holds himself, and with eyes downcast, head bent, shoulders drooped, like he's been defeated and has no chance of recovery, I fear something has gone terribly wrong. Sure—everything bothers Shikamaru and makes him tired, but he isn't one to become upset like this over the trivial things.

I'm about to ask him what's wrong when he doubles over and rests his forehead on the crook of my collarbone. I freeze in my surprise, my arms dangling at my side uselessly as his hair pricks my cheek and neck and his breath warms the fabric of my shirt. _This_ is definitely not like Shikamaru.

"Ah, Shika?" I say, wondering if I'm supposed to know what to do. I tilt my head toward him, and though there's a musky odor of dirt and rain and the faintest trace of cigarette smoke, there is still indubitably the smell of grass that has somehow been infused into his skin. I smooth down his hair and wait for him to speak, wondering what could have possibly rendered him like this. His body relaxes as I go through my motions, but when he doesn't say a word, I ask, "Hey, Shikamaru, what's wrong? If you're tired, you can come in and—"

Shikamaru takes a deep, shuddering breath, which effectively cuts me off. As I wait for him to gather himself, I press a hand to the back of his neck, a subtle way for me to check his pulse. It's calm, healthy, but the breaths he takes are too deep, like he's trying to hold something in.

"On the mission," he says finally. "We were—. The Akatsuki," he whispers, and I stop. "Asuma—" He chokes, and I press closer to Shikamaru as he says, "Asuma was killed."

I become dizzy, push him away, and say, "What?" even though I heard him loud and clear. Shikamaru keeps his head low, his eyes pressed shut tightly, brow furrowed together, and I mutter, "Oh, god, Shikamaru." Realizing just how dangerous his mission was, that he could have died too, I pull him in again, hugging him fiercely, thinking horribly, selfishly, about how glad I am that Shikamaru, though worn and bruised and grimy, is alive and before me and safe.

I can't hold him close enough. I can't make him real enough, even though I can feel his heart beating through his jacket, can smell the sweet scent of grass and Shikamaru soaked into his skin, and hear him breathing as he reciprocates my hug, squeezing me so hard he crushes my lungs.

"I couldn't," he's saying, "do anything. That guy's technique—I wasn't strong enough and it—it's—"

"Hey," I say sharply, cutting him off. I know what he means to say: _It's all my fault._ Naturally. But I don't want to think about whose fault it is or what went wrong or how things could have gone differently. I just want to revel in the fact that Shikamaru's here and I have him. I want him to come inside and stay with me, always, so I would know he's safe, always.

So I invite him in and sit him down in my living room before going off to make tea. Neither of us will drink it, but it gives me time to think about what to say and do to make him feel better. There'll be none of that "It's going to be okay" bullshit. As true as that might be, it means nothing in the moment. I know that better than anyone. I'm not going to minimize his pain because it's real and it means something, and there is no point in denying what is real.

When I enter the living room with the tea tray, I still don't have anything to say to him. He is doubled over on the couch, head in his hands, and head between his knees. I set the tray down on the table and sit beside him, moving to rub his back before I stop myself. Instead, I pour the tea, deciding the more I'm able to distract myself, the faster I'll be able to come up with something comforting to say.

Despite my plan, Shikamaru says, "Kurenai," and I freeze with my hand on the kettle, the dull aching that had been growing in my chest splintering. I close my eyes as he goes on, bracing myself for the worst. "When I told her, she—she and Asuma have a child coming, Ren." He lifts his head, staring straight out the window fogged by the feathery drapes. He presses his knuckles to his lips, the bags under his eyes apparent in the light. "Asuma told me to take care of it," he says, "and that the children were king. They're king."

I'm not sure what this last part means, but I can tell by the way he repeats it under his breath every so often that it's significant. There is something desperate about the way he says it again and again, a soft litany for Asuma, that makes my heart clench. I lean my forehead against Shikamaru's temple, wrapping my arm around his, and I feel him relax for minute. But that minute passes too soon and Shikamaru takes a deep breath and untangles himself from me.

"I should go," he says. "I haven't gone home yet, and if my parents hear about this from someone other than me, they'll be worried."

"Of course," I say, watching him as he gets up. "Of course," I say again and follow him to the door. He pauses, turns to say goodbye to me, but then ends up staring at the floor. Thinking. I can't tell what about, but I have a feeling it's something to do with Asuma and children being royalty.

I brush my fingers against his cheek. He jerks out of his reverie, shutting his eyes, and apologizes, but the defeat and fatigue and sadness all over his face makes me reach out and pull him into another hug, wishing I could squeeze all these un-Shikamaru-like emotions out of him and make him completely Shikamaru once again.

This time he doesn't reciprocate my hug, stays stiff in my hold like he can't stand being around me anymore. But he doesn't move away, doesn't say anything to push me away, and so I stand there with my chin pressed on his collarbone and his slightly ashy scent filling my nose, thickening my lungs.

"The funeral is later today," he says and, squeezing him one last time, I take my cue to let him go. I smooth out his shirt where I've held him too tightly and slick back his hair where I've managed to muss it. He continues to stare at the ground as I freshen him up, and when I finish he doesn't say thank you or gripe about me babying him. He just closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before saying, "I'll see you then."

"Hey," I call after him as he steps down from my porch. He stops, barely turns his head to glance at me over his shoulder, and my heart hurts when I see him like this, so uncharacteristically Shikamaru that he won't even complain about my fussing. I want him back. But after this, there's no going back.

"I love you, Shikamaru," I say, because I've missed him and because our mortality makes me sick, but mostly because it's true, and there's nothing I'd rather say to him at a time like this. He is, has always been, and will always be my best and kindest friend, and if I ever lost him, I would absolutely have nothing.

Rei slips into the foyer, half-hiding behind a corner, as I close the door. She digs her fingers into the wall and says, quietly, "That was sweet of you."

I don't answer, stay with my hand gripping the door handle, my forehead pressed to the wood. I hear her feet clomping forward, feel her hand tightening over my shoulder in comfort.

"Are you still sure about this?" she says when I take a deep breath and turn around. "Your plan, I mean."

"Yes," I say, clipping my hair behind my ear. "Never been more sure about something in my life. If you'll excuse me, I have to go get ready for the funeral."

Rei nods solemnly and steps aside so that I can go change. "I'll call Hiro-kun and Nao home, too," she says. "We'll all go."

[+]

Rei pins her hair back with the feather as we hover at the edge of the funeral service. I don't want to run into my friends in case they remember Rei's face. There's no point in explaining who she is, at this point; she'll be gone soon. Still, I peer over heads to see if I can see my friends, any of them, just to be reassured that they're still around.

I see Naruto and Sakura at the front, near Ino and Chouji. I see Kurenai's head of whirly hair as she stands from laying down flowers on Asuma's memorial, and then I drop back to the balls of my feet, my stomach roiling.

"I don't see him," I say quietly, and Nao looks away from the service. "Shikamaru," I explain. "I don't see him anywhere."

Rei shushes us. She has her head bowed, her hands pressed together stiffly in prayer. Her lips move in a blur as she recites words to the spirits, and I swear I see the feather in her hair flutter despite the fact that there is no breeze. Seeing her so collected, praying with such fervor for a man she didn't know makes me respect her, and I mutter a soft prayer myself, hoping it holds up to Rei's.

But Shikamaru of all people should be here. He's never one to miss things like this. Then again, he wasn't one to act as he did earlier either, and yet.

"Ren?" hisses Rei as I push past her and Nao and Hiro to get out of the service. "Where are you _going_?"

"I think I know where he is," I say over my shoulder. "Pray for Asuma for me! I'll be back later."

"It doesn't work that way!" Rei says, sounding disgruntled, but I ignore her and continue through the village.

The streets are, understandably, full up with laughter and kids running around, playing as though nothing is wrong. And it's true: There is nothing wrong. Because death is a natural part of life and as shinobi—_especially_ as shinobi—we should understand that, embrace it, because it will happen to the best of us.

But while death might be natural, disappearing into thin air is not. The emptiness left afterward is not. Because what happens to a person that everything about them just goes up in a pile of smoke and is reduced to nothing but ashes?

Everyone has this idea drilled into their heads that they will mean something or that they should strive to create a legacy for themselves. They are told at an impressionable age by the most influential people in their lives that they should try to make a difference in the world, else they waste their time. But why would it even be worth it if, when we die, we just fall off the face of the planet?

I find him easily, right where I expect to. He's reclined in the center of the open field, one leg crossed over his knee, arms tangled in a makeshift pillow beneath his head. Smoke rises from his lips, and when I squint I can see the outline of a cigarette.

He sits up, and I take cover behind a tree, not sure I want to bother him anymore. There has to be a reason he's isolated himself, and on a day like this, who am I to take that away from him? So I slink back through the trees, leaving him to himself.

When I return home, Rei, Hiro, and Nao are already there, all changed out of their mourning clothes. Rei lectures me on how badly my karma will be effected by the fact that I've ditched a funeral, but I wave her off and go to my room. Once I've locked myself in, I sit down at my desk and start to outline the plans Rei and I had made before Shikamaru came to my door, but it's hard to concentrate when I think about Shikamaru.

I wonder what he'll do from here. I haven't known many people who have had someone close to them die; we're still kids after all, still unaffected by the realities of shinobi life. There was the case of Sasuke and the massacre, but Shikamaru isn't like Sasuke. He wouldn't.

I push my papers aside and glance out the window. The sky has started to fade to black, and already I can see the stars that wink in the distance. There are some things, I realize, that are universal in regards to human nature, like the need to avenge someone's death. Of course, I'd had Chiyo die right in front of me, but her death was notably different than that of my family and Asuma. And the only vengeance I could think to seek on the Uchiha for killing my family was to break the bond, which I have been working fervently toward since the massacre.

There is a knock at my door. Nao calls, "Ren?" through the wood and jiggles the doorknob, but I'm already slipping out the window.

[+]

He's playing shougi on his back porch, a single candle lighting the area around him in a yellow haze that is easily overtaken by the darkness around the edges. "Been sitting there all evening," Shikaku says, jerking his head toward his son as he directs me to him. "Try to talk him into some dinner, won't you? His mother's getting worried."

I nod and Shikaku leaves, slipping back into the living room through the shoji doors. I step quietly toward Shikamaru, peering over his shoulder to see if he's playing himself in this game or just moving pieces around. I can't tell, to be totally honest, because I don't know the game well enough, despite attempting to play it on numerous occasions with him.

I say, "Hey, Shika."

He sits straighter, turns to see me over his shoulder. Taking this as encouragement, I move closer and say, "I didn't see you at the funeral earlier. Where were you?"

"I needed to think," he says, heaving himself to his feet without clearing the shougi board.

"Understandable," I say, twining my hands behind my back. "And how'd that go?"

Shikamaru's eyes flick to the board and I follow, knitting my brow together as I examine the pieces carefully laid, like battle plans. I bite the inside of my lip, looking back to Shikamaru who keeps his gaze averted. I sigh and take another step forward, saying, "You look tired. Why don't you get some dinner and then—"

"I'm not hungry," he says, inclining his head away as I reach for his cheek. I recoil, gathering my fingers into a ball, and glance at the shougi board again.

Like battle plans.

"You're going after them, aren't you?" I say and wait for him to answer. A minute of silence passes, and then I laugh. It breaks into pieces and sounds like a series of sobs. Shikamaru doesn't look up.

"I understand," I say, folding my arms over my chest. "I, of all people, understand, Shika. You can tell me. I would rather you tell me than . . . whatever I'm trying to do right now."

Finally, he raises his eyes. In the yellow of the candle, I can't see much. Shikamaru's eyes are hooded under his brow, the near whole of his face silhouetted. But I know his features. His sharp eyes, thin lips, crinkled brow that will undoubtedly be lined with marks of irritation in old age.

"Well," I say, lightly knocking his shoulder with my fist. "If you need anything, I'm here to help. Just say the word and—"

"You're not coming," he says, and I'm startled by edge to his voice.

"That's not what I had in mind," I say.

Shikamaru sighs, propping one hand on his hip and using the other to massage his brow. "Of course," he mutters, and then says, "Sorry. There is something I could use your help with."

He nods his head toward the shougi board by which I see two blades, molded to fit perfectly in clenched hands.

"Those were—Asuma's," he says. "They absorb the nature of your chakra, and I need to be able to use them. Could you help me with some chakra control?"

I don't think he means that. Given the nature of his family technique, precise chakra control is something that has to be practiced to a near perfection. Controlling the shadows takes so much chakra that to waste however little is to risk throwing an entire battle. But I smile, appreciate the effort he's making.

Taking his hand, I pull him down the porch, toward the shoji doors that will open into his room, and say, "Sure. In the morning. Let's get some rest in the meantime."

He nods in agreement and walks ahead of me. I glance over my shoulder at the shougi board one last time, wondering if I shouldn't push all the pieces off, ruin his plans. But Shikamaru, genius that he is, probably has them all memorized.

I won't be able to stop him.

Just as he won't be able to stop me.

[+]

The next afternoon I'm back in the same spot, standing on Shikamaru's porch as he stands in the yard, one chakra blade gripped in his hand, the other in mine. I give him pointers to shape his chakra into the most effective form and, admittedly, I think I start rambling for a bit because the next time I look at Shikamaru, he's staring at me, his lips pressed together in a tight line.

My tangent may or may not have spawned from the fact that I am worried about him. When he goes on this mission, he will be facing the likes of Itachi because undoubtedly Akatsuki will be made up of people who are just as powerful and as terrifying as Itachi. With this thought in mind, I can't help thinking, if Shikamaru doesn't manage to come back from this, I—and even if he does manage to come back from this, what will it mean for me? For Sasuke? If a group of Chuunin can take down two Akatsuki members with Shikamaru in the lead, why wouldn't Sasuke be able to? He must be about to make his move against Itachi. He has had more than enough training.

I don't say any of this out loud, of course, but I start to apologize to Shikamaru for my rambling. He interrupts and says, "I'll come back."

I pause, and then shake my head. Trust Shikamaru to read right through me. I turn the Asuma's blade over in my hands before slipping my fingers through it and surging it with my chakra. My chakra swirls thickly, like mud being mixed with a stick. Shikamaru comes forward and cups his hand over mine, breaking my concentration and making my chakra sputter to a stop. I grumble, "They would really work better with the wind element."

"I will come back, Ren," he says, and I look up at him. The determined sincerity in his expression makes me laugh.

I pat his hand, smoothing my thumb over his knuckles, and say, "Where else would you go?"

I leave him after that, heading to the training fields where Kakashi and Yamato are still overseeing Naruto's training. Naruto has made some improvement, it seems, being that craters spot the training area and each of the active Narutos cheer each other on with smug grins. I sit down beside Yamato inside the circle of dragon pillars as Kakashi looks up from his book.

"Glad you're here, Ren," he says. "We're about to test out Naruto's new move. I think he'll be happy to have an audience."

I roll my eyes as Kakashi claps his book shut and calls to Naruto, making the boy look away from his jutsu for a moment. I can't see it over the Narutos' shoulders, but the way the vibrations move around it, I can sense the wind chakra he's finally been able to manipulate into his Rasengan.

"That didn't take very long," I say, crossing my legs and watching as Naruto releases all but two of his bunshin. Kakashi directs Naruto to stand in one spot and then crosses the field to take a place a few meters away.

"No," Yamato agrees. "Kakashi certainly has a brilliant way of teaching. At this point, all we're doing is testing the limits of the jutsu, how much wind-nature Naruto can incorporate into the Rasengan."

"By the looks of the craters," I say, "I'm going to guess a lot?"

Yamato grins and Kakashi makes rapid gestures to indicate what they're going to do. Naruto smirks and holds out his hand, where his chakra begins to gather and his two bunshin start to weave their hands over the ball of chakra that forms. One of it manipulates the chakra itself; the other pumps wind-nature chakra into the Rasengan that takes shape. A disk forms around the waist of the sphere, spinning like razors. Once Naruto's technique is prepared, Kakashi nods and thrusts his own arm forward.

There is a flash that causes me to squint, and then a chirping starts, singing to the high heavens as electricity flares up his arm and disappears in sparks. They charge each other.

I shield my eyes as they clash. There is a bright flicker of light as the chakras collide, and then they are past each other, their respective hands smoking as their chakra clears. I get up at once, sighing, and Kakashi peers over his shoulder to see how Naruto fares, but then ends up grimacing and easing down to his knees. He holds his right arm, letting out soft "_ah_s" of pain as he brushes his fingers against the tender skin.

"Here," I say, kneeling down and taking Kakashi's arm. "You should have thought this through a bit more. Wind-nature is superior to lightning-nature, isn't it? You did more damage to yourself than necessary, Kakashi. Men," I say, frowning. "Useless. Good grief."

"Thank you, Ren," he says as I rest my hand on his forearm and begin healing. He glances over his shoulder at Naruto, giving him a final once over before he turns back to me. I follow his gaze; I don't know what he sees, but it must be satisfactory because Kakashi smiles widely as he speaks. "I knew it would be convenient to have you around, especially given Naruto's personality type."

"Funny," I say, rummaging through my pouch for my bandages. "While I'm here because of Naruto's recklessness in regards to his own body, here I am taking care of you."

"Well," Kakashi says as I being to wrap his arm, "Naruto is more of a danger to others than to himself when the Nine-Tails is unstable like this."

I stop for a moment to frown at him before continuing with my work. "It's a miracle that seal has lasted even this long, I think," I grumble, finishing the last of the bandaging and cutting Kakashi free. I seal the bandage with my chakra, saying, "Anyway, it's comforting to know that Naruto is the type who feels guilty for hurting others unintentionally. Means he puts others before himself. We could learn a few things from a guy like him."

Kakashi eyes me as I stand, quirks his eyebrow. "Speaking of types," he starts, "_you're_ not one to be so serious. Is there something on your mind?"

"Hmm? Well, since you asked." I rub the back of my neck and sigh. "I think," I start carefully, "Shikamaru is planning something. He hasn't spoken to me very much lately, but—I have a feeling his silence has to do with getting back at those Akatsuki guys that killed Asuma."

Kakashi's eyebrow rises even higher, resulting in an even deeper frown from me. "What makes you say that?"

"Ever since the funeral," I explain, "he's been acting strangely. He was hunched over his shougi board all night, and then he asked me to train so he could learn how to use Asuma's old knives better. I might be overreacting, but I know he isn't doing all this to keep Asuma's legacy alive."

I watch Naruto as he stumbles on his feet and Yamato compliments him on how impressive it was that he had held his own against Kakashi. Naruto pumps his fist into the air, and then wavers, nearly falling onto his face before Yamato catches him.

"Something's up," I say. "But he's not going to tell me his plans, that much I know. If anything, it'll be Chouji and Ino who he'll recruit to go with him. After all, Asuma was their sensei."

Kakashi rubs his injury, following my gaze to watch Yamato set Naruto gently down while Naruto complains about hunger pains and then turns to shout at Kakashi to take him to lunch. Kakashi agrees to the plan, but when Naruto attempts to jump up in his eagerness, he tumbles right back down, and this time Yamato isn't quick enough to help him before his face hits the ground.

I laugh as Naruto groans and rolls over, cursing the sky. I let out a slow breath and say, quietly to Kakashi, "If he does decide to go after those Akatsuki guys, would you help him, Kakashi? Even if he asks Ino and Chouji to join him on his mission, he's still going to need a fourth," I say when Kakashi regards me curiously. "And he's obviously not going to bother asking _me_ to go with him. I just want someone to keep an eye on him. To make sure he's safe while I'm not there. And I trust you."

"He's a smart kid, Ren," Kakashi says. "I'm sure your worrying is unnecessary when it comes to a guy like Shikamaru."

I scoff, pulling my hair out of my face. It keeps sticking to my cheeks, the line of my jaw. It makes me itchy. "It's _because_ of how he is that I worry about him," I say. "Keep in mind, he's also my best friend. I could never stop worrying about someone who's somehow managed to earn that title."

Kakashi doesn't react for a moment, but then he nods. He says, "Whenever you think he's about to go, tell me and I'll be there. I think I'd like to take part in this closure."

Closure. A euphemism for revenge. I chuckle, shaking my head, and Kakashi peers at me curiously. I dismiss it and go to Naruto, who Yamato is still bracing, and see if he needs to be healed like Kakashi. Expectantly, minus a few bumps and bruises, he's fine. A little rest, I tell him, but then he scoffs and tries to go over names for his new technique.

As he suggests one ridiculous name after another, I want to ask him what he would do if he had a way to go after Sasuke but had to do it on his own, without me or Sakura or Kakashi, and whether he would do it. He would probably stare at me, say, without pause, "Of course."

I shake my head at the hypothetical situation and stand after Naruto scrambles to his feet, determined to continue his training. I wave to him and Yamato, saying, "I'm heading home first. There's something I have to do."

They let me go without qualms and I make eye contact with Kakashi before I leave. He nods at me in understanding and I nod to him in thanks, and then I go home.


	68. The Parting of Ways

**Bound  
Chapter 68: The Parting of Ways**

I return to Naruto and Kakashi a few hours later, and am met with gaping mouths and wide eyes. I brush them off, tell Kakashi, "It's time." He he pulls himself out of his stupor, handing the reins of training over to Yamato before following me to the village gates where, sure enough, Shikamaru, Ino, and Chouji are gathered, ready to leave.

Tsunade has managed to catch up to them and is lecturing them about letting their emotions compromise their mission when Kakashi steps in. He offers himself as a fourth member to the team just like we planned, leaning in to whisper in Tsunade's ear. I station myself beside him, eyeing down the remainder of the former Team Asuma. They stand tall, ready to defy orders if necessary, but Ino and Chouji look relieved to have Kakashi there.

Shikamaru doesn't seem to care. But there's no hint of irritation behind it, no hidden laziness behind his disinterest. There's just . . . nothing. It reminds me of Sasuke, the way he was when he left. This thought only serves to make my heart clench tighter.

Ino quirks her head to the side as she notices me. There is no initial recognition in her eyes, but then they go wide and she gives a gasp. She says, in a strangled voice, "Ren."

"Ino," I say with a nod of an imaginary hat. "How're you doing?"

In lieu of an answer, she gapes at me, horrified. Chouji, likewise, stares at me, apparently at a loss for words, and nudges Shikamaru, who is the only one who hasn't turned around at my presence. He inclines his head back, but doesn't turn, and it isn't until Ino glares at him and urges him forward that he sighs and faces me. I thank her silently for her kindness.

When Shikamaru sees me, he has the same surprised look as everyone else. But then he drops his gaze to my shoulder, and I step forward with languid movements because I know once we're face-to-face, we won't have much time left together.

"Shikamaru," I say, closing in on him. I stop short and give a small cough at the smoke that spews from the end of the cigarette burning at his lips, shying away. He takes the cigarette out of his mouth, mercifully sparing my lungs from its smoke and I take another step forward.

"You cut your hair," he says, looking at the frayed edges of it.

I tug on the ends of my hair that curl over the bottom of my ear. The longest strands brush my jaw just barely, but I like it. When I had gotten home from speaking with Kakashi earlier, there was this itch on the back of my neck that I couldn't scratch, and whenever I leaned down to draw out the plans for Rei, my hair kept falling onto the paper and into my eyes, and I couldn't deal with it anymore. So I dug out a pair of scissors and had Rei cut it all off for me, telling her to just make it go away. And she had, thankfully, and I thought it was a nice look. But when she'd finished, all she did was stare at me sadly, like she understood something I didn't and pitied me for it. Nao and Hiro were equally as surprised by my makeover as everyone else, although their reactions were much more subtle than my friends' open gawking.

"I'd been meaning to get to it," I say with a weak laugh. "It kept getting caught on things. That wouldn't do. Don't tell me you liked it long?"

He doesn't answer, only closes his eyes and sighs. My heart tightens with sadness at Shikamaru's catharsis, and I realize how it must have been for him when I was like this, seeing nothing but myself, what I could do to make up for my mistakes after Sasuke left.

I take his face in my hands, leaning close and saying softly, "Be careful out there. And come back. D'you understand, Shikamaru?"

"Where else would I go?" he says, and I laugh and pat his cheeks the way he hates it when I do. But he tolerates it now, leans his cheek into my hand as I pat him one last time. My teeth dig into the flesh of my lip so badly I taste copper slipping onto my tongue.

"And after this," I say, tapping the cigarette in his hand. The ashes flutter and flick to the ground. "The cigarettes go for good, right? We both know I'm a fabulous medic, Shikamaru, but even I can't heal cancer once it gets deep enough."

He nods, presses the cigarette back to his lips, but he doesn't take a drag of it. I want to hug him and make a bigger deal out of his departure, but that would give too much away, and I am all for keeping secrets. So I smile and lean up to whisper in his ear the truth I have known since I saw him crying for our friends in the hospital all those years ago, the truth I had known but hadn't realized until he had vouched for me before I left for the Sand six months ago. A truth I hope he reciprocates and holds dear enough to his heart that it motivates him to come home.

I have to stand on my toes to reach his ear and lean on him to stay balanced, my fingers clipped onto the pockets of his flak jacket to keep me steady. The heat of my breath ricochets off his skin. I can smell the sharp scent of tobacco on him. I hope it doesn't stick permanently. I liked the way he smelled before.

Shikamaru nods in affirmation that he's heard me as I pull away. In a single motion, his fingers brush up the length of my neck, over my cheek, and I think that he might do something more, but he only plucks the cigarette out of his mouth and exhales a plume of smoke. The movement is so smooth that I think he'd only grazed my skin by accident, but as he rubs the back of his neck, he looks at me through his eyelashes, and I see it in his eyes.

And then I'm waving him off.

I share a look with Kakashi as he passes me. He says, "I'll look after him, Ren. Don't worry." And then he's gone, too.

Tsunade lets out a deep breath that's seeded with irritation. She says, "I guess it can't be helped. You're all still too young. Your emotions override any rational thought." I feel the vibrations shift as she turns to go back to the Administration building. I continue to stare after Shikamaru's team, even though they've long faded into the horizon.

Tsunade says, "If you haven't already guessed, you'll be going with the reformed Team Kakashi as reinforcements to Shikamaru's team. Being that you're—"

I cut her off and say, "Actually, Hokage-sama, if you would hear me out. I have a request."

[+]

I continue to sit in on Naruto's training. Mostly, it consists of Naruto resting so that he can regain his energy to test his jutsu over and over now that it's been developed. "It's not totally complete yet," he says, reclining in the grass as I tap the earth with my fist, refilling the craters he's blasted into the ground so that he has more room to move when he practices. "Yamato-taichou says we have it only at twenty-five percent, so it's bound to be awesome when it's at one hundred percent, don't you think?"

"Let's wait 'til you get there to say." I smooth over the cracks in the earth as Naruto sits up, affronted. He watches me as I work and raises his own hand. He begins to swirl his fingers through the air like he's trying to do a magic trick, and I stop to stare at him in wonder.

"What are you doing?" I ask with a short laugh.

"How do you do that?" he says. "Move the earth that easily, I mean." He gestures to the training grounds which have all been evened out. "I might have a wind-natured chakra, but I can't manipulate the air like you can the earth. Is there some special training that you did with Gaara to learn that?"

"No, because it doesn't work that way," I say. "You know how my kekkei genkai gives me an affinity for the vibrations? Well, there are vibrations in the ground, too. Whenever someone moves, their footsteps reverberate against the earth and I can sense them. In the same way, I can spread the vibrations through the earth, except the vibrations that I send out are infused with my chakra. That makes it so I can shift the earth faster and to a much better degree than most people. It also makes it seem like I'm, as you say, 'bending' the earth. I can do the same with the wind," I say, and swirl a burst of air at his face. He winces, whaps it away like a fly, and I grin. "But it's not my nature-type. So I suppose you could say that I'm just effectively putting my vibrations to use."

"Does that mean you don't _actually_ have an earth-nature chakra?" Naruto says, and I shake my head.

"I do," I say. "I can transform my chakra into earth and have it become chakra-reinforced, but I can 'bend' the earth much better with the vibrations, so that's what I do most of the time. That's why most of the earth barriers I create can be broken through so easily. It's misleading, but what can I say? I'm a liar," I tell him in a hushed tone. He doesn't catch on.

Naruto crosses his arms and pouts. "That's . . . kind of cool," he acknowledges.

"Thanks," I say, but he's already up on his feet, shouting, "Yamato-taichou! Let's go again!"

I have a feeling I had something to do with Naruto's sudden spur to continue training. Yamato warns Naruto to take full advantage of the breaks he gets, but Naruto is already summoning his bunshin and charging the palm of his hand with chakra. Yamato is forced to take his position in the center of the circle of pillars and I watch as one of his bunshin shouts that he's going to add more wind-nature into the jutsu.

They're being blown apart by the wind chakra getting out of control when Sakura lands beside me. I see her examine me out of the corner of her eye and am amused when the surprise registers on her face, like she hadn't counted on recognizing me.

She says, "Ren! I didn't recognize you with—your hair."

"Yeah," I say, smoothing down what's left of it. "Finally got around to cutting it. What do you think?"

"It's," she says, but she's interrupted by Naruto's shout of, "Sakura-chan! What are you doing here?"

"Tsunade-sama sent me to talk to you and Yamato-taichou," Sakura says quickly, and I think if Naruto hadn't interjected when he did, she would have been left stuttering about my new hair. I don't blame her. It's a radical change. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Or at least a situation where you have sole control over how things turn out, like how your hair is cut. "She wants to send Team Kakashi out to reinforce Shikamaru's team who've gone after the Akatsuki. She's given you twenty-four hours to complete your training."

"Whaat?" Naruto cries, grabbing the ends of his hair.

Yamato frowns too, upset by the deadline. He says, "Then we don't have time to waste. Naruto, let's try it again."

Naruto smirks, rushes back into the field, and Yamato takes his station in the center of the pillars. Sakura looks endearingly at Naruto, her eyes crinkling with her smile. While Naruto has been training like this, I wonder what she has been doing to get stronger, whether she's still reading about the effects of drugs on the human body or researching curses. I wonder how much studying she's been doing to get closer to Sasuke, and how much it will pay off in the end. Unlike me, reaching Sasuke has always been her goal.

"Sakura," I say, catching her attention. "When you go on this mission, take care of Shikamaru for me, okay?"

"Aren't you coming?" she asks. "If you're worried about hurting Sai's feelings, I wouldn't. He'd understand, or at least _try_ to, I'm sure, if you asked him to stay behind. Besides, I don't think he's developed his feelings enough to be hurt yet."

I laugh, fussing with the collar of my shirt. "No, that's not it," I say, reaching back to clip my hair behind my ear, only to feel wisps that curl against my fingers and don't move. I let my hand fall limp to my side. "I just have a feeling I shouldn't go on this mission."

Sakura eyes sweep over my hair again, examining it as though trying to see through an illusion. She says, "Shikamaru will be okay, Ren. If you come, you could make sure of it yourself."

"That's not my problem either," I say, shaking my head. "Anyway, it doesn't matter why I don't want to go. Just take care of him for me. Promise me. Because he'll say he's fine," I say, rolling my eyes. "But he'll be tired. Make sure he rests."

Sakura hesitates, but nods and agrees.

I take a deep breath before I continue. "Also, I'm sorry I didn't tell you and Naruto about the bond sooner. I wasn't ready, but I should have realized it wasn't a matter of _me_. If I had cared about you guys as much as I claimed to have, I should have made it my priority to tell you and Naruto about the bond the moment I noticed something off with Sasuke. Then maybe you could have helped me keep him here."

Sakura curls her fingers around her wrist. "It's okay. I heard what you said to Naruto the other day. I understand."

There is a soft lilt to her voice that tells me she doesn't quite mean what she says, but it's all right. I hadn't quite meant what I said either.

"What are your plans for it now?" she asks as Naruto gives a yelp. He's lost control of his jutsu again and has sent one of his bunshin flying across the field. It slams into the ground with such force that it disappears, and Naruto staggers, taking on the blow his bunshin had felt. Yamato calls out to make sure he's all right. Naruto waves away the concern and recreates another bunshin to replace his last, and returns to his training. "The . . . bond, I mean."

"Hope it stays broken," I say. "Or out of commission or whatever it is until I can find a way to break it completely. That's all I want."

Incredulity knots her brow together. Sakura says, "Even if it's the only way we can get Sasuke-kun back?"

I purse my lips. "Did Tsunade tell you why the elders don't trust me to go on missions involving Sasuke, Sakura? Shizune, I'm sure, must have hinted at it at some point. It's not because of the bond. It's because of what I am capable of because of the bond. You didn't grow up with it—it was kind of just thrust upon you in a rush, so maybe you don't understand just how dangerous it is because it sounds so promising: a link to Sasuke that can sense him always—unless he doesn't want it to. And that's the point I'm trying to make. With this bond," I say, enunciating my words carefully, "Sasuke can make me do anything he wants. He can turn me against you, the whole of the village, and I would do it with a smile and happy 'Yes, Sasuke-kun'. He could read all the secrets of the village in my head without me even knowing. Not that I know any secrets, but hypothetically."

Naruto shouts, this time in glee as he manages to expand the band of wind that spins around the belly of his Rasengan. His bunshin step aside and Naruto drives his jutsu into the earth, sending shockwaves through the training ground. Sakura loses her footing while I have my feet firmly planted to the ground with my chakra. Sakura shields her eyes with her hands at the flare of light the jutsu burns off, and I squint into the rapture, feeling as the earth decimates where Naruto plants his jutsu, and alarmed by the fact that it keeps burrowing into the ground, expanding across meters and meters until a quarter of the training field has sunken into a crater.

Sakura lets out a faint gasp as the jutsu fades and I move quickly to the edge of the crater. At the bottom of the pit, Naruto stands lopsidedly.

"Naruto!" I call. He sways as he tries to turn, and I say, "No, don't move too much. Just give me an indication that you're okay."

Naruto doubles over, leaning on his knees, his breathing raggedy.

"Uh, that's indicating that you're _not_ okay, Naruto," I say as Sakura and Yamato appear beside me, peering into the crater with worry. But then Naruto pumps his fist into the air and gives me a thumbs-up.

"Perfect," I say. "Sakura will be down to help you in a second, so don't—no, no, don't fall over!" I say, but it's too late. He's crumpled to the ground, face-first into the dirt. I sigh and Sakura winces at the heavy _thump_ of his body hitting the earth. Yamato skids down the side of the crater as I straighten and lament, "Naruto will never learn to take it easy."

Sakura chuckles, and the same endearing look returns to her face. But then she glances at me and it disappears. "Why don't you see to Naruto yourself? Are you going somewhere?"

"Yes," I say. "I'm meeting someone in a bit, and I don't want to be late. More apologies to give and all that." I pat Sakura's shoulder and add, keeping my voice low, "Sakura, try to understand what I said. The way I see it, it's either I keep this bond I have with Sasuke or I regain the trust the village once had in me. If you had to choose, what would you have done?"

Sakura doesn't answer. I lift my hand off her shoulder, and say, "Good luck on the mission. And take care of Shikamaru."

[+]

The graveyard is empty.

I guess that's not completely true, being that there are, like, _bodies_ underground and just because I can't see them doesn't mean they're not there. But so far as living people go, I'm the only one I can see in the yard as I walk down the rows, looking at the headstones until I find the one I want.

"Sarutobi Asuma," I say, coming to a stop and reaching back to scratch the itchy stubs of my hair. "Sorry for ditching out on your funeral the other day. Figure I'd make it up to you by paying you a visit now."

I kneel in front of his headstone and lay down a bouquet of flowers I'd bought before coming here. I frown once the flowers settle against the stone and say, "I don't actually know if you like flowers. Maybe I should have brought you a pack of cigarettes. Well. Wouldn't have been able to buy them anyway. Suppose I could have stolen a packet for you, if you're really that desperate for some smokes up in the sky. Can't imagine The Big Guy would like that very much, though."

I cross my legs, inclining my head with the breeze, and sigh, holding onto my ankles. The plastic around the flowers crinkles as the bouquet fidgets in the wind. I cup my hands together, bringing my chakra into my palms and melding it into earth. I compress it, solidify it, turn it to rock. I hold it out as though Asuma should be impressed before tying it to the ribbon around the bouquet to prevent the flowers from flying away.

"They've gone to take care of those Akatsuki guys for you," I say quietly, propping my elbow on my knee and leaning my head onto my fist. With my free hand, I trace circles in the perfectly manicured grass. "Shikamaru and Ino and Chouji and Kakashi. I think Team 7—the _new_ Team 7, I guess—is going to back them up soon, once Naruto rests up or completes his training. Whichever comes first. I'm not going," I say with a small shrug. "Don't feel like it. But, just between you and me," I whisper, leaning closer to his headstone. "I have a plan. Came up with it just before Shikamaru came home from the mission you guys went on together and—well. Here we are. I want to tell you, though, because you'll keep my secret, and you are the closest thing to Shikamaru I have. You see, I'm leaving, too. Going after Sasuke. By myself. Again. In, like, less than an hour."

I swirl my fingers through the grass, the imprint of my fist against my cheek becoming a numbing pain that aches my bones. I think back to when I had told Rei about my plan, how her immediate concern was, "Are you going to tell anyone?" and how I thought the question was so ridiculous I didn't justify it with an answer. But I realize, as I sit in front of Asuma's grave, I hadn't answered her directly because I knew I _wanted_ to tell someone. I wanted to tell Naruto, when he got his jutsu right the first time. I wanted to tell Shikamaru, before he left, and Sakura just a few minutes ago. But all those moments passed too quickly for me to gather my courage, and they wouldn't have agreed to it anyway. Now I'm left with the comfort that, of the two people who know the truth, one is dead.

Tsunade knows, of course. I saw fit to tell the Hokage at least about what I'm sure will be perceived by the village elders and council as treason. And she had looked at me, eyes boiling with rage and lips pursed, ready to fire threats about how terrible my punishment will be if I follow through with my plan or manage to make it home. I'd laughed, though, and said, "If I manage to make it home with Sasuke, though, can the village really be that mad at me?"

After that, she turned her back on me and reiterated what she'd said about Shikamaru: "You kids don't know when to let your emotions go."

"You geezers," I say, scoffing as I rub a blade of grass so hard between my fingers that it peels into rolls of green and stains my flesh, "telling me my methods are all wrong. That's where I got you slick bastards. I'm not _really_ going on my own. I have these friends who are helping me. They're sweet. Thoughtful. One of them helped me do this." I gesture to my hair. "And the timing is perfect. Everyone is gone, so no one can even try to stop me until it's too late. But I'm not here to tell you that. I just wanted to ask you to watch out for Shikamaru. You know how I feel about him coming home safely."

I laugh, uncurling from my position and stretching my arms over my head. "Anyway," I say, getting to my feet as I feel the vibrations coursing through the earth. "Someone's coming, and I have a feeling you'll enjoy her presence much more than mine. But remember what I said!" I tap his headstone and glower. "Look out for Shikamaru, do you hear? He's doing this for you just as much as for your child."

I straighten my clothes as I stand, glancing down the pathway to see a woman with curly black hair and wearing a simple dress coming forward, an additional bouquet of flowers in her arms. I smile when she notices me and wave to her. "Hello, Kurenai."

She blinks at me, stunned. Her eyes scour my near barren head as she says, delayed, "Ren."

"I was just leaving," I say, ruffling the fluff of hair that stills hang over my brow.

"It's okay," she says, jolting herself out of her surprise at my new look. She places the bouquet down beside mine. "You're welcome to stay."

"Nah, I should give you guys time alone," I say. "I only wanted to ask Asuma to look out for Shikamaru while he's out on the mission. Look out for him always, actually. You got that?" I say, frowning at the sky. "Take care of Shikamaru all the time, all right?"

Kurenai gives a weak laugh, and I watch as she subconsciously brushes her hand against her stomach. I incline my head, a bit embarrassed.

"Shikamaru told me about the baby," I say, pocketing my hands as Kurenai flatten her fingers over the growing child and smiles. "He's gonna take good care of it when it's born. Told me he would. So don't worry."

"I'm not," she says, glancing at Asuma's headstone. Her eyes dim a bit. "Shikamaru was his favorite pupil. I couldn't have entrusted this child to a better person with Asuma—"

She chokes, her fingers fluttering to her lips.

I clear my throat. "Yeah," I say. "Anyway, I'll leave you. I have things to do, so."

This time, Kurenai lets me go. I don't dawdle getting home, where Rei, Hiro, and Nao have been working to pack our bags for the journey. They all sit on the floor as they work, supplies spread out across the living room floor. Nao and Hiro fill our holsters and hip pouches while Rei fills our knapsacks with mostly food. I pick up one of the hip pouches and assess the weapons Nao and Hiro have chosen to pack. The knives have all been sharpened and polished. I commend the boys for their effort.

"That room," Nao says, pointing down the hall to the weaponry my father kept, "is like a house of horrors, Ren. Who keeps such an extensive collection of weapons in a house with small children?"

"My father," I say, "obviously. Anyway, I never went in there. It was off-limits. My dad kept it locked and since I was trained in medicine, weapons were never my thing. How's the packing going, though? Did you guys find everything you needed from the boxes and the weaponry? I didn't mean to leave you guys with all of it, but there were some loose ends that needed to be tied up."

Rei clips one of the bags shut, moving it to the side. Hiro stacks a hip pouch on top of it and Nao slides a holster across the floor. The holster bumps off the side of the bag and stays there.

"We are at twenty-five percent completion," Rei announces with a wink to her boys. She pulls the next knapsack into her lap. "We'll be ready soon. By the way, I hope you don't mind, but I snipped some branches off that plant on your porch and packed it away. Also, I added some of my own special ingredients to the fertilizer so it would stay alive while you're gone. Now, the biggest question is, how are you with transportation?"

I frown as Nao flips a knife, weighing it. It somersaults in the air and he catches it deftly by the handle each time. "I think I might have to sink through the ground," I say as Nao notices me staring and grins, "by which I mean manipulate the earth so that I can move through it. Either that or I can make a tunnel and the three of us can all go through it so we don't have to assign a rendezvous point."

Rei snorts and says, "That's practical," but really it's the only way I can think to sneak out of the village without being detected. Rei, Hiro, and Nao can leave freely; since they're no longer shinobi of the Sound, they're here on ordinary travel visas. I, on the other hand, need express permission from the Hokage, especially being who I am. And, earlier, when I had tried to talk Tsunade into letting me go, she had scoffed and turned away from me. Not exactly the sign of a go-ahead. So I don't have another option.

"You all know where we're headed right?" I say, adjusting my headband and wondering whether I should take it off when we're travelling. "I mean, it should be a given."

"Northeast," Nao deadpans, slumping against the couch. "Toward the Sound Village. Yeah, yeah. But remind me," Nao says, raking a hand through his hair. It stick up for a moment before flopping back over his forehead. "Why are we going after Orochimaru again? Didn't we—" He gestures around to himself, Rei, and Hiro. "—agree that he gave us the creeps and that we wanted nothing to do with him?"

"He has Sasuke," I say. "And you agreed to help me. So your fear of Orochimaru is invalid."

"And when did you start caring about Sasuke?" says Nao, and Rei laughs until I glare at her. She clears her throat and goes back to packing the bags.

I say, "If I can get to Sasuke and bring him home, this will all be over. I'll break the bond and he'll be home, and everyone's worries will be gone."

"Yeah," Nao says, shaking his head. "Flawless, that plan."

"Your vote of confidence warms my heart," I say, adjusting my headband. "But you should keep in mind what makes my attempt different from Sakura and Naruto's attempt at the Tenchi Bridge. I know what I'm doing."

Rei leans over the knapsack she's packing and whispers to her teammates, "She says that a lot!"

"So what are you doing?" Nao says after snickering at Rei's comment.

"I'm killing two birds with one stone," I say. "Because I'm going to break this bond, freeing me of my duties once and for all, and Sasuke will be back. All's well that ends well."

"Wait," Rei says, sitting straighter. She clips the knapsack shut, shoves it at Hiro, who protests as she knocks an entire bag of weapons on its side. Knives skid across the floor. "You _are_ going to bring Sasuke home _alive_, aren't you?"

I furrow my brow and say, confused, "Uh, yes. Otherwise the whole 'everyone will be happy' part of my plan wouldn't work out too well."

"Then how do you expect to break the bond?" she says. "I'm all for killing two birds with one stone, but unless Sasuke's been carrying the blood oath around with him or volunteers himself for an exorcism—which you would still not have my support in—I don't see how you're going to break the bond."

"There's a fourth way," I say, helping Hiro collect the strewn weapons. It had become glaringly obvious to me these past few days. I had always refused this method of breaking the bond because I didn't want to associate myself with Sasuke more than I had to. But I know what Sasuke wants, what it'll take to get him home, and if I can break the bond in the process, then so be it.

"I'm going to fulfill the bond," I say. "I'm going to help Sasuke kill Itachi, and then I'm going to bring Sasuke home."


	69. Remainder

**Bound  
Chapter 69: Remainder**

My declaration is met with a derisive scoff. Nao tosses Rei the holster he's finished packing and says, "Just like that, huh?"

"Nao's right, Ren," Rei says, tucking her hair behind her ear. "I don't think the bond works that way. You can't do one thing and expect for it to make up for a hundred years of servitude. Besides, from what I can tell, your ancestors stuck to the bond pretty closely before you came along. If _their_ service didn't fulfill the bond, I don't know if yours will."

"That's not what I meant," Nao says, "although that is a valid point. What _I_ meant to say is, do you really expect Sasuke to come home so easily after he gets his revenge? I don't know him, so I can't say for sure, but he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who lets things go so easily."

"What does he expect to do after he kills Itachi, though?" I say, shrugging. "This village won't stop until he's back in their grasp, either as a prisoner or a reformed shinobi. Naruto and Sakura won't stop until he's back. The way I figure it, what other choice will he have?"

Nao rolls his eyes and looks to his teammates, expecting them to agree with him. They concern themselves only with packing and he gives a short laugh of disbelief. "Plenty of people have started their own village before out of situations just like this," Nao says like it shouldn't need explaining. "Sasuke could do the same! What will you do if he doesn't want to come home still, even after all that trouble?"

I stay quiet, listening to the soft rustling of Rei tucking clothes into a knapsack and Hiro adjusting the knives in the packs. Nao harrumphs like he's caught me in his argument, but truthfully, I have a response: Sasuke doesn't have a choice. After he kills Itachi, he will come home with me and everyone will be relieved. I will regain the trust I used to have and everything will end.

Everything has to end.

But I let Nao think he's won and our packing finishes quickly from there. We're ready to go by nightfall, and we don't waste any time leaving. Rei decides that going by underground tunnel, while excessive, is our best bet; it'll save us the trouble of being separated and give us the cover we need until we can get out of range of the village.

We start from my backyard. I use the vibrations to open a cylindrical pit in the ground. Hiro hovers over the edge of it as I work, giving a shudder once the hole becomes so deep that the lamplight doesn't reach the ground.

"Didn't realize it until now," he says as Rei sets the lamp down and reaches into her knapsack for a flashlight, "but I think being buried alive is on my list of Things I Would Really Hate."

"Don't worry, Hiro-kun," Rei says, sitting down and throwing her legs over the side of the pit. She grins up at him, holding the light under her chin, although I can't tell if this is deliberate. Her eyes are shadowed by the arch of her cheekbones, giving her a hollowed look, and Hiro shakes his head. "If anything happens, I'll be sure to save you before these other two. I'll go first." She swings the light into the pit below, calculating the drop. "Well. Here we go!"

She pushes off the edge of the pit, and Hiro follows after. I hear them land with gruff grunts, and then shout the all clear. I motion for Nao to go first so I can close the pit behind me when I go down. He seems reluctant to move, a flashlight of his own in his hands.

"What's the matter?" I ask. "You're not afraid of the dark, are you?"

He shines the light at my feet. Through the moonlight, I see him rolling his eyes. "I grew out of that years ago," he says, but doesn't take a step. Instead, he adds, "To tell you the truth, I'm surprised Rei didn't fight your plan more than she did. She's not one to let these kinds of things happen."

"These kinds of things," I repeat.

He waves vaguely. "You know. Why we had to travel all that time for you, why she put her own health at risk to try to find a way to break the bond. She's not one to be okay with people abandoning their villages."

"I'm not abandoning my village," I say, affronted.

He gives me a pointed look. "Come on, Ren. Be serious."

"I am being serious. I'm coming back. Once I have Sasuke, I'll be back."

"There's more to it than that," Nao says, but before I can ask him to explain, he jumps into the pit just as Rei's voice rings up and demands to know if we're coming or if this is a trap. I glower into the pit, seeing the faint beams of their flashlights and consider trapping them in there. But I need to get out just as much as I need them. So I slide down to the edge of the pit, digging my fingers into the damp soil.

"I'll come back," I repeat, the soft whisper of Shikamaru voice beneath mine. I can't tell if I'm repeating his promise or making one of my own because, so far as I know, Sasuke could keep me from retuning. But I will come home, one way or another, and I will be with Shikamaru, and Sakura and Naruto and Kakashi, and everything will be fine.

I look up from the hole at the deep evergreen of the village around me. The trees rustle with a night breeze, twigs cracking beneath the feet of small animals. My house creaks behind me, and there is a _click_ like someone closing doors. It almost sounds like the haunting echo of my parents securing the house at night, just as I went to bed, so I knew I would be safe, always.

I pick up the lamp beside me and blow out the flame within. The wick of the candle flickers with the last embers as I place it down beside me, and with that I drop into the pit, my hands dragging the earth over the hole like a canvas and sealing us in.

[+]

We move swiftly through the night in the tunnels. I have to create it as we go, shifting the earth behind us as we move forward because I can't just incinerate the earth to nothing. Energy has to go somewhere, and most of mine ends up in the earth, wearing me out by the time we reach our goal of a kilometer outside the village.

From what Rei tells me when I wake up, I had collapsed upon freeing us from our earthly confines. She scolds me as I sit up in the sleeping bag she has rolled me in, and I mostly stare at her blearily through eyes swollen with sleep. She must realize, at some point, that her words aren't getting through to me, because she stops talking and hands me a hot cup of tea she's warmed over the fire someone's built before she begins to fuss with our supplies.

We're deep into the night. Nao and Hiro are sleeping in their respective sleeping bags as I sip my tea, not completely awake, but unable to return to sleep. Rei is on guard duty, still impossibly alert for this time of night. I wonder how she manages to have so much energy all the time, decide it must have something to do with the spirits without much consideration, and settle my cup of tea in my lap as she adds twigs to the barely burning fire.

I watch her as she works, before flicking my eyes to Hiro and Nao, who are still sleeping soundly. However unofficial this mission is, I can't help but think this is my first time on a real traditional squad, where there are only four members and no extra weight to burden the others. And here I am, spearheading it, despite having no experience whatsoever. This fact makes me wish this mission had a better purpose.

"I hope you don't mind," Rei says as I brush my thoughts out of my head and sip my tea. She reaches behind her and brings out a length of fabric which she holds out. A metal plate planted in the center of the fabric shines in the glow of the embers, while the cloth burns an inky blue. "I took this off of you when you collapsed. I think it's better you don't travel with any kind of identifier on you."

"I'm going home," I say, and Rei blinks at me in irritated confusion, like she can't believe I had dragged her this far only to want to turn back. "Not now," I explain, and she rolls her eyes, tossing my headband into my lap. I take the cloth between my fingers and rub it. "Not when we've just left the village. But afterward. When I find Sasuke and we kill Itachi. I'm going home."

"Where else would you go?" she asks and, remembering how I had asked Shikamaru the same, I flinch. She doesn't notice. "Of course you're going to go home. Never thought for a second that you wouldn't."

I set my cup of tea aside, taking my headband in my hands and smoothing my thumb over the emblem carved into the metal. I turn it over, preparing to tie it back onto my forehead, before I think better of it. I fold the cloth over the metal and keep it tightly in my fist.

"Why are you helping me, Rei?" I ask as she leans against a tree, a blanket drawn over her legs. "I mean, helping me break the bond is one thing, but to sneak me out of the village like this?"

"Well," she says, "I'd rather do it _with_ you than have you do it alone. Ren, you can't tell me you would have stayed home simply because I said I didn't want you to go anywhere."

"I did the first time," I say. "After the Chuunin exams, I practically let you walk all over me."

"That was different," she dismisses. "I was actually _doing_ something. I had your faith. But, this time, I gave you three options, two of which were more _ideas_ than options because there's no way I'm letting you go through with either one, and the last of which seemed impossible. At least when I had left you before, there was this kind of hope laid out before you. This time around, you were at another dead end. And I know you. You get frustrated. You would have done anything to break through that impasse, even if it meant leaving the village to find Sasuke on your own. And hell if I'll trust you to do anything right on your own anymore."

I scoff, finishing off my tea and handing the cup back to her. "Was it really necessary to bring teacups?" I ask, pointing. "We don't need that weight carrying us down."

Rei smoothes down the side of the cup, her fingers tracing the delicate blue paint that swirls like ocean waves along the rim. "It's always good to carry reminders of where you come from," Rei says. "This is how you remember yourself. This is how people remember you." She wraps the cup in a piece of cloth and packs it delicately, apparently not remembering what she had told me about having identifiers while travelling. Although, perhaps that only applied to me, given my circumstances. I still have a village after all, while Rei has been shunned from hers.

"You and me, Ren," she says, straightening up, "we're not so different. We've turned our backs on the customs of our families. We were both banished from our village at one point, although my exile is much more permanent than yours. We have fabulous friends, and we don't know how we managed it. But sometimes we forget that there is more to us than what we strive to be. Do you understand?"

I can't say that I do, so I sit in silence, and Rei seems to catch on because she smiles knowingly and nods, but she doesn't explain. She stokes the fire again, and this time, when she speaks, her voice is soft, like she's afraid of waking Hiro and Nao.

She asks, "Did you leave a note? Anything to explain why you left?"

I don't answer.

"Not even a hint," she sighs. "So he's going to come home to an empty house and just wonder where you went? What was the point of making him promise to come home then?"

I think, I didn't make him promise to come home to _me_, but to Rei I say, "Tsunade will tell everyone. She'll have someone come check on me in the morning, she'll put two and two together, and the moment everyone comes home, she'll tell them all."

Rei gives a sharp laugh as I slip back into my sleeping bag and close my eyes. I can imagine her throwing her head back to share her amusement with the stars.

"You picked the perfect time to leave, didn't you, Ren?" she says. "No one to look after you, no one to hold you back. All your best friends, gone, and with them all the responsibility you have. The perfect escape."

"I'm really very clever," I say, holding my headband close to my chest. "No one seems to believe that."

I sink deeper into my sleeping bag so that my feet bump the bottom and the blanket covers my head. There was never a time for me to mention leaving. What would I have told them? "Oh, hey, so, I got this brilliant plan the other day. I'm going to go after Sasuke. But I don't want any of you coming because I'm going to kill Itachi and you guys just want to bring Sasuke home, and I don't think that plan of action is very effective. Don't worry, I'll bring Sasuke home for you, though. Like a present. Gift wrapped with a bow and everything. And my bond will be broken and you guys can get off my back, and I will be happy and you will be happy and there's no need to question anything."

Yeah, that would have gone over well.

Ultimately, thinking about Shikamaru is what makes me lose sleep. I think about his mission and him and I hope that he's okay. I hope that he comes home and I hope that he returns to his old self and smiles and is happy.

But mostly, I hope he forgives me for doing this. Because he is the only one who really matters to me.

In the morning, I'm a little bleary-eyed, but it's nothing I can't fight off. Rei must know about my sleepless night because she offers me an herb that she says will give me energy; I know what she means is that it'll keep me awake. I accept it and take it with the small breakfast Rei makes up for us out of roots and nearby berries. We eat quickly, pack our things, and start east.

I've unpinned the metal plate from my headband and stuck it to the top of my pants. My shirt covers it from sight, but I still wear it, and that is comforting to me.

"So what exactly are our plans for tracking Sasuke?" says Nao a few minutes into our walk. "Have you felt anything from the bond since that last attack?"

I shake my head, adjusting my knapsack. "But I think," I say, "once we get close enough, I'll be able to feel him."

"Let's keep our fingers crossed," Rei says, "because I can't track him with the spirits. Whatever he's been doing to train has made his aura murky. Whenever I try to find him, the spirits just give me static and a really bad feeling."

"Rei," Hiro says in his trademark admonishing voice. "You know you shouldn't—"

"Hush," she says, pressing her finger to his lips. "I have my feather back now. I'll be fine, Hiro-kun, but thank you for worrying about me."

Hiro doesn't look convinced, but he drops the matter. Rei blows him a kiss and Nao shakes his head. "This is what it's like travelling with them," he says under his breath, and I laugh. "Endless flirting and ogling. Thank the powers above that you're with us, Ren, otherwise I would be miserable."

"You're always miserable," Hiro says pointedly.

"Except when he's around Ren-chan here," teases Rei, and Nao rolls his eyes.

"That's because she's the only sane one," he says, and Rei nods like she doesn't believe him but will concede to his point to pacify him.

"If I could interrupt," I say, and point to Rei's feather. "I was wondering: Can that send messages to anyone you want?"

Rei looks up as though she'll be able to see the feather on the back of her head. "Hmm? Within reason," she says, shrugging. "If I can feel their auras, I can give them a message. Why? You don't plan on using me to explain yourself to your friends, do you? Because I can already tell you I'm not going to do that. You should have given them a head's up on your own and it's not my fault that they will probably hate you when you get home."

"Wow," I say, affronted by her apathy. "So not what I had in mind, but thanks for making it clear where you stand. I just wanted to know in case we find Sasuke. We can give the guys back home some information if we need. He's going to be with Orochimaru, after all. If they have something planned against the village and I happen to find out about it, I'm not going to sit back and let it happen. I have to alert someone."

Rei hums, fiddles with the feather, and says, "Not a bad plan. I could send a message for you if that's the case, straight to whoever you need."

"Perfect," I say, rubbing away the itch on the back of my hand.

Rei notices the gesture and says, "Did you fall in a patch of poison ivy or something?"

"No," I say, holding my hand out for examination. Aside from paths of red scratch marks, my hand is smooth and clear, without the hint of a rash. It could be a weird reaction to the grass we had been sleeping in, or something I ate, but as I start to rub the itch again, I tell Rei, "I've been getting weird feelings lately, though. Like an itch I can't scratch just always there on my skin."

I don't know what compels me to tell her this; I hadn't even realized it to be a truth until I had said it out loud. It sounds ridiculous and I'm about to dismiss it when Rei grabs my hand, taking this much more seriously than I had anticipated.

"Let's see what I can deduce," she says, turning to walk backwards so that she can flip my hand over and examine every fold in my skin, tapping her fingers down the length of my bones.

"You're not a medic, are you?" I say, looking over her shoulder to make sure I don't lead her into any trees. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

"Shaman, medic, it's all the same to me," she says as she begins to massage my hands. "Now, let's see what I can sense."

"_Sense_?" I echo, confused, but then she comes to a halt, and I ram into her. I push her off my feet and say, "You can't just _sense_—"

"_Hush_," she says, sandwiching my hand between hers. And then she stands there, eyes closed, seemingly intent on praying for my itch to go away. I look to Hiro and Nao to see what they have to say, but they shrug as though this is a regular occurrence and there is nothing for me to do except go along with it. Like hell. We're losing time standing around, and as I start to protest, Rei slaps my hand, says, "_That_—"

Something about the way she hits me sends a surge of electricity up my entire arm. It weaves through my body, paralyzing me so that I can't breathe, even when I open my mouth to demand Rei to tell me what she's done. Rei notices the stiffness in my arms and motions for Nao and Hiro to move forward. They set me down, and Rei sits in front of me, unpinning the feather from her hair in one fluid motion. She holds it between our hands, and leans down to whisper, "Concentrate!" although I don't know what I'm supposed to be concentrating on until I feel it.

There is a tugging deep in my stomach, like my breakfast is threatening to revolt and tear it apart. I double over, my forehead pressing into Rei's lap, her hands still wrapped in mine. And then there is a pain, like someone drawing a finely sharpened blade through my skull, stabbing it between my eyes.

My throat closes up and I choke. The darkness begins to fuzz behind my eyelids, and no matter how much I push it away, it overwhelms my vision. My muscles go slack and I want to roll over on my back and die, because surely that must be coming next with the way my body is reacting. Rei holds me firm, barking out orders to Hiro and Nao, although I can't make out any of her words. I just hear the sharpness of her voice, the way it never wavers, and I'm comforted, reminded of the way my mother would be during operations.

It's not something I like to remember, but when I was beginning my medical training, my father would have me sit in on a few of my mother's operations, which she would take care of on a larger part of the compound, where my family would gather as a collective to have meetings or throw parties. Obviously we wouldn't hold the parties and the meetings in the same room in which my mother did all her operations, but it was the same general area.

Anyway, during these operations, I would watch my mother work, unflinching, with the steadiest hands I've ever seen. No matter how much the others would yell bad news, she would respond with the utmost confidence that her patient would survive, and it seemed to me that it was, indeed, her confidence alone that would bring people back to life.

. . . what I wouldn't do to have her sooth me right now. To have her smooth down my hair and sing me lullabies and reassure me in this unyielding darkness that covers my eyes no matter how many times I blink.

I don't ever wish for—or even _think_ about—my mother. Naturally, I wonder if this really is the end that I'm missing her so much or if maybe it's my guilt catching up to me.

It's hard to say.

But I think, in general, it might just be my life flashing before my eyes in those initial moments before dying because I see Team 7 together in full: Me, Sasuke, Sakura, Naruto, and Kakashi, training together in a field, irritating each other as we go on our first real mission outside the village. Taking care of each other as things seem to be taking a turn for the worse in a ocean-side village against a purported demon shinobi who hides in the mist. I can taste a sea breeze on my tongue, feel rough, pocketed stone under my hands.

What I wouldn't give to go back.

_So go back._

Something thumps roughly on my chest, so hard that the air slams back into my lungs and I jerk upright, sputtering and gagging on the oxygen that hits me too fast. My coughs are rattling, like someone puffing on a defective party blower, and it's minutes before I can regain my composure.

"What," I wheeze, massaging my chest as I sit up to see Rei with her hands clasped together like a club, "was—_that_?"

"_That_," Rei says, extracting a broken feather from my fist and frowning at it, "was a sign, wasn't it? Unless you're talking about what knocked you out of your little attack. That was _me_ punching your chest to restart your lungs. Funny how effective that is."

She shakes out the feather and small plumes molt from its spine. She doesn't lament or even seem bothered by its damaged state as she re-pins it into her hair and smoothes down her clothes. As she turns to Hiro to ask him to bring me water, I see the feather has completely repaired itself without a hint that it had been clutched and twisted and falling apart only moments earlier. It has repaired itself, just as it had before during my training with Kiba and Akamaru.

"What do you mean _sign_?" I ask, deciding the feather isn't worth figuring out. "A sign of what?"

Rei shudders, says, "Can you at least wait until your voice recovers to talk to me? I can't handle that husky voice you're speaking with. Makes me feel like I'm being violated."

"_Rei."_

"Right, right. More to the point," says Rei as Hiro gives me a canister of water. "You should know as well as I do what that was. When was the last time you had that kind of pain? When Sasuke was able to get inside your head a few weeks ago, right?"

I grip the canister without taking a drink, instead dropping my head into my free hand and saying, "Oh, god."

"How long has that been happening?" Rei wants to know. "That itch. Since that attack you had earlier?"

"I don't know," I say, sweeping my hair behind my ear. Rei narrows her eyes at me and I hold my hands up in defense. "I really don't know! Probably. It just . . . it was so on and off and it was such a little thing that I didn't realize it was even _a thing_ that was _happening_. I honestly didn't."

Rei twirls the feather between her fingers and says, "Well, I suppose, in the long run, that's not what matters. I managed to get a signal off of that connection when the bond was momentarily reestablished, and I have a faint idea of where your lovey-dove is, so if we follow that, we should be find him—"

"No," I say, and finally, unable to stand the dryness in my throat, take a long swing from the canister. As I wipe my mouth and put the canister away, I say, "We can catch up to Sasuke later. There's . . . some place else I want to visit first. The Land of the Waves," I elaborate when Rei gives me a questioning look.

Rei gapes at me and demands, "What? But—why? That's in the opposite direction of the Sound Country!"

"Whatever," Nao says, offering me his hand to help me get to my feet. "I am perfectly okay with doing everything I can to put off seeing Orochimaru—"

"Orochimaru is dead," I say and then blink in surprise. The statement had risen up with a exhale, automatic and a seemingly inherent fact, and I'm not sure how to explain to Rei, Hiro, and Nao's blank stares what compelled me to say it other than it's true. Although I _know_ I can't be sure of as much, but—

I press my fingers to my diaphragm, feeling the remainders of the soft tugs from earlier.

Rei notices my gesture and steps forward, saying, "What do you mean he's dead, Ren?"

"I think," I say slowly, lifting my gaze and looking in the direction of the Sound. "I mean exactly what I said. Orochimaru's dead. Sasuke—Sasuke killed him."

Rei lets out a hiss of breath, walks away from me, muttering under her breath. Nao pushes off of the tree he'd been leaning against and says, "Whoa, back up for a minute. Is that what you saw when you were—you know—" He acts like he's suffocating, and I roll my eyes. "—earlier? Is that something you can confirm for a fact? Because it sounds like you're pulling these statements out of thin air."

"She's right," Rei says, turning back to the group. She's scowling and her hair is more mussed than it had been, like she's been drawing her hands through them. "The spirits are in an upheaval right now with the release of a dark energy. I can't say for sure it's him, but I have a very strong feeling that it is. The spirits are trying to sort through it, but something is blocking them. That Sasuke of yours sure knows how to cause a riot, Ren."

"So where is Sasuke now?" Hiro asks as Rei comes up beside him and takes the hem of his sleeve. She rubs the fabric of his sleeve between her thumb and forefinger, and her face relaxes, as though finding comfort in the small gesture. "He's not going to stay in the Sound Village with Orochimaru dead. How are we supposed to track him if the one lead we have is gone?"

"Don't worry," I say. "This works out in our favor. We'll just track—"

"And by _we_ you mean _Rei_," Rei says, irritated, and Hiro pets her hand.

"—the one person we know he'll be drawn toward: Itachi. In the meantime," I say, adjusting my knapsack over my shoulder. "Connecting to Sasuke through the bond really wears me out these days, and you can probably see why. I think having take a nice vacation will do us all well. We're going to the Land of the Waves."

Nao scoffs, crossing his arms. "Barely a day out of the village," he says, following me as I lead the way, "and we're already taking detours. At this rate, we'll never find him."

"That's where you're wrong, Nao," I say. "I always have a way of finding him."


	70. Boom Town

**Bound  
Chapter 70: Boom Town**

It takes us about a day and a half to get to the Land of the Waves. When we get to the bridge, the first thing I do is laugh. Rei quirks her brown at the lettering over the bridge, purses her lips, and crosses her arms. She says, "What the hell?" and I laugh even harder.

Because the words, THE GREAT NARUTO BRIDGE, have been stamped across the top of the beams that make up the entryway over the bridge and into the Land of the Waves. Tazuna, the old man in charge of building the bridge, had joked with me about this before we left, and I'd laughed along, but I never thought he was serious.

I suppose it has more to do with Naruto being an absolute wonder than anything, though. That he is able to inspire people in such a way that they would name notable landmarks after him—it is incredible.

"Did you want to come all this way just to laugh at a bridge?" asks Rei as I compose myself, shaking my head.

"No. I just wanted to visit, but this definitely makes things better by tenfold!" I say. "I was in the Land of the Waves a long time ago, helping some of the locals build this bridge. It was the first big mission—Team 7, the original Team 7, was assigned to," I say quietly, and Rei squints at the bridge, unable to see the memories I have of it and consequently unimpressed.

"So this Naruto the bridge refers to," Rei says, pointing to the sign. "That would be your friend Naruto?"

"That's the one," I say, and laugh again. "God, he's going to be so full of himself when he finds out about this. When I get home—" I stop short and clear my throat. "Anyway, since the walk here took most of the day, we should stay here for the night and see what we can do about finding Itachi tomorrow."

"Fine with me," Rei says, brushing her hair over her shoulder. "Using the spirits will make me tired, so the more rest I get now, the better. Let's see if we can go find a hotel to stay in."

There is one thing I notice as we're crossing The Great Naruto Bridge: Everyone is happier than they were before. There are children in brightly colored clothes—clothes that aren't raggedy or smeared with dirt that is not so much a failure to wash so much as it is carelessness. Adults carry bags full of _things_, from clothes to food to toys for their children. And there is not a single face hiding in fear.

When we reach the other side of the bridge, I draw Rei, Hiro, and Nao over to the side of the road. "There's something here I want to see," I say, and they follow.

A considerable distance away from the main road, there are two crosses that mark the graves of Haku and Momochi Zabuza. I want to pay my respects to them, and when I see their crosses still there, hovering in grass that is a bit too overgrown, nostalgia swims up in my stomach, and I run to them.

"Graves," Nao deadpans as I brush the moss off of the markers and adjust them so that they stand straighter. They're smaller than I remember, and time has caused the wood to splinter and crust with moss. "That must have been one unfortunate mission you went on if someone died."

"It was bittersweet," I say as Rei steps forward. She clasps her hands together, and I wonder if she always prays for people she doesn't know. "These were our enemies for a greater part of the mission, but toward the end, Naruto turned them around. It's the reason we made it out alive and why this village has that bridge."

"Hmph. During the exams, all I remember thinking about Naruto was that he was incredibly obnoxious," Rei says, finishing her blessings. "Always shouting and butting his nose where it didn't belong."

"That's Naruto," I say, smiling. "He has the best intentions though."

"Whose sword is that?" asks Hiro, pointing to the massive blade that sits behind one of the crosses, and I laugh.

"Momochi Zabuza," I say, brushing crusted dirt from the hilt, and Hiro looks at me like he hadn't heard me properly.

When I don't correct myself, Hiro says, "As in . . . Momochi Zabuza—Demon of the Mist, Momochi Zabuza?"

"That's the one," I say. "In any case, let's find a place to stay and work out our plans. It's getting late."

Rei, Hiro, and Nao agree and start on their way back to the main road. I linger at the crosses for a moment, unable to draw myself away. I smooth my hand over Zabuza's blade, which is crusty from dust and rain matting over its surface. I clear a streak across the blade, and am surprised to see it still shine beneath all the muck.

"I'll come back before I leave tomorrow," I say, shaking the dirt off my hands, "and clean the sword up a bit for you. Look forward to it."

"You know, after running away from your village, I didn't expect you to be so happy," Rei says, pulling her scarf off her neck as I catch up to them. "Especially being in a village where there's so much water to dampen your vibrations."

"You don't understand," I say, gesturing to the village growing increasingly larger in front of us, and explain to her the story of Gatoh and old man Tazuna and Haku and Zabuza. By the end of it, Rei is blinking at me in wonder and says, "That doesn't sound like a mission for _Genin_ to go on."

"That was, again, because of Naruto," I say, laughing. "We kept getting these dinky D-ranked missions and when the Hokage gave us a C-ranked, it turned out that Tazuna had lied about the severity of his situation, which turned the mission into an A-rank. Trust Naruto to make everything go wrong. Or, I suppose," I say with a shrug as we cross the last of the buffer between the bridge and the village, "trust Naruto to make everything go right."

"Ah, Ren-chan? Is that—"

I stop in my tracks at the voice and turn to find a boy with a mop of black hair grinning at me, pleasantly surprised. "I thought it was you!" he says. "Your clothes looked familiar. Only shinobi go around like that."

"My clothes?" I say, and look down at my attire. It's nothing out of the ordinary: black shinobi sandals, black pants that stop just below my knees, and a loosely-fitted long shirt that ends just below my waist. The collar of my shirt is cut low enough that my mesh undershirt is visible, and I suppose that and the bandages I've wrapped around my wrists and knees give me away. Ordinary people don't need those kinds of safeguards while walking through town. Nor do they need to carry holsters and hip pouches full to the brim with weapons. But I could have been any shinobi just passing through, and when I point this out to the boy, he says, "I recognized your hair, too, of course. Not many girls have their hair cut that short. I didn't think you'd keep the same look after all these years!"

I brush my hair self-consciously and Nao laughs. The boy regards him with confusion as Nao says, "You sure know how to flatter a lady, don't you?"

I elbow Nao. He rubs his injury, wincing. I say to the boy, "I'm sorry, I don't—"

The boy cuts me off, saying, with a hint of pride, "That's all right. You probably wouldn't recognize me; I've really grown up since the last time you were here."

I blink at him, taking him in. His hair hangs flat on his head, and he wears what are obviously working clothes: sleeveless so nothing gets in his way, loosely fitted to let a breeze through and cool him down, pants that look well worn with sawdust. He's young, not someone I would have fought beside, and when I realize who he is, I feel immensely dense for not recognizing him sooner.

"Inari!" I say, and his smile brightens. "Oh, wow, yeah. I didn't—you didn't used to be so _beamy_," I say, and he laughs in spite of himself.

Inari glances over Rei, Hiro, and Nao, who don't take the opportunity to introduce themselves. Likewise, Inari doesn't take the time to ask after them and instead says, "You're not travelling with Naruto-niichan anymore?"

Rei snorts, her eyes flicking back to the bridge like she still can't believe the legacy Naruto has left here.

I say, shifting uncomfortably on my feet, "Ah, no. Things get tricky when you're a shinobi, so Naruto and I had to go our separate ways. But I still see him around sometimes. He just came back to our village a few weeks ago after travelling around the country to train for two years with his shishou."

Inari lets out a low whistle, impressed. "That's Naruto-niichan," he says. "Training hard to beat Sasuke, isn't he?"

At this, I only offer Inari a smile, which he takes as an affirmation.

"Where are you staying?" he asks, and before I can answer he insists that I come stay at his house like last time, that it's the least he can do after everything we'd done for the village. Ever the miser when it comes to money, I accept his offer and we follow him home.

"Well, I'll be!" cries Tazuna when we enter his living room. He is older than I remember, the wrinkles on his face deeper, the boom of his voice crackled with the husk of old age, but he is alive as ever, and he must still be working in carpentry because he doesn't seem to have become frail or an invalid like so many old people usually do. "One of the little brats come back to check up on us at last."

Their house is virtually unchanged, although there is a considerable amount of décor around the house now: a plant here to liven up the room, cloths that drape over shelves to add a spruce of color. The opulence in their house is humble and fitting, and I say, "Doing well for yourselves I see."

"Yes. Everything has been _super_ ever since you kids showed up and fixed the town for us," Tazuna says with a grin. He takes in the group behind me and, not recognizing any of them, asks, "Who are your new friends?"

I introduce Rei, Nao, and Hiro to them as my new cell. Rei bows with a flourish when I point to her and smiles brightly, and Tazuna is instantly taken up with her. He asks how she had managed to get stuck with a brat like me, and how the quality of shinobi in Konoha must be diminishing if they've been forced to pair a pretty girl with such average looking people, and I scowl.

Hiro chuckles as Tazuna offers Rei a seat without even looking at me twice. He says, "Don't take it personally. It's the—"

"Spirits," I say, rolling my eyes. "Yeah, I thought so."

"Where are the others?" asks Tazuna when I sit down at the table. "Sakura and that super brat Naruto? Why aren't you with them?"

"They're shinobi, Grandpa," Inari says with a scoff, although he had asked the same question earlier. "They can't be together all the time."

I laugh, ruffling Inari's hair as he offers to take our bags to our room for us. "That's right," I say, sitting back in my seat. "Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi are on another mission presently and couldn't come with me. So I'm on my own this time around."

"And that boy?" prompts Tazuna. He points to his face, frowning in such a way that all the lines on his face gather like they can't fight the force of gravity anymore. "The one who was always scowling? Where's he?"

Rei looks at me, curious to see how I'm going to cover for Sasuke. The lie comes more easily than I expect, like I had always had it within me and was just waiting for a chance to use it. "He's been on his own mission," I say, propping my chin on my fist. "I'm on my way to rendezvous with him and help him complete it. I decided to take a small detour first, though, and that's how I ended up here."

"Well, we're super glad to have you!" Tazuna says, slapping the table. "Tsunami will be home with supper soon! She's not usually out so late, but since trade's improved around here, people have been more friendly and Tsunami gets caught up in the talk of the town. In the meantime, you guys go get comfortable in your room; I'll have Inari go get you when Tsunami comes home."

I assume we're going to take the same room that we had occupied when I was here before, and when I'm able to remember how to get to the room, I am pleased to find Inari setting out extra blankets for us. Hiro and Nao take the set up from there, and I thank Inari for his kindness as Rei stretches out on a half-made futon.

Inari eyes her unsurely and leans in to whisper to me, "How is Naruto-niichan? Are you—if you don't mind me asking—are the two of you still friends?"

I startle at the question, glancing over my shoulder to see if Rei has caught his words. Although it doesn't appear she's paying us mind, I step outside and close the door behind me a bit, saying, "Of course we're still friends. What makes you say that?"

Inari props his hand on his hip, looks at me in the way the soon-to-be-Genin at the Academy look at me when I underestimate their abilities. He says, "I dunno. When you guys were here the first time, I thought, from just looking at you, the bonds you had with each other would keep you guys together no matter what." He shrugs and lowers his eyes like he's embarrassed to be lecturing me. "And now you're not together. Plus, you're not wearing your headband."

I reach up to brush the fringes of hair that hang over my brow, feeling the bareness of my forehead, the apparent betrayal I am brandishing just by not wearing my headband. But it's still on me, I reassure myself. I still have it, clipped to the hem of my pants.

But. Out of sight, out of mind.

The concern on Inari's face as he catches my motion morphs into sadness, and I am at a loss for how much a little boy has noticed in just an hour of being with me. "I can't say know how the life of a shinobi works," he says as I lower my hand, "but I know heroes like Naruto-niichan don't have one-time friends. If you were on a team with him like that, I thought, you would always be on that same team with him. I don't know," he says again, shaking his head. He turns on his heels and walks away quickly, waving to me over his shoulder. "I'll call you guys out when Mom gets home. I hope you're hungry because once she hears you're here, she's going to make a lot of food!"

"What was that all about?" Rei asks when I step back into the room.

"Nothing," I reply, shutting the door. "Just catching up with an old friend. I think we should make up our plans right now and set out around noon tomorrow. How does that sound to you?"

"Rushed," Rei says with a shrug, and I scowl at her. "Why don't we hang out here longer? These people seem nice enough and the spirits will have me in a bad mood by morning if I try to track Itachi tonight."

"That's something we're going to have to bare, then," I say, sitting down beside my things and running my fingers over the red stone around my neck. "Sorry, boys, I hope you don't mind."

"We're used to it," Nao says.

"I don't know if _my_ feelings matter in the case," Rei says, pressing a hand to her chest dramatically. "But contacting the spirits for information doesn't feel good, even with the feather. You remember what Shaman Mako told me back in the Wind Country?" she says, directing her question at Hiro and fluttering her eyes.

Hiro bites his lip and looks at her sympathetically. "Well," he says, and I groan, running my hands over my face.

"We can't stay here," I say in what I hope is a firm enough tone to end the conversation. "You spend too much time in one place and the people start to get into your head. You start doing things for them you wouldn't otherwise care to do, and then you're stuck doing it forever, keeping them safe, never getting anything out of it."

I don't mean to say that out loud. The rant comes tumbling out of my mouth, like a river swelling with runoff, bursting over the shores because it can't hold any more. Rei raises her brow at me in that "Really?" fashion that makes me look away.

I say, "I only mean that, despite our cover story, we aren't here as official shinobi on a mission. Inari recognized that and called me out on it in the hall, so I think it'd be safest if we just—leave as soon as possible."

For some reason, we all turn to Hiro to decide the matter. He startles and says, "Well . . . the spirits do wear Rei out. But Ren's right, too. We can't stay for too long or else we'll be dragged into whatever problems might arise in the village. Even if we have been dismissed from our village, we can't shirk our duties as shinobi and not help the villager if something does come up."

"So it's decided," I say as Rei glowers at Hiro, who gives her an apologetic look. "Tomorrow afternoon, we have to be out of here. How long do you think it'll take you to find Itachi? Is there anything weird about his aura that might make it difficult for you?"

"I don't know," Rei says, throwing her hands up. "I've never tried to trace him before. God knows what those Akatsuki do in their free time, but if it isn't anything damaging to their souls, I should be able to trace him easily. I could have his location by the end of tonight. _But we are not leaving this village until the last possible minute_," she says, shooting into sitting position. "Because you said we have until tomorrow afternoon to leave, and I am going to milk that deadline for all it's worth, do you understand me, Kagiru Ren?"

"Transparently," I say. "So long as we're able to find Sasuke soon, I'm fine."

Rei harrumphs and sweeps her hair over her shoulders, knotting it on top of her head. She pins the feather through it and says, "Tell our gracious hosts that I'm not feeling well after all that tiring travelling and to save me a dish. Hiro can bring it to me later. In the meantime, you boys go. Ren, come sit here." Rei pats the empty space in front of her.

"What? Why?"

Rei scoffs, says, "You can't expect me to try to find Itachi without a medium. Which is ironic, since _I'm_ supposed to be a medium. Whatever. Point is, I need something that connects me to him, and the most powerful thing is blood. And _you're_ blood."

I take my wrist, more out of shock than fear that Rei will slit them and do some weird ceremony. I say, "I don't have Uchiha blood in me."

Irritated, Rei says, "You do. Blood bound to them, remember? That's how that works. Now get over here."

Reluctantly, I cross the room, sitting down in front of Rei, who immediately grabs my wrists and says, "Don't worry: I'm not going to cut you open or anything. I only need you to sit still and concentrate on the bond, on anything about it that you can remember. Okay?"

Not okay, but I nod anyway and take a deep breath. The door clicks shut as Nao and Hiro make their exit and then Rei and I are left alone. I'm anxious and I don't know how these rituals go or what happens, but I mimic Rei as best as I can and close my eyes. "Concentrate on the bond, anything about it you can remember," she had said. So I remember the tugging, the constant pings of _Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke_, no matter where I am or what I do. I remember how his pain would shoot through my core and cripple me, and how I would get goosebumps when his power became overwhelming.

But I remember the good parts too, however few and far between they were. I remember his kindness, his sympathy, and how he would come to my aid if he felt that I was in danger. I remember how the easily the bond allowed us to work off of each other, even without a glance in the other's direction, and I remember the rush of being able to have that kind of bond with someone.

I know I complain about the bond a lot, and it makes me more sullen than I need to be, but it wasn't all terrible. Having a bond with someone like I had a bond with Sasuke can be good—I realize that. It had been good for a long time before I inherited it, and would have probably continued to be good if our families hadn't died, but—the way things have panned out, the bond cannot continue to be good. Things are too different now, and while I can remember the good things about the bond, I cannot recreate them anymore. Sasuke is too far gone and, consequently, I am too far gone.

Remembering all the good things that happened does make me sorry to have to break it, though. But breaking it will be better for us in the long run.

Rei's grip tightens around my hands and I wince and say, "Ow!" but she shushes me and says, "Concentrate! You're doing good. I can almost—"

A pain severs my back, sparking from my tailbone and splitting my shoulder blades, like I have been slumping too long. I'm uncomfortable sitting, now, and I want to tug out of Rei's grip, get up, and stretch, but I stay where I am for the sake of finding Sasuke.

I have to find Sasuke. I have to help him kill Itachi and convince him to return home—or else bring him home by force. There is no doubt in my mind that after his fight with Itachi, Sasuke will be worse for wear, unable to take care of himself, and I will carry him home on my shoulders if I have to. So long as he comes home.

The pain in my back sharpens to the point where I let out a gasp and shudder. For a minute I have the idea to tell Rei to stop, that I need to get up and move, but then the scent of the ocean drifts in through the window, and I can taste the salt on my tongue. That is enough to distract me from the pain, bring me back to the time when Sasuke and I were here, and he and Naruto were constantly competing, and Sakura and I were on the bridge, protecting Tazuna in the morning mist that burnt away by mid-afternoon. I remember the way the sun felt on my skin after sitting all morning in the cool dampness, how the sun would heat me to the core until it felt as though—

I'm burning.

I yelp and tug away from Rei, managing to pull free with one forceful yank. I roll and end up doing a backward somersault over a futon and into the wall, where I take a moment to moan, my hands pressed against my mouth.

"What in the _hell_ was that?" I gripe, sitting adjusting myself so that I sit straight. "Rei, I was not expecting this to hurt!"

It isn't until after I say it that I realize how much I sound like a child. Good thing Rei doesn't seem to hear me. She remains stiffly in place, her eyes closed, her mouth moving in quick succession, not even pausing for breath. Her arms are extended and fingers shaped like she is still holding onto my hands, although she grappling nothing but air.

It's a few minutes before she opens her eyes, and even then they are glazed over with a film of a daydream. I approach her slowly, prompting, "Rei?"

Her eyes snap wider, shocking me, and she says, "Everything is all right, Kagiru Ren. Everything will be all right."

"I don't doubt that," I say, keeping my hands against the floorboards, which cools my skin from the burn I had felt earlier. "But what happened just now? When you were trying to track Itachi?"

"The energies must come full circle," she says, her voice hauntingly soft. "It can neither be created nor destroyed, only transferred and changed. Do you understand?"

I rub my hands, at a loss for how to answer. Rei braces her head in her palms, and while she recomposes herself, I get up and go to the window, where I can see the waves folding in on each other I pray my fingers under the window and lift it higher, allowing more of the ocean breeze to flow in, and I take a deep breath.

The sea salt fills my lungs and freezes them over. The way the cold air hits my face temporarily stuns me, and I exhale, remembering the way the sea had centered me earlier.

Except there's something odd about the way the salt tastes on my tongue. Earlier, the salt had been thicker, purer. Unmarred by industry and human breath.

North.

I blink, pursing my lips, rubbing my hands again as I lean on the windowsill. "North," I say, wondering if it means what I think it does. Could the heat I had felt while Rei was trying to locate Itachi have been the spirits transferring to me? That would be an explanation for the pain, and for my sudden acuteness in regards to the way the sea tastes, but until Rei has recovered, I have no way of knowing.

I turn, see if she's straightened up yet, but find her sprawled out across blankets and pillows what don't belong to her. She snores, her mouth parted in the slightest, with a blanket pulled up to her neck. I tsk and close the window, figuring the wind coming in over the ocean might freeze us to death anyway, and walk to Rei. As I reach over to adjust her pillow and make her more comfortable, there is a knock at the door and Hiro lets himself in.

He's carrying a small bowl of soup that steams and fills the air with a sharp sweetness. "Just a small appetizer," he says. "Nao and Tsunami-san are working on the main course right now." He holds the bowl out to me in offering and I accept it, freeing him to fuss over Rei.

"Is this what happens normally?" I ask, swirling the herbs and vegetables in the soup, waiting for it to cool down. "She does one of these—whatever they are, and then she crashes?"

Hiro nods, looks grim as he says, "It used to be that she would only be dizzy or feel nauseated, but I think as her powers get stronger, the effects get worse. You know how it works: the better something sounds, the harsher its consequences."

I scoff and he grins. Hiro manages to get Rei situated so that she's not spread eagle across the floor and is neatly contained on her futon. She stirs a few times, but never wakes up completely. Hiro tells me that she'll be sleeping until at least morning, and reassures me that we'll be able to leave at my desired time without a hitch.

"It depends on how long the whole process took," Hiro says, flicking a stray hair out of his face. "How did it go, anyway?"

"Uh," I say, pushing my now empty bowl of soup off to the side. "Okay, I guess. I dunno. I've never really done this before, so it's hard to say. But it only took—ten, fifteen minutes, maybe. Does that change how long she'll need to sleep?"

"No," he says, and shrugs when my shoulders slump. "Were you able to locate either Itachi or Sasuke, though? Rei usually doesn't sleep this deeply unless she got some kind of information."

I hesitate, glancing toward the window. I drum my fingers along the floorboards, say, "There was—something. I think they're somewhere north. I can't be sure where, but I have a good idea, and I think if we wander in that general direction, we'll run into them as they're coming or going. Right?"

Hiro is skeptical, says, "'North' is vague. The chances of us just running into one of them on our way up is slim. Did Rei specify where north? Like, how far north, or a city or town we could scout?"

Again, I pause, the sea burning my throat. "Kind of," I say, and extract the map from my knapsack. I unroll it and rummage for a pen. Finding one in the recesses of one of the smaller pockets of my knapsack, I mark a spot on a whim on the northernmost point of the coast. "I—_we_ have reason to believe this point is where we will run into them."

"Them?" Hiro repeats. "_Them_. You can't tell me both Itachi and Sasuke are heading this way."

"No," I say. "Just Sasuke. But I—I think it's safe to assume that he has recruited a team to help him with his mission."

Hiro watches me carefully as I reroll the map and tuck it under my pillow. "Okay," Hiro says. "And Rei told you all this?"

I flinch and then admit, "No. Not exactly. But while she had my hands, there was this kind of . . . _burning_. It went through my whole body, and—I could taste the sea from this area. I think the spirits might have passed through me and, you know, given me that signal. Crazy as that sounds," I say quickly as Hiro shakes his head. "I know. But Rei did spew this stuff about energies transferring so . . . so it makes sense that the spirit energies transferred to _me_, right?"

"It's not too far-fetched," he says, smoothing Rei's hair over her brow. "The spirits have a funny way of working. Especially since you're so close to Sasuke—"

"I'm not close to Sasuke."

"Given the bond," he corrects, shifting to take my empty soup bowl. "The spirits must have wormed their way into your life-threads and decided to give you the coordinates of his location. It makes sense."

He stands, brushing himself off. He flicks his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes again and says, "Before we leave, though, I'd like to reconfirm with Rei. We don't want to set out on a course we aren't sure about. You understand, right?"

"Of course," I say automatically, and with that Hiro nods at me, reminds me to make sure Rei stays warm because apparently she's sensitive to the cold, and leaves. I have a sneaking suspicion that Hiro thinks I'm making up these coordinates so we will have something to do, somewhere to go. But I'm not one to want to travel for the fun of it. Travelling is troublesome and inconvenient, and why go anywhere when I can have all the comforts of staying in one place?

I'm only out here because I have to be.

* * *

**A/N:** I hope you enjoy! Please review.


	71. Friends Forever

**Bound  
Chapter 71: Friends Forever  
**

I end up falling asleep before anyone comes in to call us for dinner, and wake up in the morning with a monster hunger gnawing at the pit of my stomach. I groan, roll to my feet, finding futons abandoned all around me. Rei's blankets lie in a heap at the end of her futon, while the boys have their things folded neatly, their pillows stacked to top it all off. I muss my hair and, with a yawn, head to the bathroom to freshen up for breakfast.

In the hallway, I can hear someone clattering dishes and smell breakfast wafting from the kitchen. The smell makes my stomach twist, aching for sustenance. I clean quickly and go to the kitchen where I find everyone already seated at the table. Their plates are laid out in front of them, and Rei waves a forkful of eggs enthusiastically at Inari while she entertains with a story.

She's telling them of when we'd met in the Forest of Death, and portrays herself as a helpless victim who was unfairly and brutally harassed by me, when I distinctly remember it being the other way around. Still, I let her dramatize the story, making comments only when I feel the need to defend myself against her accusations that I am secretly a terrible person. Tazuna, smitten with Rei, takes her side and says I was the most abrasive of the members of Team 7, while Tsunami insists that no woman would ever be so disagreeable.

Inari twists his hands under the table the whole time, avoiding my gaze.

"So," Rei says, leaning forward as Nao and Hiro help Tsunami clear the table. "Hiro filled Nao and me in on what the two of you discussed last night. If his assumptions are correct, then we may as well go to the coordinates you marked on the map. It's our best—and only—bet at the moment because I didn't feel anything else from the spirits."

"Nothing?" I ask, turning my cup in the ring of water it has left behind. Rei shakes her head in confirmation. "Is that something that happens?"

"Dunno," she says. "I don't share the spirits with very many people."

I see her point and drop the conversation, but not before Inari notices us whispering. Suspicious, he calls attention to us by asking, "So, Ren-chan, when will you be heading out?"

I drum my fingers on the table, waiting for Rei to give me an estimate. When she shrugs, I sigh and say, "We don't mean to come off as moochers, but we need to leave in an hour or two. After we replenish our supplies in town, of course. So I would say our goodbyes come now."

Tsunami begins to protests, says we haven't rested for nearly as long as we should have. Tazuna, likewise, goes on to say how shinobi are always pushing themselves too hard. It's Inari who manages to talk sense into his mother and grandfather, saying, "Guys, they're _shinobi_," which seems to settle everything.

"Thank you, Inari," Rei says, smiling widely at the boy, whose response is to look away. "Nao, Hiro-kun, could you go get our bags for us? Thank you again for your kindness, Tsunami-san, Tazuna-san."

The two gush over Rei and her politeness again and I roll my eyes. Inari is less impressed by her display and continues to twine his hands together under the table as he ignores her.

"I'll walk you out of the village, Ren-chan," Inari says, scooting out of his seat with a loud creak as the boys return with our things. "It's the least I can do. Besides, it's been a while since we've stopped by Haku's and Zabuza's graves to give them offerings. We'll go to the market so you guys can get your stuff and I'll buy offerings for Haku and Zabuza too."

After hugs and well wishes, we leave the house. Inari brings us into town and tells us about all the change that has occurred, about the delis and restaurants and the small dojo that opened up down the street from his home.

I wish Naruto could see Inari. I wish Naruto could see how much influence he's had over the prosperity of this entire town. Nothing would compare to the smile on his face, the way he would clasp his hands behind his head and blush and say, "What's a hero for?"

He has absolutely become a hero for this village. It's no wonder Inari looks up to him so much. For Naruto to hold you in high regard would be an honor indeed.

I wonder what Naruto will think of me when he finds out about what I've done.

Rei, Hiro, and Nao find the supplies we need with ease, and Inari stays by my side the entire time, frowning at them.

"What's the matter?" I ask when Rei goes to pay for our supplies.

Inari startles and shakes his head, saying, "I—it's nothing."

"Come on, Inari. I noticed you haven't taken as kindly to Rei as much as your gramps and mom," I say. "I know Rei can seem . . . "

"Fake?" Inari offers.

"I suppose," I say, unable to find a better word for it. "But she's a good person. She's my teammate."

I never thought those words would be coming out of my mouth. To tell you the truth, I never thought I would be defending Rei at all. But she's helped me so much these past few years, put herself at risk for me, and she is the only one I can divulge all my concerns about the bond to without cringing or being afraid that she will try to use me to get to Sasuke.

"This isn't how it's supposed to be," Inari blurts, snapping me out of my reverie, and then blushes a furious red. "What I mean to say is . . . in my mind, it's you, Naruto-nii, Sakura-chan, and Kakashi-sensei. These others don't belong. They don't know anything about what happened here. I wanted us to cherish it together. Mom, Gramps, me, and Team 7. Not these guys. And I know you're on a mission, and I know I'm not an expert when it comes to shinobi customs, but it seems like you've . . . abandoned Team 7 for these guys."

I flinch, and Inari gives me a knowing look, like he's already heard of all the things I've done in the past two and a half years. I know that can't be the case, but his eyes make me nervous. Sighing, I pat his head and muss his hair.

I say, "You were right about Naruto, you know. He's a guy who makes friends forever. And I'm still friends with him, Inari; don't worry about that. I didn't abandon him. Just . . . when you grow up, you have to make decisions that take you away from what's comfortable and what's yours and, even though the outcome isn't the fairest or the best, sometimes it has to happen this way. Do you understand?"

Inari blinks hard and then nods. I wrap an arm around his shoulders and say, "Good. Now, you haven't asked about Naruto nearly enough, and I know you have questions about him. What do you want to know?"

So the walk to the graves is a lot of Inari asking about Naruto and his training. I try to keep up with his questions, tell Inari everything I can remember about how Naruto's training is going, but short of knowing what Naruto eats for breakfast, Inari is left unsatisfied by what I have to tell him. He asks after Sakura and Kakashi, too, and I tell him what I can about both of them, how much stronger they've become, what they are doing now. Then he asks after Sasuke.

"What kind of mission is he on," Inari says when we're halfway to the graves, the bag of offerings spinning around in the knot of his hands, "that would take him out this way?"

"He's hunting down an S-rank criminal," I say, and Rei gives the softest of scoffs. "He's actually more north of this way, but I wanted to stop by your town and see how things were going."

"Is he on his own?" asks Inari. "Or is he in a new cell, like you are?"

"A new cell," I say. Rei gives me an inquiring look and then shakes her head to cue that I should stop talking, although I'm not sure why. Still, I take her advice and change the subject, asking about Inari and his grandfather and lamenting that I didn't get to catch up with them enough during my very brief stay here. I maintain my focus on getting to Haku and Zabuza quickly before Inari can come up with new questions to ask. Before long we've reached the beginning of the bridge and are heading over to the side of the road, where the graves sit covered in vines and greenery, just as before. Only, there's something wrong, and as I approach, I slow down, looking between the two crosses. Haku's has the scarf he wore hanging around the midsection of the cross and pinned down with one of his senbon for good measure. But Zabuza's is barren, the sword that had been stuck behind it gone. I stare at it, stricken, wondering if maybe vines have grown over it and camouflaged it from view. They did look unruly yesterday and the winds could have easily blown the vines wayward, obscuring the sword further. But there is nothing to indicate as much.

Inari starts to move toward the grave markers before he freezes in his tracks. Noticing the same thing I had, he says, "Ren-chan, did you—"

"No," I say, my throat closing as I stagger up to the cross. "No, it was . . . it was here yesterday, Inari. Just . . . it was there." Search as I might, though, the sword is nowhere to be seen, and that kind of thing can't be missed. My anger flares, my fingers digging into the splintered wood so hard that it starts to split.

"Ren-chan," Inari says, but my anger spills over and I let out a shout of indignation.

"I don't understand. Who—what kind of _bastard_ would steal from a grave!" I cry, slamming my fist into the top of the cross so hard that it plummets into the earth. It's stopped only by the horizontal bar of the cross, although the bar does sink significantly into the ground.

"Ren," Rei chides. Hiro takes me by my shoulders and pulls me back before I can do more damage. I brush him off and run my hands through my hair, walking away from the crosses to collect my thoughts, but I keep wondering: How could this have happened?

"Sorry," I say, and then dig the heels of my hands into my eyes and say, "Sorry, Zabuza. I'm so, so sorry. This wasn't supposed to happen. No one was supposed to ever take it."

Rei looks up from fixing the grave and I run my hands down my face, smoothing out the anger and remorse. "Who would take it?" I say. "It was massive and it—we planted it here," I say quietly, mourning. "In memoriam. We left it for them."

"Ren-chan," Inari says. "It's not your fault. If I had visited their graves more often—"

"None of that," Rei says gently, patting his head. "As hard as it is to hear, there's nothing any of us could have done to prevent this from happening, Little Kami." Inari regards her with puzzlement, probably more put off by the nickname she's given him than by her statement. She doesn't notice, merely presses her hands together in prayer and says, "Whoever took this sword will have traces of Zabuza's spirit on them, if that makes you feel any better, Ren. After we find Itachi—or Sasuke, whoever we cross first—I'll help you track them and get the sword back to its rightful place."

I clench my fists, say, "Yeah, fine. Thanks. But when I find whoever did this, whoever stole Zabuza's sword, I'm going to kill them."

"What a thing to say while standing on graves!" says Rei, distracted from her prayer. She points at Haku's cross. "Do you think that makes their spirits feel better?"

"Hell it does," I say, shrugging on my knapsack. "Even if it doesn't, it makes _my_ spirit feel better. We're going."

"Ah, Ren-chan!" Inari says, and jogs to keep pace with me. His black eyes are wide, his hair frazzled by the wind. "G-good luck with your mission. I hope you find Sasuke soon. And when you see Naruto again," he says, falling away when I don't slow down to speak to him. "Tell him to come back!"

[+]

"You're getting ahead of yourself, don't you think?" Rei asks, but it sounds more like a complaint than a concern. She trails a considerable distance behind me, her hands twined behind her head and her footsteps lagging more and more the farther we walk. The sunlight piercing through the trees spots Rei's face with a hazy yellow. "One moment you want to find Sasuke, the next you want to hunt down whoever stole that goddamn sword. Which is more important to you?"

"Finding Sasuke, obviously," I say. "All I'm saying is if, in the process of finding Sasuke, we also happen to find out who stole Zabuza's sword, I will go out of my way to make sure the sword is returned and the person who stole it is dead."

Rei heaves a sigh. Maybe I _am_ making a bigger deal out of losing Zabuza's sword than it needs to be—after all, it's not _my_ fault exactly that it happened—but there is more that has been lost here than a simple sword, like the literal blood, sweat, and tears poured into those people and that bridge and the hope that village fostered. But, most importantly to me, there was the time my team and I spent here, the training we did, the newfound trust and respect we had for each other after everything that had happened.

There was the happiness we had and managed to hold onto until the Chuunin exams, and having Zabuza's sword behind his grave marker made it all real. It was all the struggles we overcame; it bound us together as friends. And now it's gone.

We walk until Rei starts to complain, sleep when it gets dark, and wake up at dawn, eat breakfast, and continue our trek north.

It goes on like this for two and a half days before we reach the point I had marked on the map. When we stop, Nao tsks and takes the map out of my hands, turning it upside down as though that will change where I've placed the marker.

"This can't be right," he says, holding the map against the sun. "We're in the goddamn middle of nowhere."

I can't argue with him on that. We stand on a mass expanse of barren rock, which is slick from the sea mist that sprays across the area as the waves beat against the land. Pillars of earth rise up around us like crooked and weather-worn jail bars. Not a single green thing grows around here, and I don't see any gulls flying around like back at the Land of the Waves. It's as though every form of life has gone out of its way to avoid this place.

"What did you expect this far north?" Hiro sighs, leaning his weight on one foot while Rei blinks at the pools of water gathered at her feet. "No one in their right mind would settle in a place like this."

"Well, the spirits told us to come here," Rei says, crossing her arms. There's something about the way she says spirits that makes me frown. "And I would hardly ever dispute with the spirits. So Sasuke must be somewhere in this godforsaken place."

"Maybe if we go higher," I say, pointing to one of the rock formations. "If he's anywhere around here, we should be able to see him from that vantage point, right?"

Rei nods and then motions for Nao and Hiro to go look.

"I'm more than capable of going to check for myself," I say as she approaches me, still focused on the tide pools in the rock. She looks up at my claim and raises her eyebrows to the heavens.

"Of course you are," she says, and then tilts her head to the side, like there is some greater observation that needs to be made. "I just want to be sure. How are you feeling now?"

"Fine," I say shortly, and turn away from her.

The reason Rei asks this is, about an hour ago, I had had to stop because of a stellar pain in my body that didn't seem to originate anywhere but, at the same time, seemed to happen everywhere at once. Rei had pulled up to me, pressed the feather into my hands, and then jerked away abruptly with a hiss of pain.

The pain went on for a few minutes, and when it finally began to subside, Nao had his arm around my waist, bracing me as Rei recovered her feather.

"Well," she'd said, and I coughed and croaked, "Well. Two guesses what that was."

She smoothed out her feather and stuck it back in her head, said, "I only need one."

I clutched my chest, feeling as the bond dispersed into nothing in my head. If the bond is waking up, I thought, then Sasuke must be close by.

We rested for another few minutes, after which I insisted I was fine and here we are now, waiting for Hiro and Nao to report back to us with any suspicious activity they might be seeing. Rei regards me with tired skepticism and says, "It's okay for you to _not_ be fine, you know. We won't stop the mission and send you home."

"I know. But if the spirits told us to come here—and, you know, coupled with what happened earlier—we must be on the right track. I just don't want to let Sasuke slip through my hands again—what?" I ask when Rei gives me a plaintive look.

"I told you it was hard for me to pinpoint the location of dark aura through the spirits," Rei says.

I purse my lips. "What are you trying to say—that the spirits are probably wrong about Sasuke being here? If yes, that's something you should have mentioned earlier. Anyway, I don't think we have to worry about that." I rub my hands together, glancing around at the pillars of rock that lean to one side, threatening to blow in the winds that rush over the flat land. "I have a . . . feeling about this place. The spirits know what they're talking about."

"I think what happened to you in the Land of the Waves was as much the spirits as your attack a little earlier," Rei says, and I freeze. The gush of wind that swarms past us at that moment is so cold and rigid that it stuns my lungs for a minute before I am able to inhale sharply, biting my lip as what she means sinks into my head.

A kunai comes sailing across Rei's face, startling me. She sighs as I whirl toward where the knife had come from and see Nao waving for us to come up. Rei plucks the kunai out of the ground and jerks her thumb toward Nao, leaping off before I can agree.

When we get to him, he wastes no time filling us in. "Hiro just spotted some people a few yards that way," Nao says, pointing toward a spot farther up the length of the ocean as Rei hands him his kunai. "Probably best if we pursue him on these rock pillars. They'll give us a vantage point to ambush them if it does happen to be Sasuke and he happens to not want to be caught."

"Trust me," Rei says. "He wants to be caught."

She jumps off, leaving Nao to stare after her in puzzlement and me to scowl at her hair wriggling in the wind. "Why does she have to say things like that?" I mumble and follow her before Nao can ask what either of us is talking about.

Her implications mixed with the waves crashing against the plateaus and making the vibrations buzz in my ears make me uneasy. The bond won't stay dead, despite what Sasuke had done, and the vibrations won't stay still. It's like I can't depend on anything to be stable anymore.

I see Hiro hiding a bit ahead, standing on the very edge of a short platform where the pillar has cracked and left room for him to hide behind what considerable mass still sprouts toward the sky. Rei stands crouched on a pillar not a meter away from him, taking cover behind another pillar that hides her from view of the group that stands below. From where I am, I can't see much of the group, but with the way the wind blows, their voices are carried to my ears.

"Have you been able to hear much of their conversation?" I ask Hiro, glad we're downwind.

He shakes his head, peers over his shoulder. "They've been standing around for a few minutes now, like they're waiting for something. They only just started speaking when you guys came near."

He exchanges a look with Rei that doesn't go without my notice. A vein pulses in my forehead and I have half a mind to snap at them when Nao does the honors.

"What is it with those looks you guys have been giving each other?" he demands, and Rei raises an eyebrow as though amused by his tone. "Don't think Ren and I haven't noticed. You guys have been sneaking around since we left the Land of the Waves, and I know you're not just flirting with each other. If you have something to say, say it. We're a team, remember?"

"Don't get your panties in a bunch," Rei says and Hiro sighs, his shoulder sagging. "Hiro-kun and I always tell you everything, Nao. In this situation, though, you and Ren would form some kind of pact to tell each other everything and we couldn't risk that."

"Couldn't risk that?" Nao repeats, indignant. Despite how much I want to join his side, just like Rei and Hiro apparently supposed I would, I hear the quip of a voice that sends shivers up my spine. I peer around the pillar where I'm hiding and glance down. Past the pillars that block them from my view, I see the small glimpse of black hair and a white coattail fluttering in the breeze. I strain to hear their voices more clearly over the hum of Nao and Rei's argument when I catch the words: "I guess I'll stick with you . . . Sasuke."

I jerk, causing pebbles to crumble from where my hands hold onto the pillar to keep my balance. I hope the small disturbance goes without notice by the people down below as I turn back to my team, who are still glaring at each other and swapping angry words.

"They're down there," I hiss, swiping my hand in a motion across my neck that cues Rei and Nao to stop arguing. "Shut up so I can hear what they're—"

I'm cut off midsentence by an arm that grabs me around the waist and yanks me down from the cliff, into the water below. I manage a yelp before water fills my mouth, and an anger bursts in my stomach. As though incited by my anger, the arm squeezes me harder, flattening my lungs and forcing me to release all my breath in a mess of bubbles that swarm my face. I push against the arm, which finally gives, though through no fault of mine, and I kick toward the surface. As I am about to break through, a hand reaches into the water and grabs the collar of my shirt, dragging me to the surface.

I come up coughing and sputtering, the air from the ocean breezing over me and making me cold. My teeth are chattering as I pull myself to my feet.

"Are you all right?" It's Nao, his hand on my head to keep my head up.

"F-fine," I say, and Rei comes up beside me, mutter what sounds like a curse under her breath while Hiro pulls a blanket from his knapsack. I notice that she, Hiro, and Nao aren't wet in the least.

Before I can ask how they managed to stay dry, Hiro throws the blanket over me and says, "They went for you first, so we were able to get away in time. Sorry."

"They," I repeat, and Rei narrows her eyes, spits a last curse into the open, and redirects her gaze over my shoulder. I turn and am met by three sets of glares and a pair of eyes that blink at me dully. My heart stutters and I falter a bit until I remember where I am, what's happening, who stands before me. And then my face burns with the heat of my anger, which warms my body substantially, and I hiss, "_Sasuke_."


	72. Undertow

**A/N:** Just thought now would be a good time to reiterate (if I haven't before?) that, despite the Sasuke labeling on this story, it's not a SasukexOC pairing. Ahaha. So, please keep that in mind as you read these next few chapters, and I hope you enjoy them.

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 72: Undertow**

The bond unfurls, purring to life at the sight of its master. I feel the spark of it trying to reignite the connection between me and Sasuke, to no avail. Still, it makes my stomach turn. I feel a flickering of regret at coming here, finding him, but I suffocate it before it can find legs to stand on. I try to convince myself, _This was the only way. Leaving Sakura and Naruto out of this was the only way_.

I almost believe it.

In the afternoon light, I can see him much better than when he was illuminated by the Kyuubi's chakra. His face is all angles. His cheekbones, nose, jaw line are sharper than I remember and his skin paler, as though he hasn't bothered to step foot in the sun for the past three years.

He still retains the trademark good looks he was revered for back home, and something about that comforts and calms me, despite the malice he exudes.

He is still Sasuke, the boy I was once friends with what seems like eons ago. He is still the same boy I was bound to by fate. Give or take a few character developments.

He doesn't appear as enthralled by me as I am by him. His eyes move from me to Rei and Nao and Hiro, sizing us up. Despite the cold of the ocean blowing over us, Sasuke stands unfazed in a long-sleeved shirt that opens down his chest, an arm resting on the hilt of his thin sheathed sword. He doesn't appear surprised to see me, doesn't allow me so much as a quirk of his eyebrow as he looks at me, and this makes my annoyance flare.

"Ah," he says. The sound of his voice is like the trill of a songbird to the bond. It hikes up, spins, and burrows, trying to find a way back to him. I wince, tightening the blanket over my shoulders. One of the three who stand beside Sasuke, a boy with silver blue hair, loses grip on his glare and quirks a brow. He says, "Do you know this girl, Sasuke? Should we refrain from killing her?"

"By all means," I say, and I hear Rei tsk.

I open my mouth to retort, tell her to shut her mouth and stay out of this, when I notice the sword that the boy is holding: An enlarged and elongated butcher knife that hooks at the tip. I let out a noise of strangled surprise and say, "The kubikiribocho!"

The boy's eyebrows rise in surprise and he swings his sword back and forth. "Someone who knows her weapons! I'm impressed. Say, who is she, Sasuke? She seems to know you, so it must go the other way around too."

Sasuke doesn't answer, only narrows his eyes, daring me to make another comment about the sword. I bite my tongue until a flash of images flutters through the back of my eyelids: Sasuke in the Land of the Waves, seeing the sign that opened out to the Great Naruto Bridge. And it all clicks in my head.

"You," I say to Sasuke and point an accusatory finger at the boy who holds Zabuza's sword up to taunt me. "You let that _bastard_ take the sword? How could you do that?"

Sasuke tilts his head back, looking down his nose at me like he can't understand why I'm still talking.

"All that time," I say, "everything we did, did that mean nothing to you at all?"

His eyebrows raise. For a moment, it seems like he's actually considering my question. But then he deadpans, "No," and I lose it.

I toss the blanket off and sling the vibrations at him. They hit dead center, knocking the air out of him and sending him reeling backward. He catches himself easily, though, and glares at me, but doesn't otherwise move to defend himself. I reel the vibrations in once more, charging it with my chakra and sweeping it into a maelstrom that rivals the turbulent waves and fills the air with an ominous buzzing. If I can just slam this on him, it'll simultaneously burst his eardrums and crush his lungs, and then—

The vibrations swing out of my command as another force sneaks up behind me. I turn around too late to comprehend the attack and I'm deluged by a wave of water that washes me aside, soaks me to the core, and fills my lungs until I'm vomiting up clear liquid.

Coughing so hard it rattles my rib cage, I wipe the corner of my mouth, glaring at the figure that draws itself up from the water with a smirk full of pointy teeth. The boy with silvery-blue hair is half-formed as he rises, his skin rippling as his legs begin to mold from the water, his face half-melted as he pulls himself together.

"I didn't live a lifetime in the Sound without learning a thing or two about these sound waves," he says, making a vague gesture. "Water dampens the vibrations, doesn't it? It doesn't mute them completely, but it does dilute them enough to make them ineffective in battle."

"Go to hell," I snap, and he laughs.

"Not quite yet," he says. "I have a few things to do before I meet my maker."

With a wave of his hand, Sasuke is able to silence the boy's laughs. The boy doesn't look pleased to comply, but he does.

Sasuke steps forward, prompting me to step back. He quirks an eyebrow, a gesture of amusement that is wholly wasted on his hardened face. "Why are you here," he asks, "if you're just going to run away?"

"I'm not running," I say, and the boy who had turned to water mutters, "No. More like cowering."

"You know very well why I'm here, Sasuke," I say, ignoring the other boy. "But if it makes you happier to hear me say it, then I'll say it: I want to join you and help you kill Itachi. That's what you want to do, still, right?"

He turns his head as though he hears something in the distance. He says, "And how do you intend to help with that?"

"By following you to the ends of the earth," I say with a lavish wave of my hand. "How else? That _is_ my main directive in this life."

Rei lets out a bark of laughter, prompting everyone to look at her. She waves their eyes away and says, "Sorry, sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt. Just pretend we're not here."

Sasuke doesn't need to be told twice. He hasn't even glanced at Rei for her interruption and says, "You didn't seem to care about your directive before."

I stutter for a response and then swallow my words when I can't form a complete thought. I hadn't anticipated Sasuke to be so disagreeable. Obviously. I figured he would welcome me back with a haughty smile and an I-told-you-so. But he sees right through my intentions. He just wants me to admit it out loud, now.

"There's a reason I left you and Sakura and Naruto and the village all behind," he says when I don't try to save face. "You only care about things when it's convenient to you. You think everything can be saved with a little love and some talk, and you think you know everything, but you're all ignorant fools."

"And you're an arrogant bastard," I say, "no better than any of us!"

"That's where I beg to differ," he says. He steps forward. In reaction I jerk away, but he catches my forearm and tugs me back. I trip on his toes, stumbling into his chest, and his breath burns my scalp. He says as I freeze, "You were too weak to leave it all behind."

He's convinced of this fact, that much I can tell in the way he has his eyes set, the way he keeps his shoulders back like there is nothing stopping him from moving on. I jerk out of his hold and say, "Sasuke," but don't know how to continue because the way he looks at me, so blank and uninterested, spurs a great sadness in me that makes me lose my train of thought.

Not to mention, the fact that I'm so close to him after years of being away—I'm a bit overwhelmed. He's like a dream that threatens to disappear the moment I open my eyes wide enough. But the place where he'd touched me still burns around my wrist and the bond eats it up. _So close,_ it purrs. _Just a little more._

I take a deep breath and another step back. "Sasuke," I say again. "I'm not here to fight with you anymore. I want to help you, I want to get you to your goal so—so you can come home. I want you to come home. Please," I say over the snickering of the boy who had stolen Zabuza's sword. "I'm asking you to let me help."

"Are you?" he asks, and I'm about to insist that yes, I am, I meant everything I said, but there is a prickle of sickness in my stomach that turns me cold and forces me to ask, "What do you mean?"

I swear I see his lips twitch into a smirk, but the second I blink, it's gone. He glances at Rei and Hiro and Nao. "Why don't you send your thugs away?" he asks. "You won't need them anymore, although the effort you made to get to me is flattering."

"I didn't," I start, and stop short. He's right. I did make this a huge effort to get to him. I recruited Rei, Hiro, and Nao with this task. I left everyone behind to get to him. And I left without a single word.

"Why are you doing this, Ren?" Sasuke says, noticing my hesitation. "Really ask yourself."

I want to—need to break this bond. If I can do that and bring Sasuke home, then everything will be fine. We'll all win. Sakura and Naruto will have Sasuke back, Itachi will be dead, and the bond fulfilled and broken.

_No_, the bond murmurs. _One selfless act will not kill the bond. You can't be so naïve_.

The skin on the back of my neck crawls, and I press my hand to it, smoothing down my skin.

"You getting the coordinates had as much to do with the spirits as your little attack earlier," Rei had said, and I meet Sasuke's eyes, horror sinking into my heart as I realize what he means to suggest.

I can't be so naïve.

"Quit toying with her, Uchiha," Rei says, taking my shoulder and startling me. Sasuke's lackeys tense as Rei brushes up beside me, but Sasuke waves them down. Rei is wholly unconcerned by them. "I've had enough of your little games. If you want her with you," Rei says, "then just say so. You know she would gladly go with you—although I use the word 'gladly' loosely."

Sasuke shifts on his feet to face Rei, the length of his sheathed blade bumping his calf. "I remember you," he says. "The girl from the Chuunin exams."

"Yes, Kannagi Rei, pleased to remake your acquaintance," she says offhandedly. "Listen: I know about this bond of yours and what it entails. I know what you mean to do and whatever hold you have over Ren is more powerful than her willpower. But that doesn't give you the right to call her out like this and abandon everyone she loves just because you snap your fingers."

"Stay out of this," he says without pause. "This is none of your concern."

I stop her from making another remark. "It's okay," I say, pushing her hand off my shoulder. She blinks at me, stunned, but takes a deep breath and nods in understanding. "Doesn't matter why I'm here, Sasuke," I say, although he doesn't take his glare off Rei when I speak to him. "The point is I _am_ here, and I want—I'm here to help you, whether it's because I had reasoned it out myself or because you . . . summoned me."

The word leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I shake it off. This is my directive, after all. So I say, very quietly, "I am here for you."

He doesn't give any indication of the fact, but I can tell he's pleased with the turn of events. He pivots on his heel and I watch his back, prepared for him to take flight and leave me thoroughly humiliated. But he only goes back to his teammates who wait for orders.

"Karin, you can go if you like," Sasuke says. The girl's head jerks up, her red hair streaming into her face. "With Ren here," he says in response to her blank look, "we'll have someone to replace you. She can't sense people as well as you can, but the range at which she can use her vibrations is just as useful. Plus, she's a trained medic. Her skills would be more useful than yours if the situation ever called for it."

The boy who had been harassing me smirks, leaning his weight onto the sword. "Well, good riddance! You know, Ren, I could use some healing."

"So you're letting me come with you?" I say, but Sasuke is barraged by a stream of protests from the girl he's just relieved of her duties. I leave Sasuke to deal with her and face Rei, saying, "I guess our mission is complete."

Rei adjusts the feather in her hair. "I guess so," she says, and then leans in to speak to me in a whisper. "Be careful with them, Ren. These are not good people."

I laugh, crossing my arms. "You don't need to tell me twice. Thank you," I add when Rei shakes her head. "For helping me this far. I never would have made it to him without you."

"You would have," she says, patting my head. "I think we both know that. Now, without further ado," Rei says loud enough to interrupt the conversation between Sasuke and his teammates. "If you'll excuse us, our journey ends here. Team Rei will be taking leave and we hope to never see you again."

Before Rei can move a step, Sasuke is in front of her, his sword in his hand, pointed right at Rei's chest.

"Sasuke!" I say as Rei blinks at the tip of the sword in surprise, her hands held up in deference. She smiles darkly at Sasuke and purrs, "Oh, I wouldn't if I were you."

"You know too much," he says. "The three of you are a liability. Suigetsu, Juugo."

The boys beside him step forward and Hiro and Nao move into position in response. I grab Sasuke's wrist, pushing his hand down. Sasuke's lackeys exchange glances, unsure of how to go ahead, as I say, "Stop it. You're not exactly moving inconspicuously anyway. D'you think you've gone unnoticed after the stunt you pulled, killing Orochimaru?"

Sasuke narrows his eyes at me as I dig my fingers into his skin. He says, "Stop protecting them, Ren. You know it won't work, especially when your allegiance rests with me."

This strikes a nerve with me, but I rise above it, deciding I have to help Rei get away. "Then consider all I've done for you," I say, "whether I wanted to or not. Can you please, just this once, do this for me?"

Sasuke purses his lips and retracts his sword. He walks away, head held high, and I let out a sigh of relief.

"Sorry about that," I say.

Rei dismisses my apology and says, "It wasn't your fault. Anyway." She has me in a hug before I know what she's doing, and then Nao and Hiro are flocked around us too, Nao mussing my hair and Hiro patting my shoulder. "Good luck, little tonakai," she says into my hair. "You're going to need it."

"If these guys ever give you any trouble," Nao says, "don't hesitate to send out a distress signal, all right? Whatever it is, Rei will pick it up. We'll be able to keep tabs on them now that you're with them. Right, Rei?"

"Right," Rei grumbles, and the three of them let me go. "In the meantime, I'll make sure your friends know you're safe. Well. As safe as you can be in this company."

"Thank you," I say, "again. For everything."

Rei beams at me, says, "Don't sweat it. But I would go now, if I were you. Your new teammates look like they're getting a bit impatient. We'll stay until you have to take off." She points to Sasuke who watches us with a hand resting on his sword still, threatening. I run my hand through the crop of my hair and sigh.

Rei pecks me on the cheek and turns me around, pushes me forward. I give them a last wave before crossing the plateau and taking my place at Sasuke's side. The bond ruffles, curls up, humming peacefully. It's the first I've felt it and haven't had any consequent pain.

By no means has it woken up. But I can tell by the way Sasuke looks at me that he knows my relief.

I don't like the way he makes me feel. I don't like the way he knows everything about me, can know everything about me without even trying. I don't like how, even after three years, I know he understands me by the flick of my eyes or the twist of a finger. I don't like that he can make me feel like he is the only person in the world I can trust because of what we have.

"Well," I say once I'm beside him.

Sasuke nods, takes a deep breath, pulls himself up. He says, "Well. Now that we're ready, we should get going. But first."

The vibrations spike and I turn in time to see a flash of lightning shooting toward Nao, Hiro, and Rei. I grab Sasuke's wrist, knocking his aim to the sky, but the reach of his lightning shoots out and snaps at Hiro, who is pushed aside by Rei. She reaches for the lightning, as though attempting to grab it, but the lightning disperses at her fingertips.

Sasuke jerks out of my hold and runs for Rei's group, who has braced for the attack in the meantime. Rei smirks as he goes straight for her. She twists out of his path at the last moment, swinging her foot down between his shoulder blades. He manages to leap out of the way, bouncing off one of the nearby rock pillars to avoid Nao, who comes in from the left to grab Sasuke.

Even from this distance, I can see that Sasuke's eyes shine bright red, seeing through all of their moves. Hiro sneaks up behind Sasuke only to tumble forward as Sasuke grabs him by the collar and tosses him into the ocean. Nao is tripped and slammed into the ground by a kick that causes a crater to crack across the plateau, and Rei is pinned to a rock pillar by kunai that have pierced her clothes. As Rei yanks herself free, Sasuke takes the moment to suck in a breath of chakra and exhale it in a billowing plume of fire that I can feel heating my face. But before the fire can lick Rei, I flip through hand signs and sweep the earth up to send the fire skyward.

Rei gets free then and scales the wall I've created to jump right into the flames. I watch, wide-eyed, wondering why I have even bothered to help her, when the flames are suddenly sucked away, as though a vacuum had opened in space and consumed it. But there's only Rei, sailing through the air, grinning with her chest puffed and her fingers pressed to her lips as though she's keeping a secret. And then in her next breath, she spits a stream of fire that moves nearly as fast as Sasuke's lightning and scorches the ground at his feet before he leaps out of the way.

He skids to a stop at the edge of the plateau, his entire arm flickering with the light of his Chidori. Before Rei can land, he is rushing at her again, arm poised to strike her as her feet hit the earth. There is nothing to show where he will aim, if he will move at the last second to strike from the side, because he is moving so quickly that there's nothing to see of him but the dust left in his wake. Still, Rei doesn't appear perturbed, instead opens her arms as though waiting to embrace him, and then crouches, miraculously ducking under the attack.

Sasuke, anticipating this, swings his leg around, but Rei catches it, leaps over it as she would a jump rope, and grabs his arm that sparkles with lightning. She sweeps her hands down the length of his arm, as though she had meant to yank him toward her but had lost her grip. The lightning from Sasuke's Chidori weaves up her fingers, crackles as it rounds her arms, and then evaporates.

Rei's hair flurries for a moment, ruffled from the electricity, and settles down around her head as Sasuke narrows his eyes at her. She smiles at him demurely. Her hands are circled around his wrist, keeping him in place, as she explains, "This is fighting with the spirits, being one with the earth. It's more powerful than any godly technique you have. You might have harnessed the heavenly elements of the gods—the fire that they teased us with and the lightning they shoot down when they're angry—but it does not make you one of them. I think you forget that."

She lets him go and eases away, smoothing down her shirt. Hiro is pulling himself out of the water. Nao rubs his neck as he rights himself. Rei tuts and makes sure that they're all right before she turns to face us. She props her hands on her hips and says, "You take care of Ren, do you hear me? If I hear so much as one rumor from the spirits that you've done anything to hurt her, I will come after you and skin you. I have your chakra now." She taps her diaphragm, winks at us. "Soaked it up when you tried to attack me. Now I can track you easily, especially since you have Ren with you."

This time, there's no room for warning. Sasuke's sword just streaks across the plateau, striking Rei right through her stomach. She gives a tiny gasp, reaches for the sword, and then thinks better of it. She slumps to the ground as grab Sasuke's shirtsleeve and hiss, "Sasuke!"

Rei wraps her hand around the sword, slowly pulling it out of her stomach as Nao and Hiro swarm her. Blood bulges between her fingertips and stains her shirt.

"Sasuke!" I say again as his Chidori fades, the chirping dies. "What the hell—"

"They'll get in the way," he deadpans, merciless. "They always do. You need to learn when to leave people behind."

"You know what I think?" I say, tossing his arm aside. "_Fuck you._"

I start to go to Rei, but Sasuke says, "Don't,", and I stop dead in my tracks. "Not a step out of place, Ren, or this will be the end of the three of them."

"One thing," I spit, whirling on him. "I asked you to do this _one thing_, you _lousy bastard_, and you couldn't even give me that, could you? Sasuke, why couldn't you give me this, only this? God_dammit_!" I shout and shove him, hard. He only stumbles back one step, but it's enough to break whatever hold he has on me. I push my hair back, attempting to regain my composure, and stride to the other side of the plateau, where Hiro and Nao are bracing Rei, lowering her gently to the ground.

"Hey, Rei," I say, kneeling beside her. Her breathing is raggedly, her face pale and sweaty, although she maintains this look like it's no big deal. She grins at me, wincing as she moves the wrong way.

"The spirits were getting a little unsettled," she says. "Kind of saw this coming. I should have warned you."

"It's okay," I say, and motion for the boys to hold her up while I move her hand. "You did good for the most part. You saw through his every attack. Because of the spirits, right?"

I look to Nao, who nods grimly. He had told me that I would have to see Rei fight one day. The way she worked with the spirits was truly incredible, that she could escape even Sasuke's attacks and disperse all his elemental jutsu like that.

I touch my fingers to her wound; she gasps but allows me to help her. The fabric of her shirt that has been pierced by the sword is singed, black threads fraying and sticking to her skin with her blood. Sasuke had infused the sword with his lightning chakra to make it sharper, more damaging. I sigh and, using my chakra, I cut the loose ends away and then press my palm to her wound.

I can feel the cells sparking as they heal, creating new cells to replace the ones that have been cooked. The surplus electricity that crackles in her body disrupts the signals from her nervous system to her organs, and I try my best to direct them in a way that makes sense to her body, and when I hear her breathing settle, I feel a small sense of pride in my skill.

Hiro hands me a roll of bandages that I quickly use to tape her up. She thanks me in a whisper and pushes me away as she tries to stand. Nao slings her arm over his shoulders and helps her to her feet, which she doesn't allow him to do without complaint. Hiro is already standing, his hands rolled into fists and glaring at Sasuke.

"That," he says through bared teeth, "was the work of an amateur—a coward who couldn't deal with the fact that he'd been defeated. If you want to fight us for real, don't try to hide your attacks like that."

"With pleasure," Sasuke says, and then Hiro is flinging Sasuke's sword back at him brazenly. Sasuke catches it without a problem, turns it so that it points at us and lights it up with his lightning chakra to top it all off.

"Sasuke!" I hiss. "Enough is enough."

Sasuke freezes, his gaze set on the ground at my feet. His arm twitches, but instead of moving against us, he straightens and presses his sword back into its sheath.

"We're going," he says. On that note, his lackeys leap off, leaving us to silence and the streaming winds that whirl our hair in our faces. I wait for Sasuke to leave too, but he waves me forward and says, "Are you coming or not?"

I wish I could say no.

"Make sure you rest for a bit," I tell Hiro, who finally breaks his glare on Sasuke and nods. "Take care."

"You too, Ren," he says. "And remember: if anything happens at all, notify us. We'll come at once."

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to notify them, but I agree and am back at Sasuke's side before he can urge me to move faster. Once there, he turns and prepares to follow his teammates who leap over the towering rock pillars.

"Consider that your one favor," he says, and waits for me to go before he moves.

[+]

The rest of Sasuke's team is introduced to me as we mobilized. The boy who had liquefied himself is named Suigetsu and is from the Village Hidden in the Mist. He wants to collect the swords of the legendary Seven Swordsman, which is why he had stolen Zabuza's sword, why Suigetsu is on this mission with Sasuke in the first place. The other boy in the party, Juugo, is a monster of a thing—literally. I had noticed his huge build when we had initially met, but Suigetsu tells me it's his DNA that made Orochimaru's signature curse mark possible. Lastly, the girl, Karin, is a sensor type with special healing abilities. Taking a bite out of her is enough to heal even the worst wounds, which is as disgusting as it sounds. She had told Sasuke she had other plans and obligations she needed to fulfill, which is why Sasuke had dismissed her of her duties earlier, but she remains with us, frowning our entire journey. She's the only one with any real useful abilities on the other team; the other two are merely there for their brute force, which I doubt Sasuke needs any more of. But better safe than sorry, I suppose.

I'm introduced to them as someone Sasuke used to know from Konoha. The girl who ran away in every sense of the phrase.

I can't really believe I'm with Sasuke. Every time I look away from him, I keep thinking he'll disappear, that he's a hallucination the bond has conjured up to comfort itself.

But he's here. And I'm with him. Kagiru and Uchiha, together again at last.

We travel for a few kilometers in silence, make camp in silence, and eat our dinners in silence. As we're setting up our sleeping bags, Sasuke informs us that he'll be taking first watch tonight. The others welcome the news gladly and slip into bed, pulling their blankets around their shoulders as the cold seeps out of the night.

I don't follow suit. I want to talk to Sasuke alone—or as alone as I can be with these others.

"Where are we going, anyway?" I ask once everyone is settled and their breathing has leveled out. The fire crackles over my voice and Sasuke eyes it as though he has heard it speak to him instead of me.

"The abandoned city," he says, "where my family used to get all our supplies."

I raise a brow and regard him with uncertainty. "That old place? It's it a little, uh, outdated?" I say, shuffling my feet closer to the fire. I kick up dirt by accident and Sasuke tsks.

"Don't do that. You'll put out the fire," he says, borderline chiding. I scoff, retracting my feet. "Nekobaa has been nothing but loyal to our family," he says, "even considering our circumstances. She's not one to make me think her loyalty has wavered from the Uchiha."

"No," I say. "I suppose not everyone is like me."

Sasuke peers at me through the corner of his eye and then stands, chucking a small branch into the fire as he moves around it. He checks on Suigetsu, Juugo, and Karin, hovering a bit over the girl, before he comes back to sit beside me. I can tell immediately what he's noticed—Karin's breathing is too shallow for her to be sleeping. She's probably waiting for me to say I'm going to bed before she decides to stir and tell Sasuke she'll keep him company. But I still have things to say.

"Why did you do it?" I whisper, keeping watch as Karin's shoulder twitches.

Sasuke doesn't respond.

"If you had all these people with you already," I say, "why did you call me back? Why couldn't you leave me alone?"

"I missed you," he says, and I scoff, scooting away from him. "In all seriousness," he says, "I thought I could use your help. You are a talented kunoichi, Ren: a skilled medic and gifted with a kekkei genkai."

"Please, you're making me blush."

"You alone could prove to be more useful than the three of them combined," says Sasuke. "That's why I called you."

"Yes, because I am just some servant to be manipulated whenever the hell you feel like it," I say with a smile. "Why couldn't you just reinstate the bond and ask me? If even for a minute or two—"

"And risk you tracking me?" he says. He rolls his eyes—the first sign of disdain, of any emotion, actually, I have seen from him since our reunion—and adds, "I know you've tried to track me before: on your own and then with that shaman girl. I can feel the bond writhing every time you make an attempt. It wants to reconnect on my end just as much as on yours. But letting Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi find me during this crucial time was not an option. They would only get in the way."

He sounds almost sad. Almost. My brow wrinkles as I blink at him, trying to read his face and figure him out. I say, "This would be more simple if you did let us find you. Everyone back home knows how much of a threat the Akatsuki is now. They're as eager to take out members as you are to kill Ian. In fact," I say with a tired laugh, "the only reason I got out of the village in the first place is that everyone who could have stopped me left to avenge Asuma, who was killed by one of the Akatsuki guys. Naruto and Sakura and Shi—"

I choke and cough and Sasuke raises an eyebrow. I press my face into my hands and sigh. The calluses scratch my face. "Ironic, isn't it? Revenge: The one thing that drives me crazy is the exact thing that lets me get away with being crazy." I shake my head, kicking dirt into the fire. This time, Sasuke doesn't chide me for it.

"If you just told me," I say in a quiet voice. "If you just asked me to come with you, I would have come."

"Case in point," he says, gesturing to our current state of affairs, and I glare at him.

"I mean _asked_ me asked me," I say. "If you had given me the choice to come, I would have come."

"No. You wouldn't have."

"How could you possibly know that?" I demand, my hands balling into fists. "Unless the revelation I had was also planted in my head by you, like everything else seems to be. You have to give me some credit here, Sasuke. I know when you're at your limit. And unlike Naruto and Sakura, I know the difference between someone who needs rescuing and someone who needs help."

He raises his gaze from the fire, and I huff because he looks toward Karin, who has stopped breathing all together. I take the vibrations, swirl them toward her, and say, "There. Now our voices will be nothing but buzzing to her ears. Does that satisfy you enough to actually listen to me?"

"I _am_ listening to you."

"Oh, okay. So then you're just not taking me seriously."

"You wouldn't have come," Sasuke says loudly, with authority, and I shrink away from him. "And I didn't reinstate the bond because then you would have felt obliged to tell everyone—I know you've already told everyone _about_ it. But this fight is between me and Itachi—and, to a lesser extent, you. No one else."

I watch him as he feeds another branch into the fire. The flames have grown much larger than necessary; the heat around us is sweltering to the point where Suigetsu has shrugged off a margin of his blanket. Luckily, Sasuke doesn't continue feeding the flames. He stands, pushing his hands into his pockets.

He says, "If you're that set on reviving the bond, though," and my eyes widen and I say, "That's not what—" but his voice is louder than mine and even before he finishes, the bond is revving up and I am breathless as he says, "then from this moment on, the bond is reinstated. Things will go back to the way they were before I left. The bond will be whole again. We'll be together."

The bond hitches, blooming into a monster as it begins to take over every thought, every feeling that registers in my brain, and replace it with Sasuke—his plans, his intentions, the small pinch of hunger that pings his stomach. It tells me everything, things I could do well without, like the temperature of his body, the rate of his heartbeat, his blood pressure—a little above average at 99.2 because of the heat of the fire, but cooling because he's walking away from the flames, a healthy 58 beats per minute, and a perfect blood pressure of 105/65. It sends me every thought he's had in the past few minutes, like how he thinks Karin is annoying, almost reminding him of a certain pink-haired kunoichi back home, how the fire reminds him of the vitality his clan used to have. How the orange flames flicker and cast a dingy glow over my skin, making the sharpness of my nose stand out.

God, is that what I really look like right now? Dirt smudges my cheeks, and there is an obvious sheen of oil on my face, making unsightly bumps on my skin stand out. And my hair. God, my hair is so short.

I'm distracted from the information barraging me by the fact that it seems I can't breathe. I press my hand to my chest where all the breath has been sucked out of my lungs. I gasp, trying to inhale a little bit of anything—to no avail. The bond is using all my energy reconnecting me and Sasuke that it has forgotten that, while it doesn't necessarily need oxygen, _I_ do. Spots start to dot my vision, my head begins to whirl. A thickness coats my consciousness until, abruptly, brusquely, air slams back into my lungs.

That only causes me to gag and choke, coughing so hard that it sounds like I'm prepared to spit up a lung. My coughs rattle and wheeze, and when I turn aside to cover it, I end up losing my balancing and falling sideways into the dirt.

Hands grab my shoulders, lift me upright, and press me against a tree. The bark bites into my back as I wipe the tears from my eyes, my coughs subsiding to mere raspy breaths.

"Are you going to take care of that, Sasuke," Suigetsu says from his sleeping bag, "or should I do the honors of slitting her throat?"

"Go back to sleep," Sasuke says, leaning down to be level with me. His hands are the ones holding me up, his thumbs pressed right into my collarbones. I brush him off, breathing still ragged. He searches my eyes to make sure I'm okay, although I want nothing more than for him to be as far away from me as possible.

Despite the fit I just had, I hold my breath, feeling the bond rustle, and I wonder. _I'm okay,_ I try, rubbing my hands over my face. _Just . . . go away, please._

Sasuke blinks, the grip of his hands loosening. Then he moves away as I ask and tosses another small branch into the fire. I hug myself tightly, closing my eyes and trying to center myself, and remember the headband I have attached at my hip, remember who I was, who I am.

Just like that, we're together again. Kagiru and Uchiha—until the very end.

**END PART III**


	73. Need

**Bound  
Chapter 73: Need  
PART IV**

Suigetsu wakes me the next morning. I don't think I prefer him to Sasuke—Suigetsu with his sharp-pointed smile that makes me feel more like his prey than another human being—but after our confrontation last night, I'm glad to be given a break from Sasuke, however fleeting. Sasuke, though, is the one who leads the group, so I can't escape him for long. When we set off for our destination, he looks right at me and, with a small jerk of his head, signals for me to walk alongside him. The gesture doesn't go without notice by the others. They turn to me, blink at me as they wait for me to accept or decline their master's invitation, though I don't have much of a choice.

I end up walking at Sasuke's side until we reach the abandoned city. The bond relishes in his presence, reminds me that I need to keep an eye on the vibrations in case anyone decides to ambush us, but I know we're relatively safe. With Juugo and Suigetsu around us, there's not much Sasuke will have to do to protect himself. Plus, if Karin is as good as sensor as Sasuke's thoughts seem to reveal, then I won't need to stay alert.

I shift through Sasuke's thoughts for the majority of our walk. He doesn't mind, being that it saves him the trouble of having to explain things to me. I see him kill Orochimaru, see his very brief but very revealing confrontation with Kabuto, and see the trouble that had gone into recruiting these three.

And yet he had still called for me. I'm less flattered than I should be.

Karin mumbles every so often at our heels, about who do I think I am and why does Sasuke seem to take such a liking to me. She obviously doesn't expect me to hear her, but given my affinity for the vibrations, I catch everything she says. She shuts up after I hear her muttering that my hair makes me look like a boy and I retort that she doesn't need to help of her asymmetrical red hair to make people believe that she is as crazy, short-tempered, and imbalanced as she is.

Suigetsu laughs. We go the rest of the way to the abandoned city without another word from Karin.

I don't know exactly why the abandoned city is abandoned, but I will admit that it acts as the perfect hideout for lucrative black market sales. Nobody who doesn't know Nekobaa's shop is here will dare enter a place that's falling apart and generally creepy.

I rub the charm Rei had given me to comfort myself as we go through the tunnels. It helps to soothe me, but it doesn't make me view the dampness and the closeness of the tunnels in a more positive light. God, this place is so creepy.

Karin shares my sentiments, although she's better about voicing them than I am. She reminds me of the girls back home—constantly complaining about everyone and every situation that doesn't meet their expectations—Ino, in particular. It doesn't help that my train of thought strays and I start to wonder about Shikamaru and the mission.

I hope they are all okay.

"Ex_cuse_ me," says Karin, shoving me aside and slithering closer to Sasuke. She knocks me toward the back of our group, nearer to Suigetsu who tsks and gives her a sullen look.

"She does that a lot," he says, clipping his thumbs on his belt. "Always to get closer to Sasuke. And you've made an enemy out of her, so you're even worse off."

I purse my lips, determined not to talk to him, and walk with my arms crossed to make myself as small as possible. I've been with these people for a day and a half and am no closer to warming up to them than before. Especially not Suigetsu, who wears the reminder of Sasuke's betrayal on his back as the kubikiribocho sways as he walks. Juugo, despite the fact that he harbors the genetic code to Orochimaru's curse mark, is at least quiet and contemplative, which I can handle.

"Anyway," Suigetsu says, taking in his surroundings. We've gone off the main streets and entered a rustic building where, I'm sure, if anyone scrapes up on anything, they'll be in danger of getting tetanus. "Who knew Orochimaru had a hideout in these ruins? This is the first time I've heard of it."

"This place has nothing to do with Orochimaru," Sasuke says. "This is a weapons house that my family used. We'll gather our supplies for our battle here."

"All these tunnels look the same," Suigetsu laments. "I'm getting confused."

"That's the plan," I mumble. "That way when we ditch you, you won't be able to find your way out and will be forced to rot here for all eternity."

"The air here is kind of thin," says Karin before Suigetsu can think of retorting. "It's irritating. Such an irritating place can't be good."

I glare daggers at the back of Sasuke's head, wishing he had better taste in companions. As though he can feel the heat of my stare on him, he turns to regard me over his shoulder, but I'm distracted by a subtle shift in the vibrations. I stop at the same time Karin does, and twist at the waist to see two small cats approaching us.

One of the cats is white with markings on its cheeks like whiskers in addition to its real whiskers. It moves with purpose, a coy grin on its face as it leans on its front legs and stretches. The other cat is a cream-color with patches of brown on either of its cheeks and staining its ears and tail completely. The cats wear shirts that tie at their abdomens. One of them even has a fishnet lining under its shirt. Both have kanji on their forehead, one reading 'ki', and the other 'shinobi'.

"It's been a long time," Sasuke says as he and the others come to a halt as well. "Denka, Hina."

"I knew it," says the cat with the markings, Denka. "It's that boy Sasuke—and can that be Ren-chan?"

"What are you doing here, nya?" asks the other cat, Hina, as I nod my head in greeting. "From what we've heard, the two of you are at odds. Finally put the past behind you?"

"That's not possible," I say.

"We're here for weapons and medicine," Sasuke answers, unperturbed by my statement. "That kind of thing. We're preparing for a battle."

"How endearing," Suigetsu says as he leans forward on his knees, holding out a hand in offering to the cats. "Talking tanuki! Here, kitty, kitty. Come here."

Denka bares his teeth and hisses at Suigetsu, who recoils. Serves him right for being so stupid, I think, claiming that Denka and Hina look like raccoon dogs and then addressing them as 'kitty'. I nudge Denka away from Suigetsu with my foot, sparing the boy of the little cat's claws on his face.

Amidst Denka's protests of being kicked around like a ball, Hina steps forward, her tail curling in that mischievous way cat's move, like smoke writhing through every barrier. She asks, "Did you bring us treats, nya?"

"Of course," Sasuke says, extracting a small bottle from his pouch. "Here—a bottle of matatabi."

I don't know when he found the time to gather it, how far ahead he'd planned that he actually got Denka and Hina's treat of choice, but I am impressed he thought to bring it along. He tosses it to the cats and Denka catches it in his mouth. He purrs in delight and turns.

"Okay," he says. "Come this way. I'll lead you to the granny cat."

"Granny cat," Suigetsu repeats, straightening. "This just keeps getting weirder and weirder."

As we advance through the dark corridors, the pipes that line the pathway over our heads begin to rattle with heat. That sound, coupled with Denka and Hina's nails clicking against the ground, serve to make the atmosphere of the hideout even more unnerving. I know there's nothing for me to be worried about—I've been here enough times to know it's one of the safest places in the world, minus the health concerns. But I think it's the simple fact that I'm somewhere my family used to frequent with a boy who my family had worshiped that puts me off more than anything. If they saw us now, together, the bond still intact, my family would praise me, I'm sure.

These tunnels, like the Uchiha estate, used to be a place where Sasuke, Itachi, and I would run around and go on thrilling adventures, be 'real' shinobi for just a second. But now they're only dingy and dark, full of twisting pipes that aren't snakes or vines to climb on, but rusting metal that threatens infections.

Sasuke and I are walking side-by-side again, leading the group behind Denka and Hina. This time, Karin is too distracted by the blooming smell of kitty litter to try to get between us. She walks with her nose wrinkled and arms crossed as we get closer to a door of light.

"This place," I grumble, shuddering. "I don't like it. Never was a cat-person. And cats, it seems, were never Ren-types."

"These cats have nothing against you," Sasuke says as Denka's ears bristle. The cat turns to smile at me and I divert my eyes quickly. "You antagonized them. That's why you ended up getting scratched every time you came here."

"They clung to my clothes," I say, "and didn't let go until they had torn it. I always had to leave this place borrowing Tamaki's stuff!"

Sasuke doesn't reply because, at that moment, we enter the main room where the stench of cat and urine becomes nearly palpable on our tongues. By no means is the hideout a messy place—Nekobaa knows how to take care of her cats and does so wonderfully—but there are some odors that can't be masked no matter how many air fresheners you put up. Especially since their hideout rests within the depths of these tunnels, where there aren't many air vents for the odors to escape, so the smell builds up and turns the air acrid.

Nekobaa is as her name suggests—an old woman with too many cats who, frankly, I'm surprised is not dead yet. She had been old when Sasuke and I were young, and she remains older than ever as we stand before her now. She has this mane of grey hair she keeps back with a cat-ear headband, and a pipe that she chews on more than she smokes. Cats crawl around her, and she is unfazed by the fact. They sit in her lap, rub against her crossed legs, yawn at her right hand.

"My, my," Nekobaa says. "If it isn't the dynamic duo of Sasuke and Ren. Although, if I do recall, there is a third person missing from this picture."

"Hello, Nekobaa," Sasuke says with a gracious bow. I can't help but scoff at the old lady's title, which had sounded more natural coming from our mouths when we were younger. But now, Sasuke being the way he is, it seems undignified. My scoff is duly ignored. "We come in hopes that you might be able to provide us with provisions—"

"And maybe get better clothes for him," I add on a whim, jerking a thumb at Juugo, who furrows his brow. "So he doesn't look like he's just come out of an asylum and we can be less conspicuous."

Nekobaa doesn't acknowledge me, instead focuses all her attention on Sasuke. I take a step back, only to have Sasuke stay me with his hand and wave me forward. He says to Nekobaa, "You remember Ren, the Kagiru's daughter. She's the lead medic on my team—"

"Which has one too many members now that I notice it," she huffs. "If she's your _lead_ medic, you mean to say that there is another one on your team?"

"Right here, ma'am," Karin says, raising her hand. "But, if you must know, _I_ was lead medic, up until a humiliating coup d'état—"

"Karin," Sasuke says. Though he doesn't snap at her or even look at her, she freezes up and lowers her eyes, mumbling under her breath. I'm disgusted that she is so intimidated by Sasuke that she won't defy him, that she abases herself so quickly just as he says her name.

But then I purse my lips and look away. I suppose even without the bond Sasuke has that kind of hold on people.

"If you already had a medic," says Nekobaa, tapping her pipe, "then why would you replace her with the likes of Ren? Is she really more reliable than any old cat you can pick up off the streets?"

The question makes me feel awkward enough to clear my throat and say, "All right, maybe I'll just wait in the hallway—"

Sasuke takes me by the elbow, says, "Regardless of the usual number of members in a cell, Ren is my lead medic. Whatever medical supplies we need, she will go over with you."

"Uh, really, I won't mind if Karin took care of this," I say, but Sasuke gestures to Nekobaa. He raises his eyebrows as though he can't feel the animosity Nekobaa has for me, and I scowl at him. When there is a soft tugging in my chest, though, it seems I don't have a choice so I take a deep breath and bow to her. "Nekobaa, if you could point me to your medical supplies please."

She scoffs, nods to one of her cats, and lets it lead me to a cupboard off to the side. As soon as I'm gone, I hear her whispering to Sasuke, her voice a gentle purring. My ears perk, eager to pick up the vibrations and hear what she's saying, but I know all too well: She's trying to sweet talk Sasuke into leaving me behind in favor of—well, anyone else.

Nekobaa and I used to get along well enough. When we were younger, she would assign Sasuke, Itachi, and me 'missions' that we would have to accomplish before our parents finished picking up their supplies. She fawned over us, gave us treats, and always made sure we were well stocked with goodies by the time we left. But after the massacre—I'll admit, I tried to approach her for supplies on my own, and she wasn't keen on helping me when she heard I'd left Sasuke behind.

Yes, loyal to the Uchiha through and through.

I did manage to get medicine all those years ago, but only because Tamaki, Nekobaa's granddaughter, caught me before I left and sneaked me what little she could scare up with the cats eyeing her.

She slides in beside me now, tucking her long brown hair behind her ear and giving me a wide smile. "Never thought I'd see you again," she says, rummaging through the drawers and handing me an herbal remedy to clear infections. "Obaachan made it pretty clear you weren't welcome."

"Yeah, well, I've never been one to follow the rules," I say. I lift a syringe of clear liquid up for examination, wonder for a moment if it's poison. "Besides, _Sasuke_ brought me here, so I'm welcome as long as I'm with him."

"Yes, Sasuke," Tamaki says, and scoots closer so that she is nearly between me and the cupboard.

"Tamaki, really—"

"He's gotten even better looking since I last saw him," she gushes. I can see her sizing him up over my shoulder and I groan. "And dressed like _that_—"

"Tamaki," I say, pushing her aside, "if you want to pour over Sasuke and how beautiful he is, please, be my guest, but over _there_, with Karin."

Tamaki laughs, moves aside. I frown and continue with my duties, plucking labeled potions from the shelves so I don't have to bother with examining each little vial. She says, "Sorry. I forgot you don't like other girls talking about him around you. Does that mean your bond—"

"I'm finished here," I say, grabbing a medical book off the shelf along with a strap of cloth to pack all the medicine together. "Thanks for your help, Tamaki. Do you think you could find Juugo some clothes? Having him walk around like that won't be good for our image."

I get up before she can say anymore, and remains on the floor, stunned for a moment before she gets up and does as I ask.

And we used to be such good friends.

I return to Nekobaa and Sasuke, who sits across from the old woman. He wears an expression of calm, like the conversation between the two of them hadn't been about me—and maybe it hadn't been. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, thinking too much that the world is plotting against me and only using me to get to Sasuke. Maybe I'm pitying myself too much. But as I lay out the supplies so that Nekobaa can review them and put a price on our supplies, I know, at least for a small portion of her discussion with Sasuke, she had been trying to convince him to get rid of me.

Once she's approved and priced everything for our purchase, Sasuke gives her one of his regal bows again. "I'm in debt to you, Nekobaa," he says, packing the supplies.

"I'm assuming that you're going after Itachi?" says Nekobaa, one of her cats pawing at the pipe she's lowered to her knees. "I've known you two since you were wee little kittens. I can't believe it's come to this. And now there's only you two—coming face to face only to murder each other."

Sasuke doesn't acknowledge her statement, instead digs in his pouch for the money he's brought along. Nekobaa narrows her already squinty eyes at him and then me. I flinch away from her and lower my gaze, wishing Sasuke would hurry.

"And you, Ren," she says, her voice like the hiss of an offended cat compared to when she'd purred to Sasuke. "Wasn't it your duty as a Kagiru to prevent this from happening?"

I stare at her with wide-eyes, try to stutter a response, but I end up fumbling the medical supplies that Sasuke has handed to me. They drop to the ground with a loud _crack!_ and spill open, eliciting a snicker from Karin. As I bend down to gather them, Nekobaa clicks her tongue in distaste, but Sasuke stops me.

I look up at him, surprised, only to see him kneeling down beside me to help me gather our things. He folds it all up neatly, handing them to me with disconcerting calm, and then offers Nekobaa the money, which she takes without a fuss.

"We're going," Sasuke says, taking me by the arm and pulling me to my feet. "Thanks for all your help, Nekobaa."

"Sasuke," I protest. I start to pry his hand off when I notice the way Nekobaa is looking between us, like she's never quite seen us before. Or, rather, like she hadn't expected us to be familiar enough with each other that Sasuke would help me in this kind of situation.

Because, ultimately, that's what he's doing, despite how reluctant I am to accept it. He's saving me from having to explain myself to Nekobaa and helping me clean up after my mistakes, and now letting me lean on him like I can't stand on my own. He's making it seem like we are still the partners in crime we were instead of being the girl and boy who had abandoned everything and everyone they cared about to achieve their own goals.

I suppose, in that way, we're still partners in crime.

Sasuke lets go of me, but he stays close, as Takami shouts for her grandmother's attention, claiming that there aren't any clothes big enough to fit Juugo. As Takami and Nekobaa argue about courtesy and how much of it they should lend to us, I take a step back from the old woman, half-shielding myself behind Sasuke. He glances at me over his shoulder, but I make a point to avoid his eyes.

"Thanks," I grumble, clutching the medical supplies close to my chest so there is, at least, still that barrier between us.

He doesn't answer.

As soon as Juugo is dressed in a curtain he had grabbed off of one of Nekobaa's windows, we leave, much to my relief, though the conditions outside aren't better. The stale air is replaced with rain, and the cloaks we've collected from Nekobaa don't keep us dry very well. In this kind of weather, they only make me feel even more stuffy, acting as a heavy, crushing weight over my shoulders. The rain doesn't last long, but it takes us hours to dry. I guess it's lucky that we walk for hours.

Sasuke gives us a heading: to start searching a town we've neared for any traces of the Akatsuki—Itachi specifically, of course. He orders us to split up once we've reached a certain point, where the trees begin to fray into open land. While Juugo and Suigetsu leap off to their respective destinations, I stay behind with a feeling in my gut that Sasuke doesn't want me to leave, which I don't mistake for anything but the bond.

I have my back turned to Sasuke for one moment to check out the surrounding area when I hear Karin's voice pitch up, hear her squeal, "Sasukeeee. Just you and me, just the two of us—"

I scoff and turn back to find her clutching onto Sasuke's arm and leaning on him heavily. She has taken her glasses off, but I can tell by the way she glares at me that she sees me clearly. Sasuke's brow is raised in the classic annoyed expression he wore so well when the girls back home barraged him like this. It's the only thing I've ever liked about him.

Propping a hand on my hip, I drawl, "Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt your little . . . whatever this is. Should Karin and I swap places? I'm fine with going around town. It'd be good for me to talk to people who aren't falling head over heels for the Uchiha name."

"No," Sasuke says as he detaches himself from Karin deftly. "Karin, you have to go with Juugo and Suigetsu."

"But," she starts, but apparently thinks better of it. She pouts, shoves her glasses back onto her face, and adjusts her cloak. When she walks past me, she tries to bump me with her shoulder, but I sidestep her and smile.

"Have a nice time," I say, waving her off. She raises her nose at me and leaves with a harrumph.

I laugh, shaking my head as I watch her disappear into the trees. "I don't know how you do it," I say, and Sasuke glances at me, curious to what I mean. "Based solely on your looks, Sasuke, you are something to be dazzled by, and I guess that, coupled with your talents, makes everyone admire you. But talking to you, I don't see how any girl can be impressed! You're all arrogance and condescension and anger. Plus, you only have this one facial expression, like you are eternally suffering. How could anyone think they could be happy with you when you have an attitude like that?"

Sasuke's eyes narrow marginally, and then he turns so that we're facing each other. He leans down to speak in my ear. I jerk away, but he catches me with a rough hand on the back of my neck.

His voice is easy as he speaks, his breath sweeping against my skin like a damp breeze. "You can say that all you like, Ren, but it doesn't change the fact that you are drawn to me just as much as those other girls. It may not be of your own will, but this bond gives us something that we could never have with anyone else."

"Th-that's exactly why it doesn't mean anything," I say, trying to incline my head away from his, but he keeps his grasp firm, his fingers digging just alongside my spine.

"Which is what makes you exactly the same," Sasuke says. "It doesn't matter that you deny it while the other girls fall hopelessly over themselves. You react the same way as they do; you forget that I can feel it. Your heart races. Your palms get sweaty. You lose your nerve, you start to stutter. You want to stand close to me, just as much as they do. You want to save me," he says quietly, "just as badly."

"Get _off_!" I say, shoving him. I'm the one who staggers back though, the one who loses her footing and almost falls over herself, just like Sasuke said. I pull my cloak closer around me while Sasuke stares at me, and though his expression is blank as ever, I can tell he's immensely pleased with himself.

"If the others do their work thoroughly, we should have to wait a while until they return," Sasuke says, turning toward the town as though someone has called for him. "Try to contain yourself until then."

"Why do I need to stay here, anyway?" I ask, still flustered. "I can search the city just as well as the others."

"I need you here with me," Sasuke says, and I wish he hadn't phrased it that way because it only serves to jumble me even more. "I'll need you to stay alert with the vibrations and tell me if you sense anything suspicious. I know your friends who so kindly dropped you off for me intend to tell everyone in Konoha about our goals. The bond doesn't keep secrets," he reminds me, and I shrink into my coat. "They're bound to come after us, especially if they know I'm free of Orochimaru, and Konoha is highly skilled in tracking because of the resources they have with the shinobi dogs and the Hyuuga. If they or any enemies are near us, I want to know immediately."

"You could have kept Karin here for that. Or you could do it yourself just as well."

"I would rather have you," he says, and I wonder if he knows what he's saying, what effect they might have on people, or if he's doing this to rile me up. "Besides, if Konoha is searching for us, which I'm sure they are, they'll try to track both of our scents. They must know that you escaped to be with me. That being the case, we need to stay together and minimize the amount of area we cover."

I fold my arms over my chest and say, "Sorry, are you trying to convince me to _stay_ in one place? Because you know if I had a choice—"

"Which you don't. Besides, I thought you wanted to help me kill Itachi," Sasuke says and looks at me. The way his eyes meets mine makes me pull away from him. Not because he's menacing or condescending, but because he really looks at me like I am a person instead of another one of his little minions. And, again, I can't help think he's pulling these expressions on me and saying these things because he's trying to sweeten me up to his plan. Not that it's working.

But.

"I know you think they can help," he says, "but they don't know what it feels like. They can't possibly _begin_ to understand what it feels like. And they can go on comparing our experiences, saying their losses are like ours, but the fact is, they can never compare. We lost our entire families, our legacies. No matter how much they imagine or try to put themselves in our shoes, they won't be able to feel our pain. This," he says, pressing a hand to his chest, "pain that we hold onto, Ren. It's unique to us. In this world, it's all we have."

"That's not true," I say. "At the risk of sounding terribly cliché and jaded, pain is universal, Sasuke. Everybody feels it. Just because we experienced this . . . tragedy of losing our families, we don't need to hold onto it like you say. Holding onto that pain only makes things worse!"

With that, he changes. His body tenses and his eyes grow dark, and he steps forward like he means to lunge at me. "Who are you to take that away from me?" he demands. "You, who have helped foster that pain and allowed it to grow like this when you abandoned me. You just as well died along with everyone else when you left."

He inhales sharply, pivots on his heel so that his back is to me, leaving me speechless. He presses his face to the breeze that blows by, giving me time to simmer in his statement. The things he says, everything he's implying—it doesn't add up to the things he's done, the way he's been acting.

There is a small part of me that wants to disregard this all. Just because he is _sometimes_ kind, and shows a little vulnerability doesn't mean he's changed or that he can change and become the person I want him to be.

He knows how to make me feel guilty, though, pulling out the abandonment card. Nekobaa isn't wholly wrong in shunning me for that, and Sasuke isn't wholly wrong for being bitter about it either.

"Sasuke," I start, but then there is a shift. The vibrations tumble against my fingers, fluctuate in a way that it shouldn't. Alert, I narrow my eyes over my shoulder, and repeat, "Sasuke."

This time, Sasuke senses the alarm in my voice, senses the ping of the vibrations through the bond, and is beside me at once. He watches the perimeter of the forest, begins to sense the disturbance too. Then he puts his arm in front of me and pushes me behind him.

"What," I begin, but he says, "It isn't Konoha. It isn't safe."

"Still," I say, pushing his arm down. "I can take care of myself. I don't need you to protect me."

"Whoever you are," he says in lieu of a reply to my claim, "come out."

I press my hand to my face, shaking my head as the bushes rustle and whoever has been spying on us reveals themselves. Out of the corner of my eye I see Sasuke incline his head, his shoulders tense. The bond ruffles, puts the vibrations on high alert, and I peek around Sasuke.

I take the sleeve of his cloak, breathe, "_Sasuke_," only to have him shush me.

"It's okay," he answers. "I'll protect you."

His words leave me startled and I check his face to make sure he isn't rolling his eyes at my panic. I'm sure, as cocky as he is, he believes there's nothing the great and wonderful Uchiha Sasuke can't handle. But he is genuine. Well, I can't say _for sure_ he's being genuine, since his face is stoic as ever.

But I know. He will protect me.

"So!" says the masked man who has uncovered himself, wearing a cloak of black with red clouds lined with white. The mask he has over his face whirls into a spiral over his right eye, obscuring his eye in darkness. His voice is boyish, with a childish excitement to it. "You're Sasuke-kun, huh? You sure do look like Itachi-san."

The glare the man elicits from Sasuke is enough to send the man skittering back to the trees. He makes a remark about how scary Sasuke is, but there is another hike in the vibrations, something that rings familiar in my memory. I look up—and find two birds soaring overhead, two birds that are a stark gold with reflected sunlight against the blue sky and to the bursting with an explosive chakra.

Explosive chakra.

I rewind to my time in the Sand Village, to my final days there when Gaara was stolen and this chakra swarmed everywhere around him. I'm about to warn Sasuke when I feel the chakra cut through the air, sailing toward us. Without time to call his attention to it, I move to manipulate the earth, create a barrier between us and the explosives I know are coming, but then my vision sharpens, the vibrations pull closer, and a darkness swirls around me, encases me in an unnatural cold, and Sasuke has me pinned to his side.

My breath catches in my throat as the heat of his body presses against mine. And, so quietly that his voice could be mistaken for the wind, he says, "I will protect you."

So it seems.


	74. Dynamic Duo

**Bound  
Chapter 74: Dynamic Duo**

It's a snake. The thing that had curled around us to protect us from the blast is a snake, whose blackened scales begin to peel away as it unravels. It flicks its tongue at the enemy from the sky who lands in front of us, tasting his chakra as an appetizer to actually eating him.

The snake, admittedly, unnerves me. My distaste for them stems from my poor experiences with them—with Orochimaru—and I hate that Sasuke has resorted to using them to protect us. Granted, I appreciate the protection, but I think I would have rather suffered a few burns and bruises than be covered by a snake.

Luckily, the snake summons disappears and I let out a breath of relief. "That man," I say into Sasuke's shoulder. "I can't remember his name, but I've fought him before in Sunagakure. I would explain his jutsu to you, but—" I let out a frustrated sigh. "—with the bond restored, just go through my memory stores and get all the information on him that I have. It'll be quicker, more convenient."

Before I can hear—or even feel—Sasuke's reaction, the man with the explosives cackles, sending unpleasant reminders of our aerial assaults in the Sand Village. "Looks like he's got some skills," the man says. "I still can't believe that Orochimaru was done in by a brat like this, mm. Oh—such malice! I like his eyes, Tobi, mm. I'm going to have to apologize to Itachi-san after this."

Sasuke's irritation does reach me this time. It might be because of who is provoking him, but Sasuke's irritation hits me hard, and I wonder why I'm hiding behind Sasuke, especially when I said I could take care of myself. So I step out from behind him, my own glare directed at the man who had attacked us, and am satisfied to see his face, half-hidden by a stream of hair, fall and turn into a scowl.

"You," he says.

"_You_," I echo. "You're a failure through and through, aren't you? Couldn't even kill yourself correctly in your own suicide bombing."

"I didn't _blow_ myself _up_, mm," he says, the same nasally grunts concluding his sentences, as though he's a primitive thing. "Not technically. It was a distraction so that I could get away, mm. You didn't think I would try to take you on eight-to-one, did you? Even I'm not that foolish, mm."

"You're not getting away this time," I say, balling my hands into fists. "After what you did in the Sand, you deserve to be dead right now, and it's a shame that you aren't."

He scoffs, his one visible eye rolling, unimpressed. He says, "Speaking of what happened in the Sand, I thought you were one of the good guys, mm. What are you doing with the likes of Uchiha Sasuke? Isn't he the one who betrayed your village, ran away and joined Orochimaru's ranks, mm? From what I could understand back in the Sunagakure," he says, and I can see the smirk working its way up his mouth, "you had an unyielding loyalty to your roots. To the point of it being a crutch, if I do say so myself, mm."

Sasuke lets out a chuckle of amusement at the same time I laugh at the man's statement. The small moment of camaraderie between me and Sasuke throws me off, but isn't enough to distract either of us from the man who scowls at us.

The man tsks. "Sharingan, huh," he says, noticing the change in Sasuke's eyes. "This guy is definitely Itachi's little brother, and due to his Uchiha heritage, he was able to kill Orochimaru, mm. He was only blessed with that lineage. Poor bastard probably thinks he's something impressive solely because of it."

I reach out to grab Sasuke's wrist, but he's already zoomed toward the two, his sword unsheathed and poised to slice the two men in half. The man with the explosives leaps out of the way in time, whereas his partner isn't so lucky. After stumbling on his own feet, he's caught on the edge of Sasuke's sword, which sinks right through him—

And leaves him unscathed.

I blink at the man, who staggers for a moment and then falls flat on his face as though he had actually been hurt, but I'm not blind, nor am I a fool. There is no pool of blood that gathers around him and feeds the soil, no real injury to him at all. I had felt the way the vibrations moved around him, the way they encased him one moment and then slipped right through him as Sasuke's blade fell on his abdomen.

I watch the man on the floor as Sasuke watches the man with the explosives, who has leaped into the trees behind, maintaining a vantage point on top of the branches.

"It seems that you have no control over your mouth," Sasuke says to the man, "so I'll ask you a few things about Itachi."

As though prompted by the statement, the man who had fallen to the floor pulls himself up in the manner of a puppet being drawn up by strings. His cloak rustles around him; otherwise, he makes no noise as he stands, raises his head. Because of the mask on his face, I can't tell if he's looking at me, but there is something unnerving about the way he has his gaze set.

He whirls around as his partner demands, "Tobi! What the hell are you doing! Regardless of who he is and his techniques, he's a brat—so let's not waste this opportunity to kill him."

"He's too fast for us," Tobi laments, raising his hands in defense as Sasuke turns to glare at him. "It's no use!"

The man in the tree grits his teeth, then pushes his cloak back in a flurry so that he can reach into his hip pouches on either side of his waist. I feel the vibrations billowing, feel them gathering around his hands as his chakra builds up into an explosive force.

"He makes his own bombs, Sasuke!" I call across the field as the man extends his hands and showcases the little clay modelings he's created.

The man tsks at my warning, then tosses the little clay bugs into the air, sending a shower of them raining over Sasuke. The man's partner, Tobi, gives a pathetic screech and scrambles away, and I narrow my eyes at him, wondering why he's bothering. If he can make himself disappear—though I still can't figure out _how_ he does it—why does he bother running away from a few explosives?

There is a crackling of electricity that catches my attention. Sasuke throws shards of electricity at the bombs, pinning them into the ground and surrounding trees. Some of the bombs impaled by Sasuke's lightning goes rolling toward the man's partner, who wails and cries, "Ah, senpai, don't detonate them!"

The man hesitates, leaves an opening wide enough for Sasuke to leap up the tree, fly in behind him. But the man's partner gives an exclamation of warning and I run forward, crossing the field and up the tree in a matter of seconds as the man is tossing one of his bombs over his shoulder at Sasuke.

I pull my cloak over the man's head, catching the bomb under my cloak, and unclip the clasp around my throat. I shove the man off the tree branch and grab Sasuke, pull him down with me as I leap off the tree, and am only partially blown aside when the bomb goes off over my shoulder, not close enough to hurt, but close enough to feel the pressure and heat of the blast on my back.

We skid to a halt opposite the man, who has managed to escape the blast as well and make it to his partner's side. Believing he had been caught in the explosion, his partner mourns his death, crying, "Even if he was harsh, he was a good man. I'll never forget you, Deidara-senpai!"

"I didn't need your help," Sasuke mutters as I catch my breath. "His bombs are infused with his chakra; I can see them with the Sharingan."

"You're welcome, anyway," I say, wiping my brow of the dirt that has been caught on my skin. "Stay alert. Look," I say, pointing to Deidara, who has clasped his hands together. The vibrations whirr in his hands, twisting and melding together with his chakra. "Somehow he makes the explosives in the palm of his hands."

"I see that," Sasuke says, and pushes me behind him. "Stay back for this one."

"Wh—I think I've proved that I can—"

I cut short when the area around the Akatsuki pair is swarmed with a cloud of smoke that reaches nearly a building's length across. The vibrations shudder, hike up to such a degree that, while I don't _need_ Sasuke to protect me, I don't protest when he steps in front of me.

The smoke clears to reveal a dragon of bone white that reflects the sunlight so brightly that I have to squint at it to see it clearly. The dragon dwarfs them by far, but Deidara leaps atop the dragon's head and shouts to his partner. I'm not sure what they have planned, but judging by the way the vibrations fluctuate, I'm prepared for the dragon to fly at us and then burst in a catastrophic explosion that even Sasuke, with his speed, won't be able to escape. I wouldn't put it past Deidara to try another suicide tactic. He's certainly shown he's not above such cowardly antics.

Instead of moving toward us, however, the dragon merely shifts its tail, which begins to shrink, losing its pointed tip for a truncated stub. The dragon rumbles for a moment, then makes a noise like it's swallowing before it opens its mouth and barfs up what looks like a collection of white eggs.

His partner stays with the eggs as Deidara takes flight. The dragon's tail shrinks once again and a lump travels up its throat, out its mouth, and sends a smaller dragon zooming toward us. This dragon has smoother wings, a better, more aerodynamic build to it than the larger dragon. It cuts through the air, leaving a whistling wind in its wake, and prompts Sasuke to fly toward it.

I watch Deidara's partner, who begins to gather the eggs in his arms, unafraid of setting them off. I wonder if I can trigger those bombs somehow, press the vibrations too close to them or—

An explosion causes the earth to quake, creates a plume of smoke and dirt that swells around us and gets caught in the wind, spreading even farther and obstructing our vision. Sasuke leaps back to my side as I cough, swatting the tainted air away from my face.

"What did you_ do_?" I ask, as he turns his eyes to the sky, where Deidara has taken flight.

"I tried to get around it," he says, referring to the smaller dragon that is now nowhere to be seen. "But it was a guided bomb."

The smoke and dirt begin to disperse with the aid of Deidara's dragon flapping the winds in our direction, and that's when I notice. "Where did the other one go?"

As our vision clears, I scour the area, searching for the man with the mask, a single sign of any of the white eggs he had piled around him. Sasuke ignores the fact that the other man is missing and leaves the issue with me. He gathers his chakra into his hand, transforms it into electricity. He reels his arm back and throws the electricity at the dragon, sending his chakra sailing in a bright streak across the sky.

Something shifts under my feet, catching my attention. I draw my eyes over the ground, feeling the vibrations rumbling up the earth and pausing for a few moments before gathering momentum again and moving on. After each pause, the way the vibrations bounce through the ground changes. Sasuke grabs me around the waist, yanking me backward so suddenly my neck cracks and I let out a grunt of surprise.

Another dragon nosedives into the ground and detonates multiple times, sending rubble raining down on us. I flinch as a sizable rock hits my head and the vibrations erupt in a flurry. The maelstrom of vibrations distracts me from the movement under our feet, but it doesn't keep Sasuke from collecting information from my head. He goes over my thoughts, what I had noticed, and then sweeps his eyes to the ground.

There is a fluttering of alarm that registers in him, and then there is a stabbing pain that rips through my stomach, taking root and sprouting, spreading through my chest, digging into my back. The pain makes me lose my breath, and I hang my head, trying to center myself as darkness spots my vision and another explosion sends shudders up the soles of my feet.

The explosion only tickles my toes, though, which confuses me. It had erupted all around us, broken all the vibrations, and nearly numbed my skin with activity. But here it is only brushing against my feet and—

The air is cleaner. How can it be so quickly after an explosion?

I open my eyes, trying to catch my breath, and am surprised to see the earth zooming back toward me, cratered and cracked. I yelp at the jolt of landing back on solid ground, the vibrations rumbling underneath me, and turn to Sasuke, who still holds me by the waist like I'm a ragdoll. And I yelp again.

Sasuke's skin has turned a cold grey, almost a light purple in the sunlight. When he looks at me, goosebumps run up my spine at sight of the black slash across the bridge of his nose, the black that fills what is supposed to be the white of his eyes, his blue lips, and—the wings that settle around us, blocking the rest of the dirt that drops around us, these wings like large hands and sprouts of feathers like fingers. I give a small whine and struggle out of his grip, terrified as his chakra sinks into my pores, tainting me. But he keeps his arms tightly around my waist, his fingers digging into my hip. I wish he would just let me go.

I am such a coward.

"Land mines," Sasuke says. His voice still sounds the same, despite his appearance. I take a deep breath and divert my eyes. "Those eggs were land mines and his partner planted them. Don't. Move."

"Don't," I say, trying to pull away, "_touch_ me! Not when you're like this, not when you're—"

The vibrations shake. The man hovering in the sky is sending another exploding dragon at us, this time packed with more of his chakra than before, making sure that it will blow us to bits.

I'm on edge from being so close to Sasuke's dark aura and irritated that I'm so scared and helpless that my rage boils over and my own chakra flares. I elbow Sasuke's gut so that I have room to breathe, suck in massive gulp of air, and flip through the appropriate hand seals before spewing a shot of chakra-infused mud at the dragon. The mud coats it in a thick shell that hardens and encases the explosion as the bomb detonates. We're hit only by flying debris from the mud I've created, and even then, Sasuke's wings fold over us and protect us.

I manage to swing out my foot and kick his wing, sending it flying backward and causing Sasuke to stumble. Luckily, he keeps his feet planted in the ground with chakra, otherwise we might have been blown to bits by a land mine.

"I would rather _die_," I hiss at him, trying to pry away his fingers, "than be protected by this damned curse seal of yours! Let me—"

Overhead, the man cackles. "A dynamic duo!" he cheers, laughing from his perch of safety. "It's too bad this romance will end in tragedy—with both of you dead, mm!"

His dragon spits out another mini-me, which, like all the others, sails toward us. Sasuke sweeps me off my feet, cradling me close to him as he lands on the hilt of his sword, somehow impaled in the ground a few meters away. I stare at him, wide-eyed, clutching onto his shirt for fear of falling onto the mines.

"Sasuke," I start, readying another stream of protests, but he leans down to me and says, so close that his breath brushes my forehead, "Stay close to the sword when I let you down, do you understand?"

"_Don't_," I say, but he's already slipping me out of his arms, onto the ground. I stay close to the sword, just like he says, and miraculously, the bombs don't go off.

He's soaring into the sky before I can how he managed to neutralize the bombs, using his wings to fly up beside the smaller dragon, which he impales with a thin streak of his Chidori. His Chidori expands, then, reaching to the Akatsuki man's larger dragon and relieving the beast of its left wing. This sends the man careening out of the sky. The man tries to escape before his dragon slams into the mines, but Sasuke unleashes two fuuma shuriken to pin the man in place.

As the man falls, Sasuke flies back to me and takes me around the waist again, pulling me into the forest, to the safety of the trees.

God, what I wouldn't give to be back with the trees.

"Let go!" I demand as soon as we're steadied on a branch. Sasuke releases me without hesitation this time, regarding me with annoyance. Before I can mirror his look and express my displeasure of being so close to him while the curse mark is activated, the field behind us quakes, jostling the trees so hard that leaves flutter off of their branches. I dig my fingers into the bark to keep my balance. The blast leaves a heat on my back and a ringing in my ears. Sasuke reaches out to touch my shoulder, but I recoil, throwing him a look of irritated disbelief. Even after how vehemently I've told him that I don't want to be around him when he has his curse mark activated, he doesn't seem to understand.

It takes me a moment to realize he's no longer purple-grey, like he has risen from the dead, and the wings on his back have melted away, although he has lost his shirt in all the commotion. His skin, aside from smudges of dirt that spot his torso, is as pearly as the whites around his eyes, which is heightened by the red of his Sharingan. His lips are pale pink, pursed in a tight line, and the cross over the bridge of his sharp, straight nose is gone.

Still. Knowing that he is so willing to and can so easily use that curse mark leaves me disconcerted. Admittedly we would be dead right now if not for that curse, but it doesn't make up for the other problems it has created in the past.

Sasuke's Sharingan flick over my shoulder. His scowl deepens. "He just keeps on coming," Sasuke grumbles as the masked Akatsuki member cheers about the fact that his senpai has survived the massive explosion that has occurred.

The man, hovering on a new clay modeling, reaches into his pouch and pulls out a hunk of white clay. He bites into it, swallows gracious amounts as though he hasn't eaten in years, and Sasuke tsks.

"Take cover," he tells me. I scoff and begin to protest, but Sasuke snaps, "I can't keep taking care of you. Go hide."

"I'm not going to leave you," I say before I realize exactly what I'm saying.

Sasuke isn't as bothered by the implication of my claim as I am and takes my shoulder. He says, "Fine. Then follow his partner. This guy won't attack him, so you'll be safe if you stay near that masked guy. And if it makes you feel better, you can help out by taking out that masked guy while I take care of this one."

Sasuke points toward the masked man who is flailing his arms at his senpai from the edge of the crater the previous explosion had caused. He jumps when he sees the other man eating the clay, and then sinks through the earth with ease.

"Go," Sasuke says, nudging me, and when I'm reluctant to move, there is a tugging in the gut in my stomach that I know is useless to fight.

I scowl at him and drop from the tree. The vibrations that ripple out from where I land heavily reverberate against roots in the ground, rotund rocks, and then—against the body of the masked man who had disappeared into the ground.

I follow suit, centering my chakra, feeling the earth mold around me, and then I am underground.

I had learned this trick in the early months of my time in the Sand, sometime after I discovered I had an earth-natured chakra. While this is a technique that nearly anyone can learn—in fact, I think Kakashi has used it several times on Team 7 missions—I only picked it up after deciding to hone my elemental techniques. Medicine becomes boring when you realize you can't heal people of their ignorance.

The masked man is easy to pursue. He surfaces from the ground sooner than I would have expected, and continues running east, so far away from his partner that I expect him to keep going and abandon him entirely. He finally slows down about half a kilometer away, at which point I can feel the other man's chakra rising at an exponential rate.

I stop, alarmed by the sudden growth. The ground around me becomes crushing as a panic grips my lungs and without thinking twice, I push myself into Sasuke's head, watching through his eyes as a massive clay modeling of the Akatsuki man's begin to expand, bloating like he had when he had tried to blow himself up in front of me back in the Wind Country.

_Sasuke,_ I start, but then my vision sharpens, the power of the Sharingan spinning, and Sasuke replies, _Ren. Get away._

I am away, physically at least, but apparently that's not enough for Sasuke. He pushes me out of his head, blocks me off from whatever is happening with him.

Despite how my reluctance, I continue with my task. The masked man has come to a halt not a meter away from me, and although he isn't on the ground, I can feel the vibrations of his shifting feet rumbling down the tree trunk, through the roots, and to my fingertips. I am right beneath him.

As I pull myself out of the ground, I hear him mumbling to himself. I stay low, keep my chakra suppressed until I can get right next to the tree where he's situated. And then, I gather my chakra into my fist, reel back my arm, and release my energy just as my knuckles meet the tree.

The bark splinters just as badly as it would if it were caught in one of the explosions. The tree gives way, crashing into its kin, snapping and crunching as it crushes the other trees. The man squeals, manages to leap out of the tree before he's caught in them, but the leaves that flutter down around us serve as perfect cover for me to attack.

I burst through the leaves, my fist poised to slam into the man's mask and break right through it. He sees me in time to dodge it, but instead of moving aside—I fall right through him.

I stumble, catch myself, and turn on my heel to face him again. He staggers himself, although my hit didn't land, and holds his hands up to his face as though I _had_ him him.

"Hey, now," he says, his childish voice making it hard for me to distinguish just how old he is. He is purposely keeping his tone light, shrill, but I can tell from his stature that he's not near my age. Older than Itachi, maybe, by two or three years, maybe more. I wonder what this man has to hide that he's shrouding his voice like he's shrouding his face.

"I don't want to fight you!" he says, waving his hands in front of him. "You're a girl!"

I'm baffled by his reasoning, and let out a bark of laughter. "That didn't stop your partner before."

"Deidara-senpai?" the man says. "That's just 'cause he's trying to kill your friend out there—and after this blast, Sasuke will be dead, so you have nothing to worry about."

I doubt that. If Sasuke were in any real danger, I would have felt the bond tugging me back to him. So I say, "What do you guys have against Sasuke, anyway? You Akatsuki members don't go after people like him. Aren't you trying to capture all the jinchuuriki?"

He appears startled by the fact that I know this. He hums and says, "You definitely know more than you should. Who are you?"

"It's not a matter of who I am," I say. "It's a matter of experience. I've encountered your kind before; I ran into your senpai, actually, back in the Sand and had a hand in killing Sasori. Does that ring a bell?"

"Nope!" he says, and the vein in my forehead pulses. "But I'll admit that you're interesting. What's your name?"

I'm about to snap at him, tell him none of these questions he's asking me matters—we're enemies and as enemies we shouldn't be taking the time to get to know each other—when a massive amount of chakra erupts from where Sasuke had been. The masked man laughs and says, "There goes Deidara-senpai's C4! Those bombs get into your bloodstream and blow up once they hit your chakra reserves. There's no way to avoid them. Your Sasuke-kun is dead."

Again, that's doubtful. If Sasuke had died, I would have absolutely felt something from the bond. But, just to be sure, I check in with the bond, tuning into Sasuke's thoughts, the amount of energy he has left to see if I need to return to his side and assist him.

His reserves have been considerably depleted. He has only enough to hold himself up, but, from what I can tell by his observations, his opponent isn't in any better a state. All he needs to do before he finishes the man off is find out where Itachi is.

Sensing me inside his head, Sasuke speaks. _I'm almost done. Come back,_ he says, and then disappears off my radar. My ears perk up and I peer over my shoulder, although I don't expect him to appear behind me and beckon me along. I'm unsettled by the way he had cut off, as though there is something he doesn't want me to see.

"Called by your master?"

The voice causes me to jump, whirl around, and throw up my defenses because the voice is not one I'm familiar with. I search the trees behind the masked man, waiting for another one of his accomplices to reveal themselves, before my eyes rest on the man who stands eerily still.

I narrow my eyes at him, say, "Who's with you?"

I swear I can feel the vibrations lilt, signaling that the man is smiling beneath his mask. I step back, cornering myself against a tree as he says, no trace of the child in his voice, "It's just you and me, Ren-chan. What are you so worried about? Is Sasuke-kun in trouble? Can you feel it?"

"How—?" A surge of electricity shooting up my spine stops me short and draws my attention back to where Sasuke and Deidara are fighting. Reaching up, I brush my fingers against the red agate stone that sits against my chest, close to my heart, and turn away. I glance at the man again, wondering if he's going to follow me and go check on his partner now that he knows I'm going to go back to Sasuke—but he's already gone.

I dig my fingers into the tree trunk, cracking it under the pressure of my grip.

_Is Sasuke in trouble?_ he'd asked. _Can you feel it?_

He knows. He knows exactly who I am, who Sasuke is to me, what binds the two of us together. I shouldn't be surprised—the Kagiru-Uchiha bond is legendary, a myth passed around the shinobi because of how ludicrous it sounds. But he couldn't have known my _name_ much less my lineage.

I will have to keep my eye out for that man again in the future.


	75. Caregiver

**Bound  
Chapter 74: Caregiver**

I'm closer to the fight than I had anticipated and run across Sasuke within minutes. He's slumped on the ground, his breathing relatively steady, and to say he looks dirty is an understatement. Black soot smears every part of him, turning his skin a pale grey where it isn't brown with dirt. Blood tracks down on either side of his mouth, stains nearly every part of his face in faint blotches. His forehead, cheeks, and nose are all layered over with a film of dirt, as is the rest of his exposed body. I can see bruises surfacing down his arms, on his shin, even on his foot, which is bare because he has somehow managed to lose a sandal.

His Sharingan still shine bright red.

"Sasuke," I say, kneeling beside him. I pause when I see two bone white snakes lying on either side of him, haphazardly strewn but thoroughly dead. I kick them aside as I lower myself and touch Sasuke's shoulder.

He doesn't look up, keeps his gaze locked on Deidara, who is crumpled meters in front of him, although neither of them are in any state to make a move against each other. I sigh, place my hand against his diaphragm, feeling as electricity crackles through his entire nervous system. I'm surprised he isn't twitching from the excess of it in his body, but I suppose that's the result of having an affinity for the element.

There are no broken bones; I take consolation in that. But he's weak enough that if Deidara manages to summon up an impossible amount of chakra to attack, I will have to step in and defend Sasuke, because there is no chance that I am letting him fight like this.

Deidara lets out a sharp laugh. "So far past your limit," he says, "that your precious girlfriend has to take care of you, mm. I'll definitely be able to finish this quickly. Even if I can't move, my bombs can reach you, mm."

Sasuke doesn't dignify the statement with a response as I shuffle behind him, pressing my hands to his back. I can feel his muscles jerking, not significantly enough to prevent him from functioning properly, but enough to cause him strain. I wonder how he ended with so much electricity in his system as I work to reroute the excess through his nervous system to the proper pathways.

"Considering the situation at hand, you could show some fear, don't you think? This time my art will win, and you'll die, mm."

"You talk as though we've fought before," I say, peering at the man over Sasuke's shoulder. "As though you and _Sasuke_ have fought before. What's your deal?"

Deidara grits his teeth, his fingers digging into the earth beneath him. "I've fought his brother," he spits. "Itachi. He looks just like him, mm. And that stupid look, those stupid eyes! That really pisses me off!" he rages suddenly, yanking the grass from the soil and scattering it at us. "It's exactly like your brother! Stop acting so damn cool!"

I regard him with wonder, annoyed that he could be so childish, reacting to Sasuke like this when both of them are on the brink of death if they exert an ounce more of chakra. I lean down to Sasuke, say into his hair, "Come on, I'll help you up. We should get out of here before this guy really loses it."

Sasuke doesn't move, instead watches Deidara without blinking, like he means to incite Deidara's irritation, wants to see what the other man plans to do if Sasuke doesn't lower his gaze.

"Those eyes," Deidara growls. "Those damned eyes make me go mad! I can't _stand_ them, always looking down on my art, always looking without amazement, always criticizing!"

"That's how he looks at _everyone_," I say, wrapping one of Sasuke's arms around my shoulder. "Don't take it personally."

"We're not going anywhere," Sasuke says, pulling away from me, "until you tell me where Itachi is. I don't give a damn about your insecurities."

Deidara deflates, apparently thrown by Sasuke's no-nonsense attitude. Sasuke blinks at him for a few more moments before deactivating the Sharingan, which seems to make Deidara even angrier.

"You keep underestimating me," Deidara snarls, reaching for the collar of his shirt. With one great forceful tug, Deidara tears his shirt off, the threads of his fishnet underlining snapping with sharp clicks, and reveals a number of odd markings, black squiggles, painted or tattooed onto his chest in the shape of a mouth. There are threads that line either of his arms, as though keeping them attached to his biceps, and one thread that cuts through the middle of the markings, like the lining of lips.

He takes the end of this thread, rips it free with another brutish yank that makes him grimace. Then, wrapping the frayed end around his finger, Deidara jerks the thread out, creating rivulets of blood that catch onto the thread and drip onto the grass, pluming from the open holes in his chest.

The line that the thread had crisscrossed begin to writhe. I narrow my eyes at it, convinced that I'm seeing things, until his chest bursts open, revealing sharp teeth and a slithering tongue.

I recoil, the sudden appearance of something so grotesque causing me to lose my focus on healing Sasuke and tumble back into the grass. Deidara, undeterred by the mouth in his chest, lifts a massive bulk of clay to the lips, and greedily the mouth begins to gnaw on it, chewing and swallowing as any ordinary mouth on a face.

The vibrations begin to buzz, rattling against my body and causing me to shake. They sink so deeply that they cut into my skin, and it isn't long before I have small trails of blood lining my forearms and shoulders, and tears in my clothes. They swarm against my ear, a constant whirr that warns, _Get away, get away, get away._

As though I needed more reason.

"Sasuke," I say, taking his arm and pulling it around my shoulders. "Two words: Fuck this. We have to get out—"

"No," Deidara says, his voice bordering maniacal. It causes me to freeze, halfway off the ground, and turn to him. The mouth on his chest has finished its meal, licks its lips, and flashes a deadly smile as cracks begin to sprout from it and spread across Deidara, like he is a molding that has finally be broken. The vibrations hike up, fill the air with such ominous noise that I'm not sure how anyone, even without the Genshindou, can't feel it, can't recognize its warning.

"You're not going to get away from me this time," Deidara is saying as the vibrations build up, accumulating in his chest. From the power that begins to exude from his chest, I'm surprised he hasn't blown up yet and alarmed that we still haven't managed to get away. "This is my ultimate art. I'm going to blow myself up—for real this time," he says, grinning at me with wide, wild eyes. "Death will make me a piece of art! An unbelievable explosion that makes indelible scars on earth! And finally—_finally_!—my art will have the praise it deserves! And _you_," he says, his voice becoming dangerously low, his skin ripening with cracks that thicken like rotting vines. "You'll certainly die."

Sasuke shoots to his feet now, swinging his arm off of me as though he means to save only himself. But then he crumples and I have to grab him to steady him and drag him away from Deidara, who laughs at our attempt at escape.

"The explosion will cover a radius of ten kilometers," he sings, eyes rolling into the back of his head in glee. The black lines on his body have thickened considerably, turning his skin to a near pitch darkness that doesn't match with the bone white modeling clay he had been using. A bump forms on his chest, like a malignant mole that needs to be removed but instead keeps spreading over his body, consuming him. "Don't think you'll escape this! Are you frightened now? Can you finally accept it now that it's determining your fate?"

Eyes. The lump on his chest has turned into a hollowed face with round, blank eyes and jagged marks that cut raggedy teeth into the darkness of its skin. The darkness takes over, the lines that had sprouted on his body now extending out, reaching to the nearby growth, threatening to suck all the color out of the forest.

Impulsively, I slam the heel of my foot into the ground, causing a wave of earth to burst up and crash over Deidara, encasing him in a substantial layer of earth that begins to close around him. If the blast will be as horrendous as he and the vibrations seem to suggest, then there's no way my earth will save us, not even reinforced by my chakra. But it will delay the blast for us, give us more time to run, and I continue coating him with as much dirt as I can, creating a tomb for him.

His words still cut through the air, escaping through the holes of the dome that I have yet to fill. "Admire!" he cheers, his voice hauntingly muffled. "Despair! And shout! Because my art—"

Silence. The calm before the storm, I believe they call it, because in those initial moments after he stops talking and when the explosion starts, there is nothing but an absolute calm, where I can hear chirping and the woods around us breezing along with faint whispers. And in that moment, I look at Sasuke and he looks at me, and there is something in his eyes that connects with me and I can only think: I need to save him.

Then the blinding light that signals that the explosion has started, that my barrier has been useless in trying to mitigate the blast, and I slam my palms into the earth, trying to create what I can to delay our fiery death because Sasuke. I need to protect Sasuke.

"Sasuke!" I cry, because the earth decimates even before I can bring it up to protect us, and there is no way that I can see to avoid this attack and as it is we are surely, surely dead and, god, I can't—

Sasuke's arm wraps around my waist and he draws me into him, my face slamming into his bare chest so hard that he grunts and my nose feels on the verge of caving in. I grab onto him as I feel the heat from the blast warming my arms and the back of my neck, and everywhere Sasuke's body doesn't touch mine and the bond thinks happily, _At least we are together._

Yeah. Thank god for that.

[+]

We're pulled into something thoroughly dark and moist and stinking of rotting flesh. That's about all I remember of after the blast because that's where I wake up. The smell allows for no slow, discombobulated awakening; immediately, I have to press my hand to my mouth to keep from gagging from the smell. Slime oozes between me and Sasuke, slipping between the threads of my hair and serving to make me shiver in disgust.

I feel him breathing beside me, my face pressed right against his grimy chest. He takes gulping breaths with no regard for the smell around us, like he can't taste it on his tongue. I try to wriggle away from him, but his arm is around my waist and grips me tightly.

"_Sasuke_," I hiss.

He shushes me, one of his hands pressing my head against him and the other caught between our torsos. His skin is sticky with sweat and slimy with ooze. I can't breathe so close against him, but I would rather suffocate than suck in this rotting smell that still manages to permeate my fingers and worm its way up my nose despite my lack of breathing.

Sasuke breathes hard and smells like smoke, and I can feel the burns that scorch his back because the bond splits his pain between us. His muscles ache and his head is on the verge of bursting, and he's angry that we're not already out of whatever he's pulled us into.

I wince as he fidgets, curses, and says, "Ren, can you—"

"Move?" I say and barely manage to turn my head, my ear pressing against Sasuke's chest so that I hear his heart beating fast. "Yeah right. Whatever the hell we're inside of—"

Breaks open at that very moment, spilling fresh air into the space, and Sasuke pushes me out before him. I roll out, onto my back, coughing and dizzy from the whirling movement, before Sasuke lands on top of me, crushing me and equally as stunned.

"Goddammit," I say, shoving him off before I see what lies next to us in a smoking mound: A giant snake with half dead eyes, wheezing as though its lungs are about to collapse. It towers over us, even on its side, and I let out a strangled cry, crawling backward in my attempt to distance myself from the monster whose eyes look hauntingly like Orochimaru's.

I feel footsteps padding up to us in the grass, a statement of "Man, you're all beat up! Who did you fight?" that sounds more amused than concerned about our state of health.

"You," the snake pants, its words laced with rage, glaring full force at Sasuke. "You _trashed_ me! Those eyes . . . you used those eyes . . . to control me . . . use me," it spits before choking on its final breath.

"Aw man," says the voice from before, and I turn to see Suigetsu, blinking nonplussed at the snake. "It died. You gotta treat animals better than that, you know. And to go controlling them with genjutsu and all, man . . . " He crouches to check on Sasuke's condition, and my gaze settles on Sasuke. My anger flares in my stomach and boils over when Sasuke gives a rattling cough, and I realize belatedly: We could have died.

"_You,_" I hiss, and my voice sounds so viciously close to the snake's that both Sasuke and Suigetsu jerk away from it before they realize it's me speaking. I scramble to my feet, and Suigetsu backs up, holding up his hands in defense and saying, "Hey, I didn't—"

I ignore him and grab Sasuke, digging my fingers into his shoulder. He grimaces and I do the same, but I push past the pain and say, "You _idiot_. Of all stupid, _stupid_ things you have done, this _by far_—"

"Whoa there," Suigetsu says, taking my arm and breaking my hold on Sasuke.

I yank free of him easily though and snarl, "Don't _touch_ me. And _you_," I say, whirling back to Sasuke, who breathes heavily through his mouth and looks annoyed to have me speaking when I should be healing him. "If you think you can come _this close_ to dying just because I'm around, you've got another thing coming! Because I'm not going to play nurse whenever you feel like killing yourself. It's like you have no regard for your body at all, like it's some kind of indestructible machine! Goddammit, Sasuke," I say, gritting my teeth. And then my heart tightens in my chest, seeing him scuffed and bloody and wasted, but most importantly alive, and I kneel beside him, brushing my fingers against his cheek, mumbling, "Goddammit, Sasuke. Please. Please learn to take care of yourself better."

"I had no choice," he mumbles, leaning his weight against me as his muscles threaten to give out. "There was no other way."

"Hmm," Suigetsu says, propping his hands on his hip. "That was an endearing turn of events, but you should really—"

"There he is!" comes a sharp voice, and without looking I know who it is. I draw away from Sasuke, bracing him as he tries to sit straight, as Karin and Juugo arrive at our side in a flurry.

"I knew you were here," Karin says, her face flushed red as her eyes scan Sasuke's half-naked body, and I wonder if she has to be such an obvious pervert. "Your chakra suddenly vanished, so I was wondering what happened. Did you just teleport or something?"

"We don't care about how you put yourself inside Manda and used a space and time jutsu to teleport to another area," Suigetsu corrects. "What we want to know is, why are you so beat up?"

"While we were waiting for you guys to return," I say, saving Sasuke the effort of explaining. He tightens his hand around my wrist, though I'm sure it's not out of thanks or comfort but more out of pain. "Some Akatsuki guys ambushed us. Apparently, one of them had fought against the Sharingan before, so he caught us off guard."

"Right before we were able to escape," Sasuke says, "we were hit by part of the blast."

"Hence, the barbequed snake."

"Well, it seems like we'll need to take a bit of a break," Suigetsu says, leaning forward to help me get Sasuke to his feet. "With a little chrysanthemum, we could have a nice dinner for tonight. Pity there isn't any around."

"Get real!" Karin says, stopping us mid-move. "Is this the level of the man who took out Orochimaru?"

"Orochimaru was already weakened," Sasuke grunts as I scoff and pull him upright. "That's all it was."

Karin scowls like, no matter what Sasuke says, she will always believe that he has some beastly power that could destroy the world. Her reaction prompts me to say, "Modesty's never suited you, Sasuke. Girls will just keep hankering after you, no matter what you say, so you may as well play it up."

"Ren has a point," Suigetsu says, grinning, as I slip Sasuke's arm over my shoulders to carry him. Suigetsu takes his other side. "Build yourself up into this big thing; it's not as though you won't be able to live up to your words. If anything," he says as Karin takes the lead, directing us to a motel she had heard about while scanning the village. "You could use all your fancy stories to help lure in ladies for me. You'd make a pretty good wingman."

"As if anyone would choose _you_ over Sasuke," Karin sniffs with a distasteful wave.

They go on bickering like that until we reach the motel Karin had seen, the Sunshine Motel, although its exterior aren't nearly as sunshiny as its name suggests. Karin, reluctantly, goes to get us a room while Juugo simmers into a cluster of nearby trees to talk to birds or some shit like that. Suigetsu stands with me to brace Sasuke for a while, until he decides it's taking Karin too long to get us a room and goes into the hotel office after her.

I'm left bracing Sasuke, whose weight is beginning to drop on me more heavily as his strength begins to give out and his knees begin to buckle. I prop him up against the wall of the hotel, watching as his head lulls back and forth. He's determined to stay awake, but I can tell his fatigue is catching up to him. After taking up all his energy into his fight with Deidara, he can no longer maintain that strong front for us.

I stay by his side, deciding that it really is taking Karin too long to get a room for us. I sigh, blowing my hair out of my face, when Sasuke's head falls against mine. Our skulls crack together with a splitting thud, and I wince, pulling away from him.

"Almost there, Sasuke," I say, patting his cheek. He takes a deep breath and jerks out of the reach of my hand.

"They're taking too long," he grumbles. His voice sounds like gravels grinding together.

"If I didn't know any better, I would have suspected that they've sneaked off to hook up," I say, and then grimace. "Bad mental image. It truly takes a sick mind to take pleasure in anything like that. Anyway," I say as one of Sasuke's knees gives out and he buckles under his weight. I catch him and push him against the wall, keeping his arm around my shoulders.

"In the meantime," I say. "I've got you."

He doesn't answer, instead focuses on recovering the rhythm of his breathing. I can feel the bond rustling, making mental notes about how I should heal Sasuke, where I should heal him first. There are wounds on his head from the blast, slight bruises that are starting to flower across his arms, and smaller cuts across his torso. The electricity that had filled his muscles have nearly dispersed into nothing. From what I can tell, he's received no injuries that will cause him permanent damage or seriously deter him for very long.

I wish Karin and Suigetsu would hurry with that room so I could heal him sooner.

My desire to heal Sasuke startles me. Not because I didn't expect myself to care for Sasuke—with the bond reinstated, how could I not?—but because it has never felt more inherent of me to take care of Sasuke. Granted, I've known and kept in mind that I was literally born to be his servant, but I have never been more willing to accept my fate than at this very moment, when we have just escaped death together and he is on the verge of collapsing in my arms.

I don't know if it's wholly because of the bond or whether this is the result of going through a life-and-death situation with him. Even if that were the case, then I should have felt this way after the Land of the Waves or during the Chuunin exams. But this is different. I can feel it in the way the bond simmers. Because this time, it's not out the bond's insistence. It's out of my own heart that I want him safe.

In my fist I grab the stone charm Rei had given me, holding onto it tightly and letting its curves and imperfections bite into my skin. I purse my lips, wondering if Sasuke has any of these same feelings. I'm tempted to peek into his head and check, but I can't risk doing that without him sensing me. So I decide to ask.

"Is this what it's supposed to be like?" I say quietly, tightening his grip around my shoulders and my hold around his waist. Sasuke gives me a cursory glance out of the corner of his eye. I can tell he's too tired to really pay attention to me. It doesn't stop me from continuing.

"With the bond," I clarify and let go of the stone. "These—feelings. Wanting to protect you and keep you safe and not caring whether I get anything in return. And, all things considered, back during our fight against those guys, we were pretty good together. In any other situation, I'm sure we could be the perfect shinobi team. Is this what it's really supposed to be like with the bond?"

Sasuke doesn't answer, only takes a shuddering breath, and allows his head to lull forward in his fatigue. I purse my lips, turn my head to face him. The vibrations rumble, signaling that Suigetsu and Karin are finally making their way back, Juugo in tow.

"Anyway, thank you for protecting me," I say softly before they come any closer. "Minus the snake part, I appreciate not being dead. So I'll repay the favor and take care of you now."

After all: It's in my blood.


	76. Godspeed

**Bound  
Chapter 76: Godspeed**

When we finally shuffle into our room, I clean up and heal myself in the bath, leaving Karin to heal Sasuke on her own, which I don't care for, but it can't be helped given our situation.

I have Juugo and Suigetsu dress Sasuke, much to Karin's dismay, before going over his dressings one more time, to make sure Karin's done an acceptable job, but mostly to annoy her. Despite his state of half-consciousness earlier, being healed has restored a small bit of his strength, and he sits stiff and straight as I examine him.

I'm distantly reminded of the time in the Waves, when I had taken care of Sasuke just like this. Then, I had forced him to heal naturally so that he would learn to take it easier on himself. Obviously that lesson hasn't sunk into his thick skull, otherwise he wouldn't be in this situation.

Sasuke hears the reprimand in my head and his eyes slink to me. I pointedly avoid his gaze, but I scowl as I finish re-bandaging the crown of his head.

"Did anyone get a lead on Itachi?" Sasuke asks instead of pursuing the memory of our closeness.

"Are you kidding me?" Karin huffs, leaning against the opposite wall. "You're half-dead and still trying to be a tough guy?"

"Is that your way of saying no?" I set the bandage into the first aid kit and regard her with irritation. "Because that could have been said without all the attitude."

"The longer we're together," Suigetsu laughs as Karin fumes, "the more I'm getting to like you, Ren. But, anyway," he says when Sasuke narrows his eyes at him. "I heard plenty about Akatsuki as a whole, but nothing specific on Uchiha Itachi. The Akatsuki are after special people, it seems, with specific kinds of chakra."

I freeze halfway through packing up the first aid kit we'd borrowed from the front desk. I take a deep breath, going through my motions as normally as I can without cluing Sasuke off that, for once, I know something relevant to the situation. Luckily, he's too distracted by Juugo speaking up to notice me. Suigetsu, on the other hand, having sensed my nervousness, watches me carefully. I make a rude gesture at him, to which he only shakes his head and smirks.

"From what the animals tell me," Juugo is saying as he peers over his shoulder where a bird has landed and sits placidly. "Akatsuki has several bases they operate out of. The animals say they feel strange, unpleasant chakra radiating out of those places."

Strange, unpleasant chakra. Sounds familiar enough. I remember how upset the spirits were when we were outside of the cave where Gaara's bijuu had been extracted. Animals are close enough with the spirits of the earth to be disturbed, too. I push the first aid kit away from me. Suigetsu continues to watch me from his perch, smiling demurely.

He says, "Hmph. Never would have guessed that a bunch of stupid animals could sense chakra. Then again, 'stupid animal' describes Karin pretty well, so I guess it makes sense."

Karin sinks the heel of her foot into Suigetsu's face, which mashes into a puddle against the wall, reforming just in time for her to crush his head in again. I let out a sigh, wiping my thumb over Sasuke's cheek, where a droplet of Suigetsu has landed, as Karin shouts, "You stupid asshole! If you don't think I'm a lady, then, hell, I'll show you just how unladylike I can be! I am fed up with your shit-talking—"

"Come on," Suigetsu protests, his voice watery from being unable to reform completely as Karin takes her fist to his face. "Cut it out!"

"Really," I say over Karin's shouts, flicking the droplets of Suigetsu onto the floor where it begins to slide back to his body. "You're making Juugo here uneasy."

At that they do stop, turning to Juugo whose bird friend flies away as his skin starts to stain over with the curse mark. He mutters, "Kill, I wanna kill someone anyone just kill them right—"

He lets out a howl that makes me purse my lips and hope no one from the front desk or in the rooms nearby thinks to come in and check on us. Karin and Suigetsu leap to their feet, Suigetsu securing his arm around Juugo's neck and arm while Karin grabs Juugo around his torso.

I frown at them before my vision brightens into a grainy sharpness, and I chide, "Sasuke."

"Settle down, Juugo," he says, meeting the other boy's eyes. Juugo freezes at the sight of the Sharingan, takes a gasping breath as the curse mark starts to recede. Karin and Suigetsu release him, bracing him as he falls to the floor, panting.

"S-sorry," he says between breaths. "I—"

"Stuff it," I say, reaching over to Sasuke who lets his head hang as my vision goes back to normal. His breathing has deepen and rumbles in the back of his throat in small snores. I tsk, tip him into me, and grab the pillow on his other side. I set the pillow down behind his head as I ease him into bed. To strain himself in such a way that he falls asleep sitting up—he truly doesn't know when to stop.

"I'm going to ask you guys something," I say, pushing Sasuke's hair out of his face as he sleeps. "And I want you to answer me honestly. Did Sasuke recruit you to wear him out? Because so far as I can tell, all you guys do is cause trouble for him and force him to clean up after you. Karin, Suigetsu—he didn't bring you along so you could argue like children and agitate Juugo. And Juugo—I'm not going to let you off the hook just because you have some uncontrollable killer instinct inside of you. Come here," I say, waving him forward, and when he doesn't approach me, I let out a sigh of aggravation and go to him, yanking the chord from around my neck.

"Come here," I say again, and this time he obeys, leaning his head forward so I can tie the necklace around him. The red stone glints against his pale skin. "This is a gift I got from that girl who helped me get to Sasuke," I explain, taking the stone that hangs at the end of the necklace and lifting his hand to it. "This artifact is supposed to center you. Something about how it comes from a stone that was blessed by the spirits that's supposed to make it this calming thing."

"Spirits?" says Karin, condescension ringing in her voice. "That's—"

I wave my hand to shut her up. It ends up offending her into silence, which works just as well. I say, "Rei's artifacts have yet to fail me, so I'm trusting this will help you. But my main point is," I say, meeting each of their gazes pointedly, "your presences alone are enough to wear down a whole army, but that isn't your purpose while you're with Sasuke. Your purpose is help him gather information and achieve his goal of finding and killing Itachi. So do what he's asked of you. And then when all is said and done, you guys can do whatever—beat each other up, go on killing rampages, whatever. But until then, stop screwing around. Understand?"

Karin scowls at me, Juugo blinks, and Suigetsu laughs. "Right," he says, giving me a small two-fingered salute. "It only makes sense that the boss's girlfriend is the boss when he's out cold. You have my cooperation, good lady, so long as a certain someone promises to also stop being a bitch."

"Suigetsu," I warn as Karin turns red with irritation. But instead of retaliating in her usual violent manner, she bolts up and says, "Whatever. I'll go _make myself useful_ then and buy some supplies, since it seems like we'll be staying here for a while."

She storms out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Sasuke doesn't stir, and I go back to his bedside, reaching over to smooth down his hair again as Suigetsu says, "You have some kind of magic, Ren, to be able to get Karin to shut up and disappear like that."

"Then I suppose it would take a miracle to get you to shut up?" I say, and Suigetsu laughs again, scooting next to me. Juugo shakes his head, redresses himself in his curtain, and leans against the open window. He distracts himself with the birds that flock to him, running his fingers over the stone charm the entire time.

"Something like that," Suigetsu says, grinning his pointy-toothed grin and drumming his knee. "But I'm sure, with your power, you'll manage to keep me pacified."

"Shove off," I say, the vein in my forehead twitching as Suigetsu leans in too close.

"Really, though," he says, "it's your presence that provokes Karin more than anything. I can see why she's intimidated by you though—you're prettier than her by far, talented enough, less temperamental, and just check out your relationship with Sasuke. I bet she wishes she could get away with touching him half as much as you do. Oh, now," he snickers as I pull away from Sasuke. "Don't let me keep you from showing Sasuke some love. I have a feeling he's been deprived of it for too long. That would explain why he goes around like he has a stick up his ass all the time."

"Why are you here," I start, giving him a sidelong glance, "if you don't even like Sasuke?"

"I never said that," replies Suigetsu, leaning back on an arm. "Sasuke's a cool guy in that he's tough and apparently indestructible, and in those ways I like him just as much as I could like anyone. But, if you really want to know, I'm only with him because he's the key to getting me another one of those swords."

He jerks his thumb over his shoulder to the oversized sword that sits in the corner, neglected while he relaxes. I tighten my hands around my ankles, turning my nose up at him as he says, "What I'm wondering, though, is why a girl like _you_ is sticking around with a guy like him. You don't seem to have the same goals, if you know what I mean."

"No," I deadpan. "I want exactly what Sasuke wants: To kill Itachi, and then go home."

Suigetsu harrumphs. "Go home?" he echoes. "Are Sasuke's plans really so uninspiring that, after he kills one of the most notorious men in the world, the only thing he will want to do afterward is go home to a suffocating, peace-loving village?"

I pause and blink at Sasuke as I consider the question. The way he sleeps, his lips slightly parted, his defenses down, it could seem that way, that he would want to go home after this arduous pursuit after Itachi. But this innocence doesn't reflect the person he is on the inside. So I say, "Maybe. Maybe not. Regardless of what he wants, though, it will be what we do. No matter what happens. Nothing will get in my way when it comes to this end result."

Suigetsu laughs at my naivety, says, "Is that so? Well, I wish you luck, then. It'll be tough shaking Karin off Sasuke when it comes time for you to leave."

Suigetsu continues to ask me prying questions in order to alleviate his boredom. He asks about Konoha, what it's like there, and when he finds that I'm more willing to talk about that than anything else, he continues on that tangent. I don't gush about it and I concede to him on some points that it is a very peace-loving village, but argue that it isn't complacent in its ways.

"They have something there," I say, strumming through the vibrations to mimic the chirping of the birds that still gather beside Juugo. "This will of fire that keeps them fighting."

"Admirable," Suigetsu says, his head lolling to the side, and I make a face at him as he says, "If those are the kind of people who hang around that village, I'm not surprised Sasuke left. I want to commit hara-kiri just listening to you go on about it."

He laughs when I scowl at him and says, "You know, for someone who willingly defected from Konoha, you seem to care about it an awful lot."

"I didn't do it willingly," I'm about to tell him, but it would be hard to explain that. So instead, I let him continue on and say, "You must care for Sasuke more, though."

"I don't," I start, and then, catching myself, I say, "I'm not doing this for him. I'm doing this for the village."

"Yeah," Suigetsu says, drawing out the word as he prepares for his next question. "But you couldn't have come all this way for Sasuke without feeling _something_ for him, right? Or maybe," he says when I don't answer, "you just won't admit it because there's someone else keeping you from declaring your undying love for Sasuke? Maybe 'the village' is symbolic of a single person you hold in higher regard than Sasuke himself."

"Suigetsu," Juugo interrupts for the first time. He looks unsettled as he eyes me, and the birds beside him ruffle their feathers. "Stop bothering her."

"I'm just trying to get to know her better," says Suigetsu, pouting, and Juugo shakes his head, discouraging.

"Itachi," I say, and they both look at me as I take deeper breaths to control my irritation and reach out to brush my fingers against a bruise on Sasuke's cheek. Sasuke winces, squirms a bit in his sleep, and his eyes flutter open, sliding to me. "I want to kill Itachi and go home. And if this is what it takes, then it's the absolute least I can do."

Sasuke blinks at me, still half-asleep, and I pull away, threading through the vibrations and making them play a song for him. I remember his mother humming this to us to help us sleep when we were little. The tune makes me a little drowsy as I play it, and it gets Sasuke back to sleep. I can only hope the song brings on happy dreams for him.

"Cute," says Suigetsu as the song fades out and I press my hand to my forehead, thinking that I should probably rest too. "Too bad Karin wasn't here to see that. She would have been livid. It really is a riot messing with her."

"You should rest, too, Ren," Juugo says as my head lulls forward. "Suigetsu has the effect of wearing people out. The more sleep you get now, the better it'll be later."

I can't help thinking that it won't be better later, not until I can get Sasuke home. But the sound of sleep is appealing. Because the bond splits Sasuke's injuries, Sasuke's tiredness drains me more than anything Suigetsu could do. As I lean against the wall, thinking that maybe I'll simply relax for a few moments, sleep grasps me and pulls me under.

[+]

I wake up to the loud crack of our hotel room door breaking off and slamming into the ground. I'm not sure how long I have been asleep, but my face is buried in the blankets that are bunched around Sasuke's shoulder, and I can smell the alcohol I had used to clean his wounds pooling around me.

I'm curled beside Sasuke, very nearly pressed up against the length of his left arm, although I don't know how I've managed to get here. I had been against the wall when I had fallen asleep, but when I see Suigetsu snickering to himself as he pulls free of the broken door that had mashed him against the floor, I put it together. I push myself up, the sleep like a drug to my consciousness, and rake my hair out of my eyes.

Too tired to glare at Suigetsu, I glance instead to the door, where framed in the doorway is Karin, her face pulled into the ugliest frown I've ever seen. She looks down at me like I am scum, and I realize, to her, I must be since I am so close to her dear Sasuke.

"What is it?" I prompt, annoyed to have been woken, to have been set up and, subsequently, caught in a compromising situation because I had let my guard down.

Karin raises her nose higher, purses her lips, and thinks better than to ignore me. "We're being followed," she says. "What do we do?"

Sasuke stirs then. He's still half-asleep, as his drooping eyes indicate. But he breathes out a single, definitive breath, and says, "We run for it. Get everything ready. Juugo, grab a map and mark the location of every Akatsuki hideout you learned about."

"Sasuke," I say, kneeling beside him. Vaguely, I realize how close I am to Sasuke, how as he shifts and sits up from his futon, he moves the blanket, which in turn move against me. I scoot away. "Sasuke," I say again as he throws off his blankets. "You need to rest more. You're not well enough to go. I can feel it."

"I'm fine," he says, and that is the end of that conversation.

We collect our things and check out of the hotel in a matter of minutes. Juugo shows us the Akatsuki hideout closest to where we are, and Sasuke sets our heading in that direction.

I know he is not okay. Regardless of what he says, he still needs to rest—or, rather, _one_ of us needs to rest because Sasuke hasn't recovered enough chakra yet after the battle he went through with Deidara and summoning Orochimaru's giant snake, and now he's stealing my energy. I can feel him sapping my chakra, my alertness, and I grow dizzy with each step.

"Are you ready, Sasuke?" Karin asks as we step over the threshold of the hotel, into the forest surrounding.

"Yeah. Absorbing Orochimaru's abilities has increased my own ability to recover," he says, pulling his cloak over himself. He motions for me to walk beside him, just as before, but I stand my ground this time. He quirks a brow and a tugging in my stomach moves me forward.

"Just because you can heal faster," I say as I take my place next to him, "doesn't mean you can run around all willy-nilly without any consequences. _Someone_ has to take the toll, you know."

"I'm fine," he says, and I suppose that's what matters.

"Whether it's Akatsuki or the Leaf that's tracking us," Karin says, drawing our attention, "they may have information on Itachi. Should we ambush them?"

"No," Sasuke and I say at once, though I know our reasoning is wholly contradictory. If it is the Leaf—and from what Karin has told us about how they are finding us, how many of them there are, it _is_ the Leaf—I don't want them to see me. They may know I'm with Sasuke, but having them see me with him will only confirm my betrayal. Plus, there are eight of them, two squads, following us. What are the chances one of them is Shikamaru? In that case, I especially don't want to face them.

Sasuke on the other hand doesn't want to waste his time on them. He knows they only have one goal: Bring him home, regardless of what he wants. If we get mixed up with them, there is the chance that they will overpower us and succeed in ruining all of Sasuke's plans, and he can't risk that when we are so close to finding Itachi.

"We need to find Itachi immediately. Worst case scenario," Sasuke says, taking the hilt of his sword in his hand, "you four end up fighting the Leaf shinobi."

While he goes to fight and kill Itachi. I look to him, open my mouth to tell him that's not the plan, that no matter what I am staying by his side, assisting him in killing his brother. He doesn't acknowledge me, and the same tugging that had compelled me to stand beside him now compels me to shut my mouth.

Sasuke extracts the map and points out the coordinates for the closest hideout. "For now, we move as Hebi," he says, "and go to the hideouts Juugo was able to collect information about. Let's go."

He tucks the map into his hip pouch and makes way for the forest. I'm about to follow when out of the corner of my eye I catch Karin stopping Juugo. She whispers to him, soft words that I pick up with the vibrations.

"Think you could get your birds to do one more job and help me out?" she asks, and pauses. My presence hasn't gone without her notice; she _is_ a sensory ninja. She leers at me when she realizes I'm not going to walk away and demands, "Can I help you?"

"No," I say, "but you can finish telling Juugo your plan."

Her nostrils flare but she reaches into her cloak. She pulls out an off-white shirt that is frayed and matted with dirt and blood. She says, "These are Sasuke's old clothes. They're drenched in his sweat and—"

"Why do you have Sasuke's old clothes?" interrupts Juugo, and Karin blushes, adjusting her glasses as she protests and tries to stammer an excuse.

"What's it matter!" she says, pulling a kunai through the clothes and cutting it into patches. She has turned an ugly shade of red that clashes with her hair. It's hard for me not to roll my eyes and be disgusted by her crazy actions. She's worse than the girls back home by far. "_The point is_, the Leaf have shinobi with a heightened sense of smell on their tracking squad, and they like to make use of ninja dogs, so we can use this to send them in the wrong direction."

I scoff as Karin holds the shreds of clothes out to Juugo. She replaces her kunai into her holster and stomps past me. Her cloak snaps and flurries in her wake and she says, "You know, even though you say you want to help Sasuke, I know you want more than anything for those Leaf shinobi to find us. What kind of teammate are you that you're so twofaced?"

"The best kind," I say. "I know what Sasuke wants, but I also know what he needs. And unlike you, I keep that in mind when I'm with him."

When we catch up to Sasuke and Suigetsu, they don't seem to have noticed that we've lagged behind. Either that or they don't care. Regardless, Sasuke leads us deeper into the forest, until we have reached the very side of a cliff. Above, the cliff sharpens to a point in the sky, nearly stabbing through the sun. The foliage at the top of the cliff casts shadows down the length of the earth, but not enough to reach us.

At the base of the cliff where the Akatsuki hideout is apparently hidden, there is a small statuette of a man with his hands clasped together in prayer. I click my tongue, pressing the vibrations around the hideout to make sure that it is truly empty, that there are no traps laid out around it. When Sasuke reads the all-clear in my mind, he says, "You four stay here and wait for my orders. I'll check it out."

"Sasuke," I say, grasping the end of his cloak and stopping him short. "Let me come with you. I can help you—you said this is our mission to do _together_," I say sharply when he tugs out of my hold.

"To do together," he says without looking at me, "but not to fulfill together. Stay," he repeats, and l stay while he goes, growing smaller in the distance.

Though he is taller, his shoulders broader, the scene is the same: Sasuke turning his back on me and walking away. I know I have done the same to him on maybe as many occasions, and I know that, to a certain extent, I hate him—who he's become—but it doesn't make it sting any less. I am, at the very least, trying to make up for all the times I have abandoned him, but until he completes his revenge, he won't be able to see anything else.

"Don't look so heartbroken," Suigetsu says, reaching behind him and drumming his fingers on the hilt of his sword. "He's like that with everyone."

"I don't need you to tell me how he's like," I snap, my hands clenching into fists. "I _know_ how he's like. And _you_." I face Suigetsu, who stares at me dully, a single sharp tooth poking through his lips and giving him the appearance of a cartoonish barbarian. "Don't talk to me."

"Look," Suigetsu says, following me as I go to sulk in more private corner of the forest. "I don't know what I did to get us off on the wrong foot, but I'd rather be on good terms with the boss's girlfriend."

"Don't count on it," I say, pulling back a branch to duck under it and then letting it fly back to hit him in the face. "You will never be in my favor because so far as I am concerned you're all scum, and as soon as Sasuke has killed Itachi, I'll never have to hear from you again."

"Oh, harsh," he says, and slides in front of me to stop me. "Ren—"

"_Don't_ say my name."

Suigetsu smirks, leans against a nearby tree. "You're just like Sasuke, you know that?"

"I'm nothing like Sasuke," I say. I'm stuck with nowhere to move: Suigetsu prevents me from advancing, and returning to where Karin and Juugo wait for Sasuke is less than appealing. I'm always stuck, I think, between a rock and a hard place, never able able to escape, even when I do.

"Sure you are," Suigetsu says. "You both have the same god complex—'don't say my name,' 'don't talk to me,' 'obey my every command because you are all lesser than me.' I'm sure if you had the right set, Karin would be falling all over you, too. But, as it is, she hates you because you and Sasuke are so compatible. Unlike Karin, though, I know the stories: gods don't do anything but tear each other down. Sasuke would be better off without someone like you. Which again begs the question, what is he doing with you? And how did you find us?"

Suigetsu steps forward, breaking through my personal boundaries. I don't move, unwilling to show that I am intimidated by him. He stands so close to me that when he speaks his breath hits my forehead, bristles my hair. He smells like sea salt.

"It's taken the other Leaf shinobi this long to track us," he says, "and even now they seem to be having trouble. But _you_ found us quickly, almost immediately after Sasuke had killed Orochimaru, as though that was the signal for you to come to him. So how'd you know where to go to catch up with us?"

"That's none of your concern," I say. "If Sasuke hasn't told you, then it's no place of mine to say."

"The thing is, though," Suigetsu says, "I don't think Sasuke would care at all if you told." Up close, Suigetsu's teeth are even more prominent when he smiles, reminding me of the jagged edges of a shark's mouth. I want to pull his teeth out one by one and dangle the shards from necklaces. "And I think you know that. In fact, I think you know more than you're letting on. Like at the hotel, when Juugo mentioned those strange chakras—you know exactly what's strange about them, but you're not telling us. So are you in cahoots with Akatsuki or the Leaf? Because, now that I think about it, the Leaf haven't been able to find us until you came along."

I feel the weight of my headband on the waistband of my pants. I wonder if Sasuke knows that I still wear it, or if any of them have noticed it.

"Even without me they would have come," I say, balling my hands into fists. "You can't kill someone like Orochimaru without gaining international attention, so don't think you've caught onto something—"

My lungs constrict and I choke. I know this feeling, this tension that builds up in my body and incapacitates me. I whirl toward the hideout, where I had seen Sasuke disappear only moments ago, and say, "Sasuke needs us. Let's go."

I bound out of the forest before any of them can say more, but when I pass Karin, I can see she senses something wrong, too. Either Itachi is in there, just as Sasuke had predicted, or Sasuke is caught in a trap that the Akatsuki has left over to snare trespassers like us. Whatever the case, Sasuke needs me and I should have never let him go inside alone.

The entrance to the hideout is a small opening that has been covered by a curtain of vines. I cut them with the vibrations before bursting through, only to be stopped by the three tunnels that fork the cave. I make a noise of aggravation. I try to get an idea of where Sasuke is through the bond, but of course he has blocked me off. The only alerts I get from it are the pings of his emotions that are too strong for him to realize he's letting them slip through. I wait for Karin to catch up to me before demanding, "Which way?"

Instead of pointing, she takes lead of our little group, just to spite me. I have no choice but to follow. Suigetsu falls into step at my side as we run and gives me a sidelong glance every few often, as though checking to make sure I don't have any heartfelt confession to make to him in the midst of our trouble. When I don't say anything, he does.

"That's what I'm talking about," he says. "'Sasuke needs us.' How could you have possibly known that?"

I don't answer.

After a few more twists, the tunnel begins to widen, grow taller, until it's like we're in the very pit of a volcano that has long dried up. The darkness spreads so far that I can't see the top of the cave, but I can see Sasuke, standing in the center, surrounded by black oblong shapes that flutter to the ground in smooth rocking motions.

"Sasuke!" Karin calls, her voice reverberating off the cavern walls so that it sounds like a million girls calling his name.

He turns to us, his eyes shining bright red in the dark. I stay behind the other three as we approach Sasuke, more thrown by the sight of him than anything. I keep forgetting that he is real, that he is close enough to my consciousness that I can be called to him so easily. I purse my lips.

"I thought I told you to stay back until I said otherwise," Sasuke says.

"Ren said you needed us," Suigetsu says, jerking his thumb at me, and I fold my arms over my chest. "We figured since the two of you were so close, it was the same thing as you giving us the order."

Sasuke glares and I deflect it with a wave. "I had a bad feeling," I say, "that was obviously unfounded, since there's nothing here, but—"

"Feathers," Karin realizes, and points at the objects still fluttering to the ground around Sasuke. "How did feathers—"

"We're moving," Sasuke says, brushing past us. When he reaches me, he puts out a hand and grabs my shoulder. "Follow me," he tells the others as he pulls me alongside him.

"Get off," I say, wrestling out of his grip, but he digs his fingers into my collarbone and keeps me in place. "Sasuke—"

"He's close," Sasuke whispers to keep his voice from echoing off the cave walls. "He was here. He keeps playing these tricks, but I've got him at last."

"That's fine," I say, knowing that he speaks of Itachi and feeling more calm about it than I had anticipated, "but _let go_. You're hurting me."

He doesn't let go. Not until we reach the entrance of the hideout. Then, when it doesn't appear efficient to hold onto me as we run through the forest, his fingers ease on my shoulders, and I step out of his reach. Without a word, Sasuke takes off, and we follow, obedient as ever. I tap into the bond to see if I can figure out where we're going, and Sasuke gives me the information with relative ease: we're going to the Uchiha hideout, not far from Konoha, and there, where his clan began, it will also end.

I marvel at the irony of this.

Rushing through the forest, I wonder how close the Leaf shinobi are, if Karin's plan of spreading Sasuke's scent throughout the forest is actually helping to throw them off. I can't decide if I would rather Sasuke reach Itachi and kill him or have the Leaf find us first.

After a few moments of consideration, I decide I would like to have Sasuke kill Itachi just to end all this madness, but I would rather the Leaf find _me_ first. I just want to go home.

Sasuke has all the personnel he needs to make this mission successful. He has Juugo and Suigetsu for their brute force, and Karin for her sensory skills, which proves useful the farther we run. While I can get a feel for things with the vibrations, it takes massive influx of chakra for me to notice something strange far away. So when Karin announces that there are identical chakras all around us, I have to search the vibrations to feel what she does. Unlike her, though, I faintly recognize the way the chakra causes the vibrations to fluctuate. I _had_ spent my last days in Konoha training with it.

Sasuke feels the chakra too, and narrows his eyes in irritation. I press my lips together and say, "Sasuke." He doesn't acknowledge me.

Suigetsu notices our exchange and picks up on how tense we become. "Do we need to take another route?" he asks.

"No," Sasuke says. "Ignore it. We'll charge straight through."

"Thank god," Suigetsu says. "Detours always wear me out."

"There's not a single goddamn motion that doesn't wear you out," Karin retorts, and I shoot her warning look, reminding her of her promise to stop arguing with Suigetsu. She harrumphs as Suigetsu chuckles. I stay close to Sasuke, close enough that if I just reach out, our fingers will brush.

I can feel the vibrations at a distance, rumbling as people cut through them, gain on us. "They're going to see us," I say to Sasuke. "They're going to find us."

"You should have no problem with that, then," says Sasuke, and I can't disagree.

The vibrations spike in front of me and I look up. Breaking through the trees ahead of us is a streak of bright yellow. When it shifts, blue eyes pierce us, and I whisper his name, which is lost to the wind and the chirping of Sasuke's Chidori.

Realizing what Sasuke means to do, I open my arms and leap forward, tackling the boy who has appeared before us and tumbling with him down through the trees, hitting the branches and slamming mercilessly into the ground. He lets out a gasp as the air is knocked from his lungs, but he is strong enough to sustain the damage.

I have landed on top of him, my arms still wrapped around him. I pull him upright and say fiercely into his ear, "_Naruto._"

He struggles against me, shouts in distaste and anger and disgust as I hold him tightly. "Get _off_ of me," he says, his hand slipping on my shoulder as he tries to shove me away. "Ren—"

"_Find me_," I say, gripping his cloak, feeling as his heart beats rapidly in his chest, drumming into my skin. I realize as I hold onto him how much I hadn't been expecting to see him again, how much faith I had lost in my friends to find Sasuke and bring him home. But now, we are the closest we've been in three years, and Sasuke is just beyond our grasp.

"Follow my scent," I tell him urgently, digging my fingers into the thick fabric of his traveling cloak, "and find me, Naruto. Help me bring him back!"

He freezes at my statement, but before he can reply I dig a kunai into his back, drag it up his spine, and he disappears in a cloud of smoke.


	77. Story of Boy and Girl

**Bound  
Chapter 77: Story of Boy and Girl**

I return to Sasuke and no one says a word. They don't acknowledge me, what I may have done, but they do pick up speed again, as though they had slowed down for me. I don't know how far we've gone, how close the Leaf shinobi are to us—I can't feel them with the vibrations, but from the way Karin's eyes keep flickering over her shoulder, they must be catching up. I hope they're running faster now I've given them a clue.

I can't try to place my scent everywhere without being suspicious, so I follow Sasuke silently, hoping I have given Naruto something more to look for.

The forest begins to spot with old abandoned buildings, made of nothing more than grey concrete that has, over the years, become infused with the foliage around them. The buildings look like they could have been old shrines; we leap over them without a second glance. I falter when I feel the vibrations hitch, trembling up my spine as an immense amount of chakra approaches us from the west.

Karin feels it, too, and announces it to the group, bringing us to a halt just before we're cut off by a blur of black and red. I immediately recognize the cloak—and the man wearing it.

He's Itachi's companion, the shark-like man who had laughed beside Itachi in Otafuku Gai when Sasuke had been broken. I don't remember his name, but he looks the same with his pale green skin, like the color of a mossy ocean. I notice the addition of more prominent smile lines at the edge of his lips. For the companion of a notorious murderer, he appears to smile too often.

He smiles now as he regards us, his arm thrown easily over his knee and his sword balanced over his shoulder. It towers a significant height over him, wrapped in bandages. "Sasuke-kun," the man says, "if you would please continue on by yourself. Itachi-san would prefer if the rest of us waited here."

I know what Sasuke is going to say, and take his sleeve before he can say it. "Don't you dare leave me again," I tell him as he gives me a sidelong glance. His eyes shine bright with the red of his Sharingan. "Sasuke, let me help you."

"This is my revenge," he says. This time, he doesn't jerk out of my hold, but takes my wrist gently, presses his fingers into the veins on my wrist like he means to take my pulse. He detaches my hand from his cloak, says so softly his voice is a near whisper, "Stay until I call for you."

His order would bother me more than it does if he hadn't said it so kindly. It reminds me of when we had been fighting Deidara, and Sasuke had told me he would protect me, his voice a comforting hum. It reminds me of the way I had pressed against him, his body strong and dependable and there despite the raggedy state he had been in. He had still managed to protect me.

He stands before me now, seemingly healthy, though the bandages wrapped around the crown of his head and both of his wrists say otherwise. And I know that if I reach out and touch his stomach, I would feel more bandages covering the faint traces of his injuries, and if I reach out and squeeze his forearm, he would flinch from the burns I hadn't quite healed because I like to remind myself that he is human and he heals like one—slowly and over time.

I wonder if, if I reach out and touch his heart, I'll be able to feel the bond tightening his chest and lungs like it's doing to me.

I twist out of his hold. "Stop it," I say, my voice snapping under how uncomfortable he's making me. "This isn't fair. I abandoned everything to come here, help you, and make up for the things I did to you in the past. I know a few moments of loyalty doesn't condone my actions, but I did not come with you to be left behind. You shouldn't do this alone, anyway," I say. "Your brother killed _my_ family, too."

"But killing him won't make you any happier."

"You're kidding yourself if you think it's going to make _you_ happier," I say, and this time he reacts. His eyes narrow, and for a second I think I see the tomoe of his Sharingan spin. "Sasuke—"

"How long is this going to take?" says the shark man at the other end of the roof. "Your brother may be a patient man, but I would think you would want to meet up with him quickly. If there is going to be a dispute, perhaps I can settle it for you so you can go. I'm not really in the mood for another fight, but if you insist on dragging this on or passing together, I won't hold back."

Sasuke doesn't look away from me. He waits so long to reply to the man that I think he's going to accept the offer and have the man finish me off. But then he turns and I hiss, "_Sasuke!_" and he ignores me and says, "There's no problem. I only formed this team to make sure no one would interfere when I finally found him. This works out perfectly."

Karin stutters, steps forward to my side. "That's crazy, Sasuke," she says. "We should kick this guy's butt and fight Itachi together!"

I think this is the first time we've ever stood together on an issue. It doesn't make me like her anymore. But this isn't her place. "Stay out of this," I snap at her. The sharpness of my voice causes her to stumble away from me and regard me with wide eyes. She had had the feeling that we were on the same side, too, however momentarily.

"_I'm_ not going to let Sasuke just run to his death either," she argues, and I see a memory flash behind her glasses before her gaze flicks back to the boy in question. "We're a _team_, aren't we? We're meant to help each other."

"Don't for one second think we're on the same team," I say.

"I wouldn't flatter you in that way," she says stiffly, and crosses her arms. "Regardless of what _she _says, though, I'm going to stick with you, Sasuke—"

"Don't even think about it, Karin," Sasuke says and her face falls. "You four wait here. This is my revenge."

He leaps off and shrinks in the distance, over the other barren concrete buildings, over the singing green treetops, and then disappears completely. As I continue to watch the horizon, I faintly hear a conversation happening between Suigetsu and the man, who Suigetsu calls Kisame.

I can't feel Sasuke through the bond anymore. He's so far gone that even the closest ties between us are nearly severed. I suppose this is what I wanted, this separation between us, but not like this. Not on his terms. Because if killing Itachi is his revenge, then breaking this bond is mine. He can't push me away like this. He's not allowed.

I pull myself out of my reverie when I see Kisame move his sword in front of him; it nearly blocks his entire body. Suigetsu mirrors his movements and it doesn't take me long to figure out what's happening.

"Stop," I say, raising an arm to stay Suigetsu's hand. "We're not here to fight. What if Sasuke needs us and you've wasted all your chakra reserves for some ego match?"

Suigetsu harrumphs, lifts his sword anyway, and says, "It's a trade-off: We stay out of Sasuke's way and he lets us do whatever we want on our free time. And what I want is relieve Kisame-senpai of that sword, the Samehada. It's something of a collector's item, if you don't know."

"No," I say and face Suigetsu, who scowls at me fiercely. "You don't get free time until Sasuke has completely followed though with his mission. Do you understand?"

"I understand," Suigetsu grumbles, "but that doesn't mean I'm going to comply. I've listened to you every other time you've given an order, Ren, but that's when I thought you would be valuable in getting me a better in with Sasuke. Obviously, that isn't the case, given the way he's just left you—"

I pounce on him, aiming for his throat, but he slides out of the way and reels the kubikiribocho behind him, slamming it down on the concrete roof right where I had been. I dodge the attack, digging my heel into the concrete and surging my chakra through it, hoping that there's a high enough concentration of earth in the concrete for me to manipulate it.

There is, luckily, and the roof comes up in a row of spikes that lead right toward Suigetsu. He sways to the left to dodge, but I have the vibrations on him and my chakra follows the vibrations like a guided bomb. He thinks to jump to avoid the spikes, digging his sword into the roof so that he can somersault over it and land safely on the other side of the building. I see him grin for a moment before I lose sight of him.

The vibrations keep track of him for me, and I realize Suigetsu is faster than I give him credit for, even with Zabuza's sword. I barely have time to fuse my chakra into the roof and bring up a band of concrete to protect me before Suigetsu drops the sword over my head, impaling it into the barrier I've created. I dart out from underneath and circle around him, bringing my foot down between his shoulder blades, but he rolls out of the way and I end up smashing my earth barrier into smithereens with the release of concentrated chakra in my heel.

My feet land with a click on the roof as Suigetsu drags his sword back, ripping a crack through the concrete. Behind me, Kisame says, "Well, I guess I won't need to fight you. This girl seems more than happy to kill you for me."

"That's because she's Kagiru," Suigetsu says, and I tense, allowing him to continue with a smirk on his face. "I remember your name now. You're one of the fabled Kagiru of the Uchiha-Kagiru bond. And here I thought it was all just a myth. But you've proven that it isn't. That's why you're so keen on healing Sasuke, why you're always with him, how you found us so easily in the first place. You have this bond that calls you back to him, don't you? No wonder you were so kind to Juugo. You have a curse mark of your own."

"What do you mean?" Juugo asks, gaze darting between me and Suigetsu. "What curse mark?"

"The Uchiha-Kagiru bond," Karin says, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose and regarding me with distaste, "was created hundreds of years ago by two star-crossed lovers—a woman from the Kagiru, a family of healers, and a man from the Uchiha, a family of powerful warriors who eventually settled the shinobi village of Konohagakure alongside the Senju clan. Though I heard that it was around the time of the founding that the bond died out. It hasn't been seen for half a century. You mean to say that _this girl_ is the continuation of that?"

I purse my lips and then straighten out of my offensive stance. Annoyed as I am by the way Karin has worded the story, I say, calmly, "How did you hear of it?"

"Around the hideout," Suigetsu says and Karin nods once, allowing Suigetsu to speak for her, "when Sasuke first arrived with Orochimaru, that's all they talked about for a while, whether it would be worthwhile to bring the Kagiru girl with them. It was Sasuke who persuaded Orochimaru it would be better to keep you in the village. Said something about gathering information about everyone for him."

For some reason, hearing this makes my head spin with anger. I wish I had the power to kill him right now. I wish I had the power to kill them all.

I bound forward, kunai at the ready, while Suigetsu positions his sword. I feint to the left, skid on my heels until I am behind him, and swing out my kunai, only to be stopped by a large, pale purple arm. I jump as Juugo reaches out to grab me and pulse the vibrations through the air to blast him aside. The vibrations burrow into the tiled roof of the building, creating a crater at Juugo's feet, but only succeed in making him stumble.

The force of the vibrations keeps me aloft for a few more moments, buying me time to consider my next move. I need to get his eyes off me, make him lose track of my movements. So I kick off the strap of my sandal and fling it off my foot, right into Suigetu's face. He's so thrown by the action that he doesn't think to move out of the way, and the sandal hits him right in his nose, knocking him off kilter.

I lunge for him then, only to be blocked by Karin, who grabs my wrist and launches me off the building. I'm caught by Kisame, who intervenes at that moment, letting me rest against him as he says, "Three against one? That's hardly fair. You three were almost playing nice earlier. Why the change of heart?"

"We didn't know we were dealing with a traitor," Karin sniffs.

"And how am I a traitor?" I demand as Kisame helps me to my feet. The concrete is cold against my bare foot and I stand lopsidedly without the other extra inch to even me out one side. "My allegiance rests with Sasuke, not any of you. And trust me when I say we are not a team—my loyalty doesn't extend to any of you, nor does my camaraderie, so I owe you nothing!"

"What were you keeping from Sasuke in that hotel room then?" retorts Suigetsu, and I stiffen. "I saw the way you reacted when I mentioned Akatsuki and what they were searching for. If you really are loyal to Sasuke, why didn't you tell him what you know?"

"That—you don't know what you're—"

Kisame laughs, pats me on the back so hard that I give a grunt. "We're also technically enemies," he says, grasping my shoulder, "but I'll fight on your side until I get the signal otherwise. I can't stand cocky kids like Suigetsu."

Suigetsu's mouth splits into his wide, pointy-toothed grin. "Servants of the Uchiha," he says, licking his lips, "both of you, until the very end. Isn't that right?"

I spin the vibrations at him in a whirlwind. By the way he begins to rush at me, he doesn't sense my attack, but Karin must feel my chakra woven into the vibrations because she jumps forward and grabs Suigetsu by his collar, tossing him aside. Meanwhile, Juugo half transforms, his black veined arms stretching across the rooftop to catch Suigetsu, who vaults himself off Juugo's forearm and right at me.

Kisame slides in front of me, blocks Suigetsu's attack, and allows me an opening. I charge my chakra into my hands, molding it into points at my fingertips, and race in to slash at Suigetsu, only to be stopped by Juugo. My chakra coated hands drill right through Juugo's transformed arm, but once my arms are through the holes I've created, Juugo's arm begins to heal, encasing my elbows in his thick purple skin. It's colder than the average body temperature, and I feel myself losing feeling in my fingers as the purple begins to consume me.

I release a noise of aggravation, surging chakra all through my arms and dragging it back through the shelling that has covered me. My action effectively cuts me free and severs the chakra nodes in Juugo's arm, causing his regeneration to slow to a near halt.

He's still close enough that when he transform his uninjured arm into an ax and swings it at me, I have to bend over backward to avoid it. Braced on my hands, I kick up to knock his ax arm into the sky and send him reeling, and manage a back-flip. I dig my fingers into the concrete and when I straighten, I bring a block of the roof with me. I whirl it over my head and hurl it at Juugo, who is still trying to regain his balance because of the weight of his arms.

Suigetsu bats the block across the roof, returning it to me, but he severely underestimates my strength. I course chakra into my fist and smash the block into rubble that crashes at my feet.

Suigetsu laughs, pausing the fight. He stands in front of Juugo and Karin, Zabuza's sword cutting a diagonal line through them. "So much for not wasting chakra on an ego match. I'll admit that you're both worthy opponents. I can see why the Uchiha favor you. Like, even though we're fighting right now, I can't help but like you more with every passing second."

"Don't," I say, "because I'm going to kill you. Whether it's now or after Sasuke has completed his task, you're going to die at my hand for stealing Zabuza's sword and, generally, being an ass."

Suigetsu blinks at me, allows his grip on the kubikiribocho to waver. His lips break into another pointy-toothed grin. "Is that why you harbored all that animosity?" he asks, allowing the sword to rest on the ground. "What's the kubikiribocho mean to _you_?"

"That's none of your concern," I say, holding onto the memory of the Land of the Waves, the memory of Sasuke, so small and fragile after Haku's fatal assault. My eyes begin to burn. When I swipe at them, no tears come away. "What matters is it goes back to Zabuza's grave where it belongs."

"So it goes back to the grave," Suigetsu says, tapping the sword. "What then? You can't keep thieves or enthusiasts like me from having at it forever. Nothing can be preserved the way you want it to be, no matter how hard you try."

"Who are you to lecture me?" I say, irritation grinding against the anger in my stomach. The feeling makes me sick, threatens to make me throw up, but I swallow thickly and focus on Suigetsu, whose silver hair glints in the light. "You, the boy with so little spine that he can melt into water and flow along with the currents like a jellyfish. Get it through your skull: I'm not like you or Sasuke or anyone. I—"

Karin gasps at the same time a current of fire ripples through my veins. She pivots in the direction that Sasuke had left, and we see it: a plume of fire flying into the sky and spreading across the white clouds that begin to turn grey.

"What," Suigetsu says as more clouds begin to roll over in the sky, churning, lightning sparking, "the hell was that?"

"Sasuke," I whisper, the bond frantically searching for him to make sure he's okay. It can't sense him, of course, but it knows we—_I_—have to go to him immediately.

"Don't think about it," Kisame says, holding out his sword to block me from moving forward when I begin to make way for the battlegrounds. "We may have been on the same team for a few minutes, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let you by."

"You know as well as I do that the battle is almost over," I say, pointing to the clouds that rumble. The lightning crackles around the clouds abnormally, like a bramble of thorns, and the streaks are thicker than average lightning bolts. "And I don't care if _they_ can't go," I say, jerking my thumb at the trio who scowl at my back, "but let me. If I interrupt, it won't make a difference to either Sasuke or Itachi. I am one of them."

From the smile that splits his face, Kisame is more amused than convinced by my argument. "You don't truly believe that. I've heard from the stories Itachi-san has told me. You've wanted to escape the Uchiha ever since the massacre, when Itachi killed both his family and yours."

I grit my teeth, ball my hands into fists. Why does it seem like I can't ever win, even when I try so hard to do right? My anger flashes and makes me short of breath, clouds my vision. But there is something unusual about these side-effects, something about the way it plumes from a deep part of my stomach that roils. I try to blink away the film that covers my vision, take deeper breaths, but it doesn't work. Everything blurs together. The air becomes so thick that I can't take a breath, and I'm left gasping for air as I tumble backward. Kisame, I assume, catches me by the arm and braces me, his enormous hands engulfing the whole of my bicep. I peel his hands off of me and flip through hand seals—dog, rat, dragon, snake—and press my palms to the concrete.

And then I sink through it, through the building, right into the earth below.

The earth is dry, cold, and I maneuver through it easily. They could all follow me if they wanted, I'm sure, but I leave without issue, and I wonder if their talk was just that—talk. They take pleasure in teasing me, the girl who ran away, because cowards are easy to make fun of.

I pull myself out of the ground, sucking in cold air that freezes my lungs. I nearly crumple to the ground as I try to stand. I catch myself on a tree before I stumble, and try the bond again to sense Sasuke.

There's no response.

I run through the remainder of the forest that splits me and Sasuke, breaking through trees and blasting apart bramble with my vibrations to get to him faster. I don't hear anyone following me, don't sense any chakras on my trail, and I don't know whether to be glad or irritated that no one is giving chase.

Then I remember: These people don't care about me. They don't care about what happens to me.

I've grown too used to living in Konoha, the peace-loving village, too full of kindness, fueled by a will of fire that ends up crushing them with concern. But I prefer it to this.

I notice an odd darkness writhing on the trees and ground, like smog billowing around the greater area of the forest in front of me. I come to a jerking halt, knowing, somehow, that this darkness is not something that I want to encounter. It's fire, I realize, and I watch as the fire sticks to the trees, despite the rain that starts to fall.

"Sasuke," I say, closing my eyes and pressing my hands to my temples. It is a feeble and pathetic way to try to reactivate the bond, but I don't know what else to do. Sasuke, I just want to protect Sasuke and bring him home. Finally I will be able to bring him home.

The bond sparks, sputters, and then ignites, allowing me to see the faint outlines of Itachi and a monster that looms over his head. I can't make out any more before the image disappears, but the panic that rises in my throat is enough for me to repeat the hand seals from earlier and go through the earth again, swimming through the ground to avoid the fires that won't extinguish through the flood.

I use the vibrations to measure out how far I have to go, how much closer I am getting to the boy I left but continue to run back to every time he calls. It doesn't take long for me to break through the ground, where I feel the vibrations don't shudder from the black flames. I lift myself from the earth, gulping for air that doesn't stink of rot and soil, and end up choking on the rain that falls into my mouth. This time, I actually collapse onto the rubble that coats the area in front of me, feeling the same tightness I always feel when Sasuke is in danger, when Sasuke is wasting away because of his recklessness.

Just when I think I won't be able to make it to Sasuke, the bond surges, tipping over a well of my chakra reserves. Still, I struggle to my feet, groggy from the dullness that throbs through my head because Sasuke is in danger. I need to reach Sasuke.

I push forward, stumbling through the rubble, slipping on the stone slick with the rain. My hair sticks against my face even though I had sliced it all off. Another stifling part of my life I thought I had been able to escape, but have failed miserably in doing so.

I can sense Sasuke's chakra emanating from nearby. I hone in on it, clambering over the jagged edges of stone that has been blown to bits by the show of force that had taken place here. The sole of my exposed foot is cut on the corners of the broken rock. The pain in only one foot is so distracting that I kick off my other sandal as well and bear the pain of cuts burning the bottoms of both my feet.

The area is completely decimated. Rubble is strewn across the area of where a building used to stand, and makes up a rough platform to walk on. The only part of the edifice that stands, from what I can see, is a chunk of the wall with the Uchiha crest conveniently still intact over Sasuke's head. Surely though, Sasuke is there, pressed against the wall as Itachi encroaches upon him.

"Sasuke," I call, and see, very minutely, Itachi's shoulders tense. He pauses as I leap over the rubble to reach them, and his eyes slink over to me, momentarily freezing me in place. His eyes don't shine Sharingan red; they have the misty film of cataracts over them instead, like he is in a perpetual state of daydreaming.

That's when I start to recognize all the symptoms: His movements are too lethargic, his muscles too shaky as he attempts the very simple task of raising his arm. There is something very wrong with him, something other than the fact that he has wasted all of his chakra that is—and probably has been for a while—killing him.

I hold my ground, taken aback by the state of him. The corner of his lips lilts up before sagging again, and he turns back to his brother when he realizes I'm not going to move. Itachi reaches out a hand to Sasuke's face, Sasuke who trembles and cowers in front of him. Blood pools from the palms of Itachi's hands, dripping and muddling in the rain.

Then Itachi presses two fingers to Sasuke's forehead, just like he used to do when Sasuke had been bothering him. The gesture is so kind and familiar that it stops my heart for a minute. Sasuke stares at his brother, stares at the blood trailing from Itachi's mouth, the mess of his hair, the bruises already forming on his sallow skin. I wonder how I hadn't noticed it before, this sickness raging within Itachi. I shouldn't be thinking this, should be concerned about Sasuke instead, but I have never seen Itachi so defeated, so thoroughly worn that he won't recover.

"Sasuke," I breathe, slowly inching up to him. He startles, turns to look away from his brother as he notices me for the first time. He regards me with wide, terrified eyes. To see these boys out of character splinters my heart, and I'm not sure why I left them behind in the first place. "Sasuke," I say, holding out a reassuring hand, "don't—"

And then Itachi slips.

I leap over the stone then, sliding forward and catching Itachi before he collapses completely. His body is cold pressing into me, and he's heavier than I expected. I stumble when I catch him, backing into Sasuke who does nothing to help me, but that I understand.

There is a moment of recognition in his eyes as I brace him, but it's gone in an instant. I let him down easily, laying him on his back and moving the hair from his face as his breathing slows to a stop and his eyes stare wide at the rain, which pools on his lower lids and rolls down his face.

I press my hands to his chest where I can feel his heart stopping, see the lesions that amass in his chest, lungs, the muscles surrounding. I should have seen it, should have noticed in the way he took those shaky breaths, but I hadn't, and I have failed as a medic, as a Kagiru. If I could save him, if I could revive him, then I'd do it. As one of the Uchiha, he is my lord and master. And that last gesture he paid to Sasuke, that simple, easy flick to his forehead—that makes me think there is a little bit of humanity left to him. There is a little bit of my idol left.

It's too late for that.

His eyes are blank, and there is something odd about what light is left in his irises. A certain deadness that doesn't come with death, that existed long before all this. I lean closer, trying to pinpoint what exactly this means, but I'm overwhelmed by a sadness that shouldn't belong. This is the man whose hands are stained with the blood of my family.

"Sasuke," I say, gently cupping my hand over Itachi's face, swiping the rain off his cheeks. "He's dead. You're safe. Sasuke?" I ask, looking up at him. The blood that had been on Itachi's hand smears his face and begins to smudge with the rain that falls on him. There is an unsightly line of blood that gathers on Sasuke's eyelid too, and begins to drip down his cheekbones like tears, making my skin squirm. I'm about to ask him if he's all right when he convulses and then topples over.

I catch him and ease him down. I turn him onto his back, but it's a painful process. I can feel the stabbing in his lungs as he moves, the way his muscles shake as he tries to brace himself without me, and the way he becomes dizzy as he realizes it's useless. He gives into me, allowing me to adjust him and make him comfortable and squeezes my fingers when I take his hand and heal the burns.

"Sasuke," I say, leaning closer to him until my face hovers above his. There is a streak of blood from Itachi's fingers that cuts under Sasuke's left eye, down his pale cheek, and stops at his jaw line. I wipe it off with a sweep of my hand. "Sasuke. You're going to be all right. I'm going to fix you up and then we're going to go home, right? You've killed him; you've gotten your revenge, so we go home now, okay? Hey," I say sharply when his eyes start to close. I take his face in my hands and he startles, his eyes opening wide to meet mine.

"Sasuke," I say over the rain that burns my body, "promise me. _Promise me_. We go home after this. I'm going to heal you and we're going to go home to Sakura and Naruto and Kakashi and Shikamaru, okay? We're going to go home to our friends."

He blinks at me, comprehension leaving his eyes as his fatigue takes over. But then his lips quiver and he mumbles something, and when I prompt him he says, "Yes. Home. That . . . . Yes."

"Yes," I say, smiling so widely my cheeks begin to ache. "Home. _Home_. Thank you," I say, leaning down and speaking into his hair as he finally falls asleep. "Thank you thank you thank you thank you."

I brush his hair out of his face, smudging the dirt on his forehead. I am in wonder at how small and frail he looks. It reminds me of when we were kids, when I had really seen him for the first time. I mean, I had always been around Sasuke and the Uchiha. I don't remember when my friendship with Sasuke began. But there was this morning after I had finished learning about herbs with my mother and my ankle started to ache. I told my mother about it after I couldn't figure out why I was hurt, and as she examined it, I said, "I think Sasuke-kun might be hurt, too."

My mother stopped prodding my ankle and examined my face carefully, squinting until her eyes disappeared into slits. Then she stood and called for my father, who I saw race down the steps of our porch. My mother returned to me, carrying bandages, but she didn't wrap up my ankle like I was expecting her to. She sat with me as my father came back up the pathway, cradling Sasuke in his arms, with Itachi trailing behind them.

As it turned out, Sasuke had been training with Itachi in the field and twisted his ankle doing some trick to impress his older brother. My mother healed him up, wrapped his ankle for good measure, and my father patted my head and said, "This is what we've been waiting for. This is it. This marks you the caregiver of the Uchiha."

I turned to Sasuke, then, blinked at him until he blinked back at me and smiled and motioned to his injury. "Pretty cool, huh?" he whispered and then hobbled off to chase his brother like he always did. I watched his back recede in the distance, his short arms swinging at his side, and I realized how much he did mean to me, had meant to me even without the bond behind me to keep me with him.

But moments like that never last for long.

I heal Sasuke slowly, taking care to not bump Itachi. Burns cover Sasuke's arms, and when I rumble my fingers over his body, electricity sparks beneath his skin and disrupts the flow of his chakra. I begin to revert the electricity back into chakra, diverting smaller doses of it to his central nervous system to make sure it can still keep up with his brain waves and so I don't overwhelm his body with too much chakra while he is still weak. After I've finished, I begin to heal the cuts and bruises and burns, but jolt to a stop when I hear someone say, "Well, what do we have here?"

I look to where a man sits on the crumbling wall Sasuke had been backed up against during the last moments of the fight and wonder why I hadn't felt a shift in the vibrations. An orange mask that swirls into a black hole over the man's right eye obscures his face, but there is his undeniable allegiance all over the black and red-cloud dotted cloak he wears.

He is the last thing I remember before struggling to wake up, my head thick and heavy and pounding.


	78. Missing

**Bound  
Chapter 78: Missing**

The voices I hear next are familiar, reassuring in their familiarity. Hearing them scares me, and I groan, pulling my head up against the mud that has collected under my cheeks.

My muscles don't work the way they should, locking and then collapsing beneath me as I try to push myself up. A pressure hovers in my lungs, makes it hard to breathe. My stomach roils with sickness, my eyes blur in and out of focus as I blink, and my thoughts are less than coherent.

I can't remember where I am, why I am here, sitting in the pouring rain, marinating in the slick mud, my body unresponsive to my commands. All I know is that everything hurts and I am not where I should be.

The voices. The voices that I hear are coming closer, and my fear overwhelms the comfort the voices give me. The only thing I can think is _I have to get away_.

There is nowhere for me to escape, though, and no way I can escape with the way I am. There is nothing for me to do except be captured by these voices that speak to me.

Do they speak _to_ me, or _about_ me? I remember asking myself the same question the morning after the massacre. This only makes my fear escalate, the sickness in my stomach boiling over and threatening to pour out of my mouth. I need—Sasuke.

"Sasuke," I say, my voice breaking, hitching as I heave myself up, as I remember: Sasuke. He had defeated Itachi. I was healing him. We were going to go home. And then—and then someone, someone with a mask, someone from Akatsuki. Someone had taken it all away because I don't feel Sasuke anywhere nearby.

And the bond. Where is the bond?

A shadow falls over me, momentarily blocks my face from the rain, and a hand grasps my shoulder as something else nudges my side, helping me onto my hands and knees. My eyes widen in alarm and I lift my face to meet another, whose mouth splits to reveal pronounced canine teeth with matching eyes that have sharp, vertical slit pupils, and a wild mop of hair to complement his animalistic features.

Kiba says, "Ren . . . !" as Akamaru lets out a small whimper at my side, nudging me again with his muzzle like he wants me to stand.

I blink at them, in wonder at how they're here. But I don't know how to speak, don't know how to think of anything other than Sasuke, where he could be, where he could have gone? That masked man—that masked man must have taken him, but where? _Where?_ And why can't I feel him, why can't the bond feel him in the slightest?

It's like the past three years all over again. I had him so close, and lost it all in a matter of seconds.

More footsteps, more voices, more people closing in on me. I recognize all their chakras, but they are not the ones I'm looking for. Where is the one I'm looking for?

"Hey, are you all right?" Kiba says as I continue to stare at him, unconcerned by the fact that he has found me and totally consumed by the fact that I have lost Sasuke. "Ren, can you—"

"Sasuke," I say again, and again my voice crackles. "Where is Sasuke?"

Kiba startles, lowers his gaze. His reaction to my question is enough to send a surge of energy into my body, and I grab the front of his shirt, yank him forward.

"Where is Sasuke!" I repeat, my hands shaking and tightening on Kiba's jacket. Kiba takes my wrists, more to brace me than to pull me off of him as I fall forward, unsteady on my knees.

"He was here," I say, ignoring the other shadows that begin to surround me. "He was just here, I was with him, _where is he now_?"

"I don't," starts Kiba, but someone else leans in, cuts him off with, "We don't know. He's gone."

Bright green eyes framed by a shocking shade of pink hair hold me in place. Sakura, her eyebrows drawn together in sadness. Perhaps irritation and suspicion. But that's not the part that bothers me.

"Gone," I repeat, letting go of Kiba's jacket. He keeps his grip tight around my wrists, holds me upright in doing so. "No. _No._ He can't—we were so close," I say, and finally take a moment to look around at the people who swarm me. Pearl white eyes. Eyes shaded by sunglasses despite the lack of sun. Dim blue eyes, defeated eyes, followed by a pair of eyes that almost match Sasuke's, and then eyes that half match.

Sharingan. There is a Sharingan that shines bright red, right at me. My heart lurches, but the bond hisses, knows that Sharingan is all wrong because it isn't in the head of an Uchiha. The simple sight of it, though, causes my brain to snap in line, and then I see them all.

Hinata, Shino, Naruto keeping his distance from me, his head lowered in the rain that weighs him down. Sai, stoic as ever, and Kakashi—Kakashi who has pushed his headband out of his face, revealing the Sharingan and causing me to wince and gasp and cry.

Because we were so close. We were so close to home, so close to reuniting with everyone, so close to finally putting an end to all of this madness. And then it was all swept away by a man in a mask who must have taken Sasuke from me. There is no other explanation.

"I almost had him," I say, gritting my teeth as the rain melds with my tears. I look between Sakura and Kiba, the two closest to me, and beg for them to believe me when I say, "He was right here, right beside me, and I was healing him after he beat Itachi. He killed Itachi! He got his revenge, and he promised me—_he promised me, he really did_—that he would come home. I was going to take him home," I say, and give up on trying to see if they believe me, crumpling forward until my head falls into Kiba's chest and he has to let go of my hands to brace my shoulders as I cry and say, "I was going to take him home and we were going to be _happy_."

"Hey," Kiba says, giving my back terse pats of comfort. "It's—"

"It's not okay," I say through teeth gritted with frustration. "Because I almost had him and he slipped through my fingers again. I couldn't save him this time and it's all my fault because I had him. I—"

"We all lost him."

The one who speaks is Naruto, and I raise my head over Kiba's shoulder to look at him. He has his back turned to me, his face tilted toward the sky. The traveling cloak that covers him hides all of his tells, but I have an idea of what he may be thinking, how he might be feeling, because I feel it too.

Kakashi lets out a sigh, directs the Chuunin forward, and says, "Kiba, do you think you could carry Ren back to the village? She doesn't look like she'll be able to move very quickly on her own."

Kiba nods, is about to lift me onto his back, but then Naruto comes up beside him and stops him. "I'll do it," he says and crouches to allow me to stumble onto his back. I wonder why he even wants me near him when I've betrayed him and let him down time and again.

Once I'm situated, I close my eyes, leaning against Naruto as we're led through the forest, back to home.

Home. I'm finally going home. But I'm returning as a failure, just as before when I was looking for a way to break the bond.

[+]

Sometime along the way, I fall asleep to snatches of them talking about me.

"I can smell his scent all over her," Kiba is saying as the drowsiness starts to set in. "She's telling the truth."

To that, no one answers because the truth doesn't matter when we have failed so miserably. The truth doesn't help us bring Sasuke back.

When I am thoroughly awake, we're not far from the village gates. Everyone's pace has slowed to a walk, and sunlight breaks through the trees that rustle, welcoming us home. My vision blurs in and out of focus with my fatigue, and when I stir, Naruto stiffens.

I close my eyes and inhale deeply. The thick scent of grass envelops my lungs, overwhelming the smell of dirt and sweat that sticks to Naruto's skin. I tighten my grip around Naruto's shoulders and grumble, "Home. We're almost home?"

"Yes," he answers softly, curtly, not without awkwardness.

My dreams had been about Sasuke. I was with him in a darkness that began to consume us both, and no matter how hard I tried, I was never able to grasp on to him. Over and over, Sasuke escaped me. A few times, Naruto pervaded the darkness, held my sleeve as I reached for Sasuke, anchoring me down as I began to float away too.

I bite the inside of my lip as the sadness begins to well inside me, threatening to spill over as Naruto keeps his silence, not bothering to ask me if I'm feeling better or make jokes at my expense. In his silence, though, I hear just how angry he is with me.

"I had to do it," I say quietly. "You can understand that, Naruto. I had my chance to go after Sasuke and bring him back, so I went."

He doesn't answer immediately. But then Naruto turns, only slightly, toward me. I can't see his eyes, but his ear bumps against my nose and I have to incline my head into his shoulder to keep his hair from pricking my cheeks.

"Yeah," he says, equally as quiet, though his voice is considerably sadder. I sigh and shut my eyes as he says, "But you didn't have to go it alone."

I only did what he would have done. If Naruto had gone instead of me, everyone would have been more tolerant toward him than they will be toward me so far as a punishment goes.

Awake as I am, no one talks to me. I don't know if they don't realize I'm awake or just don't know what to say to me, but we go the rest of the way in silence. Once inside the village, we report to the Hokage's office immediately. Inside the Hokage's office, Naruto lets me down and I step onto bare feet, tender and bruised from—

I wince as a pain shoots through my brain like lightning. Standing in front of Tsunade on wobbly legs, I grip Naruto's arm, like he'll be able to protect me from the glare she sends my way. I can't tell what she's displeased about: the fact that Sasuke managed to slip through our fingers again, the fact that I once again made it home without him, or the fact that I'm here at all.

Probably all of the above.

"I see," is all she says when Kakashi finishes giving his report. She presses her fingers to her forehead, letting out a sigh in the process. She says, "If that's the case, the least you can do, Ren, is tell us what information you were able to gather from your time with Sasuke."

I free Naruto's sleeve to fidget with my own. I say, "I wasn't with Sasuke for long, and during that time—"

I wince just like before, when I had been thinking about my feet. I look to them now, notice how dirty they are, how I don't wear any sandals and am even more sensitive to the vibrations. I can feel people walking along and speaking to one another on the floor below, can feel the way the wind blows against the building. I can feel Naruto's and Sakura's hearts racing as I'm about to tell them what I know about Sasuke. But I have a question first.

"What happened to my sandals?" I ask, looking up. The movement is too fast for my still aching head. Dizziness swarms me, causes my vision to blur over with pinpricks of grey light, like the Genshindou is activated and all I can see are the threads of vibrations, buzzing and swaying around me.

My question is met with more silence, during which I am able to recover and focus properly on the shinobi surrounding. They mostly regard me with confusion, unable to answer my inquiry.

"We," Sakura starts slowly, "found you like that. I offered to heal you, but you refused. You don't . . . remember?"

I vaguely remember the last part. I hadn't wanted Sakura to touch me, hadn't wanted her to grant me the kindness of healing my feet. But I don't remember losing my sandals, don't remember taking them off in the first place. They must have gotten caught as I was—

This time the pain cuts right through my eyes, a knife slashing horizontally in the back of my head and causes me to press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. I groan, curling in on myself, but I don't feel hands reaching for me to make sure I'm okay. I am immensely deserving of and sad about this.

"Disregard the sandals," Tsunade says. Her tone has grown urgent, irritated. "What do you remember of Sasuke? What are his motives now that he's killed Orochimaru and Itachi? Where has he gone?"

"I," I start, raising my head. I half-expect blood to be pooled on my hands from the pain that had occurred in my eyes. Faintly, I remember seeing bloodied hands leave a streak of red across Sasuke's face. I remember the cold, the way the rain soaked my clothes, but nothing substantial. Nothing about whether I talked to Sasuke after the battle, nothing about whether I was able to get him somewhere safe.

"Ren," Tsunade prompts.

"I . . . don't know," I say, my words coming out in a jumble. "I don't remember. There isn't—I _can't_ remember," I correct when I see the way Tsunade narrows her eyes at me. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I can't remember."

"What happened before?" she asks. "What happened when you initially met with him? Where did you go first?"

"There was . . . the Land of the Waves," I say quickly, aiming to level her temper with any detail I can bring to mind. "After I left the village, I went to the Land of the Waves, and . . . and there was . . . we—that is, me and the three other ninja who helped me find Sasuke—we tried to follow Itachi's—spirit," I finish lamely, realizing midsentence how nonsensical this all sounds. "We tried to find Itachi to get to Sasuke, but Sasuke ended up calling me through the bond and we found him off—god, off the coast," I say through the pain that begins to well up in my pit of my stomach and reach like vines up my throat, constricting my airways. "Off the eastern coast of the Fire Country."

"And after that?" says Tsunade, her fingers digging into her forearms. "What happened after you found him? Was he with anyone else? Did he say what his plans were after he killed Itachi?"

After I found him. There were people with him, people whose personalities I didn't like, couldn't tolerate, wanted to kill after Sasuke succeeded in killing Itachi. They were despicable, but they were all the familiar parts of being with Sasuke. They gushed over him, they feared him, they obeyed him and regarded him like he was their own personal god.

But their names and faces escape me. Their appearances, backgrounds, abilities are all lost to me as I try to recall the finer details about them. They blur together with the landscape, their every action like the sluggish movements of a slow-motion film.

"I don't," I mumble, "remember. I . . . I'm sorry. I can't—"

Naruto sucks in a deep breath and turns on his heel. He storms past Kiba and Hinata who are filed behind him and stomps out of the office. The door shuts with a harsh snap behind Naruto that makes me flinch and burrow my face into the crook of my elbow. It's a miracle that I remain standing given the way Naruto's reaction shakes me. And then when Tsunade lets out a frustrated sigh and says, "Very well. Your teams are dismissed. Kakashi, if you would, escort Ren to the interrogation squad. See what they can find out from her, and then have them report back to me."

When Kakashi takes me by the arm and begins to lead me out of the office, I ask him, very meekly, pointedly avoiding his eyes, "Can I go home first, at least? So I can clean up?"

After a hesitant pause, he consents. Kakashi doesn't speak to me as we go to my house. He only very briefly meets my eyes when I exit my house, cleaned and healed. I hold the metal plate of my headband in my hand, unattached from the waistband of my pants, as I move down the porch. I don't want to have it off anymore or hidden, don't want to give anyone reason to think that my allegiance doesn't lie with this village, first and foremost. Kakashi sees it glinting in the light and straightens.

He says, "I have something for you."

Kakashi digs into his hip pouch and extracts a long band of dark blue fabric. It's the cloth for my headband, I realize. Kakashi gives it to me and I press it between my fingers, finding comfort in the worn threads, the way I can feel the heat of my skin through the cloth.

"We ran into a squad as we were coming to find Sasuke," Kakashi explains. "A group of young shinobi, no older than you, who looked worse for wear. They told us that you were with Sasuke and gave us this to track you with."

I think of Rei, of the last time I had seen her. It was just as we found Sasuke. She was—injured, I think, and she promised to tell everyone back home that I was safe. Just like before, when she had promised to research the bond for me and help me find a way to break it, she has kept her word and fulfilled her promises.

I reattach the metal plate to my headband, saying, "They were the ones who helped me get away. They used to be Otonin, but were exiled from their village for wanting to help me break the bond. The girl in that group—her name is Kannagi Rei. Her family and mine go back. That I can remember."

Kakashi nods and allows me to take the lead. The information I've just given him is useless in regards to Sasuke, but it's the best I can provide, and I will do my best to remember anything I can.

The walk to the interrogation building is the most nerve-wracking part of being back in the village. I'm not afraid or self-conscious of the way passing shinobi look at me, judge me because they know my story, how I had run away and, essentially, betrayed my village. No, I'm more nervous about seeing one person in particular, but our paths don't cross and I am relieved when Kakashi and I enter the interrogation building without seeing him.

Once inside, Kakashi hands me off to the lead interrogator, a man named Morino Ibiki who I recognize from the Chuunin exams all those years ago. Ibiki is intimidating to me only in appearance. The scars that run across his face, the gloom of his attire—they are characteristics straight out of the Bad Guy Handbook. But I know so long as I tell him what he wants to hear, he will be kind enough.

I have no intention of lying. I have nothing to hide. Any information that I could possess I would gladly give up for the sake of the village. I tell the men of the interrogation squad this, and they seem to act more kindly to me than they would be if I were just some nobody. Besides, Yamanaka Inoichi, Ino's father, is one of the ones to interrogate me, and given his friendship with Shikaku, he knows better than to treat me like a common criminal.

I wouldn't have been upset even if they treated me like trash for all I did to the village though.

"The shackles are only for procedure," Inoichi says as some of his men clasp iron bands over my wrists that keep me to the uncomfortable stone seat. Ibiki stands by the door, keeping up his bad guy façade by frowning and crossing his arms, leaning against the doorframe as he watches me.

"We've found that some people have bad reactions to our techniques," Inoichi is saying as I return my attention to him. "This is one way we've found to keep everyone from getting hurt during the process. Not to mention, whoever installed this mental block in your head may have placed other traps to combat exactly what we're trying to do now. Don't panic," Inoichi says as my hands grasps on the armrests when someone comes up beside me to attach electrodes to my wrists, where my heartbeat can be easily read. Their hands and the electrodes are cold, and they pull at my skin, and I wish this didn't have to happen at all. "We won't hurt you."

"Thanks," I say with a small flick of my fingers. "But do what you have to if you think you find anything that may be remotely useful to the village. How are we going to start?"

"Like this," he says. Inoichi leans down to me, wraps the stretch of his hand around my forehead, his thumb pressed to one temple and his pinky pressed to my other. His hand, I think with a shiver, could easily crush my skull. "You won't feel a thing."

I don't.

There is only a dreamy memory sequence, where I see snippets of the things that have happened to me in the past few weeks. I see faces I recognize but can't name, with personalities and techniques I can't place, and lastly I see a skimming of the most recent events, when I had Sasuke in my hands, cradled in my arms, ready to be taken home, and then gone.

It takes me a moment to collect my thoughts after Inoichi releases me. My mind is muddled and clouded, my throat thick and dry. I swallow, trying to get some kind of moisture, but it ends up making me choke. I have a coughing fit that causes a few standby medics to worm to my side.

They lift my head, squeeze their fingers into my cheeks to get me to open my mouth so they can pour water into it. I spit out a good portion of the water before I manage to swallow, and when I do, it's not near as satisfying as I imagine it should have been.

"Sorry," I croak, hoarse. Inoichi waves it away and has his men come by to free me from the chair. They yank the electrodes from my arms, leaving stinging red marks behind where the electrodes have sucked onto my skin. I wince. The men don't notice.

"You were doing well for the first half of the interrogation," he says. "It was when we got closer to your memories of Sasuke that you started having a reaction. But that's to be expected if he was the one who placed this block on you. In any case," he says as I rub my wrists, which are raw from my unconscious struggle, I guess, "we weren't able to get much. It seems he was able to make you forget the names of his accomplices and whatever future plans he may have had. This isn't a simple mental block we can work past. He's almost completely wiped your memory of your weeks together."

"That must be the work of the Sharingan," Ibiki says, offering me his hand to help me off the chair. "Being that there's nothing left for us to do, you're free to go. The procedure took all night and most of the morning, so you're probably stiff. Good for you to go stretch your legs."

"There's no other way," I start, reluctant to move, "for you to get any kind of information?"

Inoichi takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, propping his hand on his waist. "Not without damaging your brain," he says, "and before you say anything, I'm not willing to go so far as to mentally incapacitate a promising young shinobi to get this information."

"There is word of another captive coming in from Amegakure," Ibiki says. "Chances are, we'll be able to gather information on him that will lead us to the Akatsuki man who took Sasuke. We saw him," Ibiki clarifies when I jerk in my seat at the mention of Akatsuki. "In your memories. An Akatsuki man was the last person you saw before our team found you, so we assume he convinced Sasuke to join with him to replace Itachi and then wipe your memory, though we can't say for sure."

"But," I say, looking between the two men. "But."

"Go home and rest, Ren," Inoichi says, lifting me out of the seat. "You need it more than anyone."

"But," I say again, and Inoichi sighs. "Why are you treating me like this? So kindly, I mean. Like I haven't done anything wrong."

Inoichi and Ibiki exchange glances. Then Inoichi says, "I saw into your mind, Ren. I saw your intentions. And not for a moment did you hold any malice toward the village."

"Although your methods of getting to Sasuke were less than desirable," Ibiki says, adjusting his gloves, "they were in good conscience. Coupled with the fact that you have . . . the burden of your ancestors hanging over your head, we understand that you may not have been able to help but do what you did. Not to mention, when you went away, Hokage-sama said nothing about placing a bounty on your return, which means she must have trusted that you would have come home on your own."

"In an interrogator's eyes," Inoichi says, smiling, "there is no evidence to condemn you or think you are the enemy. The Hokage has told us that we're to let you go as you please when we're finished. She probably isn't expecting you out for a week, though, but since we can't penetrate your mind any more than what's been attempted, we'll release you early and explain everything to the Hokage in the report."

"Besides," Ibiki says, "the effects of the Sharingan may wear off with time, as any genjutsu might, especially if the caster is losing power or doesn't know what he's doing. Additionally, any number of triggers can be enough to make you remember what happened before the Konoha team found you. In that case, you come to us immediately and we'll do some more searching. Do you understand?"

"But if he's wiped my memories," I say, weighing their words in my hands, "as you guys put it, then how are they supposed to come back? You don't mean to say they're just gone?"

Inoichi shakes his head. "That's not how it works," he says. "Perhaps we should have phrased that differently. It's more like he's _suppressed_ your memories. That's why we can't risk digging into your mind right now."

"It's clever, really," says Ibiki. "If he had just put up memory blocks, we would still be able to work around them until we find what we're looking for without any real risk of damaging you. Instead, he pushed your memories away, so that the work is arduous and potentially fatal."

"Given the power of the Sharingan," Inoichi says, "your memories may have been pushed into the deepest part of your mind that to risk having another conscience enter would wreck havoc on your body. Eventually, your brain would begin to destroy itself as it senses the foreign presence, or—"

"You could end up going crazy," Ibiki says. "Mental disorders like schizophrenia or dementia could set in. In this situation, the risks outweigh the benefits. We need you trying to remember what happened to you on your own. This is our best option."

"Go home," Inoichi says again, patting my head, and I'm reminded that he is a father by the way he smiles at me softly and sweeps his hand over my hair. "Rest. Though I'm sure the interrogation must have felt like it lasted only minutes, it's taken almost an entire day. No use spending your first day back in the village stuck in a place like this. Hey," Inoichi says, gripping my shoulder. "What's wrong? Why are you crying?"

I startle, reach up to touch my face, and feel, sure enough, tears. Quickly, I wipe them away, stuttering, "I—I'm sorry, I don't—I don't _know_, it just . . . I don't know," I say lamely, rubbing my eyes to make it stop. "Sorry."

"Usually they only start doing that when _you're_ talking to them," says Inoichi to Ibiki, who allows himself a small grin. "Anyway, no need to apologize. You've been through a lot these past few weeks. Just remember," he says, lowering his voice. "You are trying your best, Ren, and that's what matters. Now get out of here."

"One last thing," Ibiki says as Inoichi ushers me toward the door. "Do _try_ to remember. From what Inoichi has told me, it doesn't appear there are any safeguards or traps that have been built up in that brain of yours. Whatever Sasuke is making you forget, _he wants you to remember_, and with relative ease, at that. So if anything, _anything at all_, comes to you, report to us. Understand?"

* * *

**A/N: **Thank you all for the overwhelming response with the last chapter! BOUND has been on quite the ride since I first published it nearly three years ago, and I'm glad that so many of you are still enjoying it. Thank you for all the views and reviews and for simply coming back and reading with each update.**  
**

Amakawa Azusa asked a good question in the reviews with the last update and I thought I would answer that here since it may have occurred to anyone else over the course of the story. The question was: if the Kagiru plan their pregnancies around Uchiha pregnancy, why wasn't Ren born for Itachi instead?

There are other Kagiru beside Ren's immediate family. She had aunts and uncles and cousins, etc., and they were just as concerned about birthing "one of the bond" for the Uchiha as anyone else in the clan. So it could have been that Ren's parents hadn't met or weren't married at the time Sasuke's mom was pregnant with Itachi, or just that there were too many others in the clan already jumping on the pregnancy bandwagon that Ren's parents didn't want to overrun the Kagiru compound with too many children at one time, so they waited. A number of things could have happened that would have prevented Ren from potentially having an older brother, but your guess is really as good as mine!


	79. Remember

**Bound  
Chapter 79: Remember**

I stumble out of the interrogation building into a light brighter than any I've seen in a while. Ever since returning to the village, I had had the feeling everything would look different somehow. I had thought the air would be lighter, the dirt pathways smoother, the songs of leaves more lovely.

I don't feel any of that.

I'm at a loss for what to do. I don't want to go home right away; I feel like there's more to the village, that, maybe if I look closer, then I will see how things have changed since I've been gone. Then again, I don't want to go too far either, in case I run into—any of my old friends. Especially Shikamaru.

Though in the time I have been away, the village remains unchanged, I know the dynamic of my relationship with Shikamaru has changed, just like it had with Naruto and Sakura, even Kakashi, who had spoken to me kindly enough, but who I can feel looks at me as though he doesn't recognize me anymore. I can't imagine what it will be like when I face Shikamaru, when I see him and am caught between wanting to smile and laugh with him again and apologizing for everything I have ever done to hurt him and Naruto and Sakura and everyone.

I avoid the park, the Ninja Academy, the tallest buildings in the village—all the places I wanted to visit first I have deemed off-limits. I waste a majority of my time poking through alleys I've never bothered to notice before until I somehow make it to the training areas on the other side of the village. I approach them slowly, find the one that marks the training area where Team 7 had first practiced as a team.

Cinching my fingers through the chain-link fence, I can hear a team practicing in the field beyond, probably next to the same stumps Naruto had been tied to, where Kakashi had pitted us against one another in an attempt to test our camaraderie. I had been the only one to pass then, but if the Kakashi of the past could see me now, he would indubitably deem me the failure.

I lean my head against the fence. The metal digs into my forehead, cold and sharp and rusted. Slowly, I can feel even the memory of my recovery by the Konoha team slipping into oblivion, despite how hard I grasp for it. Maybe if I retrace my steps, re-experienced all the things I used to do with Sasuke, it would trigger something in my head, cause me to remember.

I want so badly to remember.

I exhale and push away from the fence and end up meandering toward the hospital. The building stands monstrously in the setting sun, a giant, towering silhouette with gleaming eyes where the light hits the windows. I'm stopped by the immensity of it, and wonder if the nurses and doctors have heard about what I've done, if they will be disinclined to return my position to me if I were to go in and ask to be put on a team of medics again.

I pause outside the hospital gates, afraid to go in and make a fool of myself. If they deny me a position then I'll be stuck wandering the halls of the hospital with nothing to do, no one to visit. Even the dying have more people to care about them than I do at the present.

The sunlight catches the doors of the hospital as they open. I look to it, waiting for the newly released patient and his family to come trotting out, healthy and happy and hopeful. But the person who exits isn't the unfamiliar face I expect, and I'm left frozen at the sight of him, skulking out from under the shadow of the veranda. I realize too late that I should be trying to escape; he sees me from across the front lawn of the hospital and stops mid-step.

Shikamaru stares at me with wide eyes and an open mouth like he means to say something to me but thinks better of it. He doesn't move toward me, and I don't move toward him, only take a deep breath and look away quickly. Then I hike up my feet and shuffle out of his view.

My rotten luck would have me run into Shikamaru at, of all places he would never be, the hospital. I should have just gone straight home after being released from the interrogation. What had I been hoping for by going through the village? I was setting myself up to run into Shikamaru. While it's true that part of me wanted to see him, a greater part of me wanted to avoid him, and why didn't I just go home?

I cut through town to go to my house. I take my previous encounter, all the little details I had noticed about him, and banish it from my thoughts. Like how his hair is longer than I remember, more sloppily tied on top of his head in his trademark stubby ponytail, and the way his clothes were more rumpled, like he hasn't taken the time to fold them after he's done his laundry.

What had he been doing at the hospital in the first place?

I focus solely on my house, what housekeeping chores I need to do. I had been home earlier to wash up, but I have more time to absorb my house. The wood doesn't shine anymore. At certain parts, the wood is warped from water and heat and cold, and I don't know whether I should invest in replacing the planks. The plant I had received from Haru remains on the topmost step on my porch, healthy and blooming, still alive thanks to whatever Rei had done to fertilize its soil. I brush it on my way up the front steps.

The house reeks of abandonment. Being left closed and sealed tight for a weeks on end has allowed for an odor to build up in the house and become stuffy. Crop circles of dust have started to layer the areas I used to shift in, giving everything a faint, misty look. I open windows in all the rooms, sneeze when a large pile of dust is disturbed and flies up my nose. I have a small inclination to look for brown boxes that need unpacking, but I just sit down on my couch, emptied and tired.

I keep having to remind myself that I haven't missed that much. It isn't like when I ran away for five years, or when I left the village for six months. But I also have to remind myself that, although I have established Konoha as my home, I continue to be the girl who keeps running from it.

I can't stop until I break this bond, until either Sasuke is home or one of us is dead. At the rate we're going, we both have equal opportunity to end up on the chopping block in Konoha.

I take consolation in that as I fall over and go to sleep.

[+]

The following morning, I wake up to the sound of someone knocking on my door. It's a pair of kids, Genin by the looks of their rosy cheeks and shiny headbands. They shift on their feet and look up at me with wide eyes.

"A message!" says one, the tallest of the group. He thrusts an envelope in my face and adds, "From the Hokage!"

I take the message and thank them, rummaging through my pockets for coins I can pay them. They rush off before I get the chance, but my pockets are empty anyway.

I turn the envelope over, deciding the three Genin had probably been sent here on a mission, a D-ranked one. I'm reminded of my own first mission with Team 7; we harvested a man's garden for him. Sakura, her hair still long, gushed over Sasuke and complained when her hair fell into the dirt. Naruto tried to brush the dirt out for her, ended up grabbing the ends of her hair too tightly and tugging out a handful of pink strands. Sasuke rolled his eyes as Sakura began to beat Naruto, and I finished the mission as they concerned themselves with each other.

I wish I remembered more of what happened this past week instead of that.

The message is a simple order for me to return to the Hokage's office immediately. I don't know what time it is, but regardless I'm not very hungry, so I wash up, change my clothes, and tie my headband on around my forehead. The fabric feels odd against my skin. I make a mental note to wash the fabric and polish the metal while I'm at it.

The sun is brilliant this morning. It sets fire to everything it touches, making people glow and beam with a godly aura. The light is warm against my skin to the point of discomfort. It's only when I cross through the shadows that I feel any kind of relief from the heat.

I am, admittedly, lonely on my walk to the Administration building. Granted, I wouldn't have met with anyone to walk to the Administration building even if I hadn't left the village, but being back and knowing that there is an unspoken distrust and resentment between me and my closest friends continues to grip my heart.

When I reach the Hokage's office, I knock and am told by a muffled voice to enter.

"I was summoned?" I say, pushing the door open. When I'm met by Tsunade's burning glare, I flinch and look to the closest person to see if I can find comfort. Even that effort is in vain because the person closest to me is Shikamaru and he is staring at me like I am a dream.

I make a strangled noise. Tsunade roll her eyes and Sakura, who occupies the space on the other side of Shikamaru, plants her face in her hands and shakes her head. "I—I can come back later," I say quickly, backing out of the room, but Tsunade says, her voice hollowed and bare in such a way that the tenor of it alone stops me in my tracks, even without her order of, "No. Ren, you're going to accompany Shikamaru to the cryptology unit and get to deciphering that code."

Shikamaru and I protest at the same time, his objection of, "What are you talking about? All the cryptology squads are done for that day." overriding my dissent of, "Really, Hokage-sama, I can't—"

She shuts me up with another glare, one that this time causes me to grow hot with embarrassment. I step aside as she gets up from her desk and pushes past me, saying, "Tell the cryptology squads they've been drafted to work directly for the Hokage. Anyway, Shikamaru, you're in charge now, and Ren, unless you plan on running away again, there's no getting out of this. So get it done."

"But where are you going?" Shikamaru asks as I rub my forehead, thoroughly mortified. "I came here to talk to you about something completely different."

"Shikamaru!" Sakura chides as Tsunade slams the door shut, trapping me inside. I wonder how long I should wait before walking out so as to avoid running into Tsunade, but then Sakura says my name in the same warning tone she had used on Shikamaru. I sigh and turn around, careful to avoid both of their gazes. "Tsunade-sama has been working like crazy."

"I have stuff to do, too," Shikamaru says, but cuts off when Sakura pleas, "Please, Shikamaru. Ren."

At this, I glance at Sakura and find her lukewarm green eyes downcast. She takes a deep breath and pushes her hair behind her ear, rolling back her shoulders as she says, "Tsunade-sama has just lost Jiraiya-sama, who was very dear to her. We can all attest to the kind of stress that puts on someone. The three of us, especially, should understand how she feels."

I startle at the news, say, "Jiraiya's—but—by _who_?"

Sakura blinks at me, her face set in what is probably contempt for the organization she names, but I can't help but feel is also, in part, for me as she says, "Akatsuki."

Without meaning to, I take a step back and ram my shoulder into the door so hard that the doorknob rattles and the books on the shelf closest to the door shake. I steady myself and clear my throat. I say, "That—I shouldn't—"

"Listen," Sakura says, crossing her arms and looking between me and Shikamaru, who has his lips pursed. "I don't know what's going on between the two of you, but I have a suspicion that it has to do with how you left the village without a word to any of us, Ren. And right now, things are weird because I don't—_we_ don't," Sakura corrects, "know how we're supposed to be around each other anymore, but I expected more from the two of you. I mean, come on: you're best friends."

Sakura comes up beside me, claps a hand on my shoulder. She says, her eyes drawn sharply down, "It's unlikely that Tsunade-sama planned for the two of you to arrive at the same moment so she could assign you to this project, but I think she knew what she was doing when she paired you up. After losing one of her closest friends, do you think she'd see what's going on and just _let_ a friendship like the one you had with each other wither and die?"

I open my mouth to stutter more protests but find that my word well is dry. Sakura doesn't look triumphant that she's won; instead, she jerks her head toward Shikamaru. I sigh and, finally, meet his gaze.

He stares at me, his brow pulled together in the way I remember, like he's about to mutter _troublesome_ and defer to his opponent's interests because he's tired of fighting. But I don't want him to simply forget everything I've done wrong or pretend it doesn't bother him because that's not going to solve anything. And besides, there is a hint of something behind his eyes that tells me he will not forget this, not for a very long time, and not unless I explain myself.

Still, all he does is sigh, shove his hands in his pockets, and turn on his heels, saying, "Fine. Let's go."

He brushes past me without a glance in my direction and I think this won't end well. But I follow him anyway because I have to and there's no rational reason why I shouldn't.

"Hey," Sakura calls as the door is about to close behind me. I turn to her. She has her back to me, her hands around her torso, hugging herself. "We're your friends, Ren. Even if you don't remember what happened when you were with . . . with Sasuke, remember that at the very least."

I press my tongue to the back of my teeth. "Okay," I say, and leave.

Shikamaru and I don't walk together to the cryptology lab so much as we walk conveniently near each other. If anyone were to look at us, they would think we were two unrelated people going coincidentally in the same direction.

Since that's not the case, though, we have to endure each other's presence. We look everywhere but at each other and when we reach the cryptology lab, there is an odd shuffle at the door, during which we both sidestep to let the other through first. When Shikamaru seems adamant about letting me go before him, I reach for the door handle just as he grabs it in his belief that I am adamant about _him_ going through first. My fingers ram against his wrist and, for some reason, my face goes hot, the burning reaching my ears and down my neck.

I apologize for bumping him, pulling away as away as quickly as I can, and cross my arms to minimize the amount of space I take up.

Shikamaru doesn't say anything, only pushes the door open and goes through.

The cryptology lab is too cold and smells like rotting books. At this hour, there are only two cryptologists in the lab, both of whom wear thick glasses with lenses that obscure their eyes and pristine white coats. I give them both wary looks, wondering if all the cryptologists appear like mad scientists, as Shikamaru explains the situation to them.

The lead cryptologist sighs, smoothing his hair back, although there is not a single strand out of place unlike his partner's, whose blonde hair is considerably rumpled, as though she's been scratching her head in trying to figure out too many codes. Considering their career choice, I wouldn't be surprised. Skimming the titles of the books alone, I don't understand why anyone would puzzle over a set of patterns and codes one day and think decrypting things is their calling. It all sounds dead boring and too complicated for my tastes.

After a few minutes flipping through code books and archives of old keys Konoha used to use during the Great Shinobi War, I sidle back to the main desk, which Shikamaru is leaning on as the cryptologist scribbles through scraps of paper, trying to make sense of the code. It's the first time I've seen the picture Tsunade had given Shikamaru up close: It's a set of numbers—9, 31, 8, 106, 7, 207, 15—burned onto the back of a frog with nothing to indicate where to start or what it could lead to.

I say, "How's it going? Any leads so far?"

Shikamaru purses his lips as the cryptologist says, "This is definitely not written in any Konoha code. None of our algorithms have produced anything useful."

"That sounds _promising_," I say, and Shikamaru scowls at me. At least his low-tolerance of my snarky-attitude hasn't gone away with our friendship.

"Well, remember," the cryptologist says, "Jiraiya-sama wrote this at the end of his life. It can't be that complex of a code. As it's completely numeric, there must be a special number needed to decipher it."

"Is it something you can figure out?" Shikamaru asks.

Before the cryptologist can answer, a dainty cough escapes the second cryptologist who lingers behind Shikamaru. We turn our attention to her, and she adjusts her glasses, which create swirls over her eyes, distorting them. She says, "Excuse me, but if you don't have the combination, you'll never figure it out!"

"Combination?" Shikamaru repeats, and I scoff, leaning on the desk, and say, "Isn't that why we're here, though? Somewhere in this lab, there must be a key to breaking this code, whether or not it's one Konoha has used before."

"Without the method to crack the code, you'll never get the message," agrees the girl, her glasses drooping down her nose. "But the common key must be something related to Jiraiya-sama, nothing that we have archived here; without it, this is hopeless, even with all our books."

"So how do we figure it out?" Shikamaru says.

"I'm not sure," she replies, "but someone close to Jiraiya-sama may have an idea."

"Jiraiya-sama was about to pass away," the first cryptologist says. "To prevent the enemy from knowing what he'd learned, he may have used a hastily-conceived code to write the message. We might make more progress if we figure out who he wanted to get the message and talk to them."

"Then that would probably be," Shikamaru says, and I straighten as I sense that we're going to be moving out soon and finish with, "The Hokage, for one. And—I dunno, Kakashi, maybe? Definitely Naruto, right?"

"Right," Shikamaru says and, unable to help himself, smiles as we at long last have a breakthrough. I'm stunned by the sight of his grin, the fact that, momentarily at least, it is directed at me before swinging to the other girl. "Thanks a bunch. We'll be back if we need anything else."

Shikamaru moves to the door. I step around the girl to follow him. As I close the door behind us, in the midst of the lead cryptologist's protests that he'll be going home soon, I see the girl's face turn a bright red and she begins to fuss with her hair. I blink in wonder as she shuffles to a mirror on a separate desk and checks her reflection, how she singsongs that the other cryptologist can go home and she'll stay here and wait for us in case we decide to return.

"Ren," Shikamaru calls, impatient, from the end of the hall and I snap the door shut. "Are you coming?"

"Yeah," I say, and go to him. We cross the street, heading back to the Administration building to find Tsunade. She sits at her desk, stoic as ever, and barely blinks at us when we enter. Shikamaru explains why we're back and Tsunade agrees to look at the photograph again.

As she examines it, I squint at her, noticing something off. Despite her age, she has always kept up a perennially young appearance through some kind of jutsu—another reason why she's considered a genius in her own right—but her skin is particularly clear today, smooth and milky white, without the slightest blemish. Instead of looking like she's in her late twenties, she looks closer to my and Shikamaru's age, at the height of her youth.

I wonder if this is her way of coping with Jiraiya's death, or perhaps this is her way of hiding the fact that she has been crying, a fact that is only given away by the dampness of her sleeves. It's the only thing she can't cover up with a jutsu.

"Sorry," she says, giving the picture back to Shikamaru. "Nothing comes to mind."

Shikamaru sighs, takes the picture. "Thanks for trying anyway," he says. "We'll leave you."

Her eyes sharpen, and she presses her lips to her hands, which she has clasped in front of her. Shikamaru and I stand our ground, since it seems as though Tsunade is about to tell us say more. Surely, she says, "The two of you still haven't made up yet?"

I stiffen, clear my throat. Shikamaru pouts.

"I'll take that as a no," she says, adjusting the papers on her desk. "A word of advice. Remember the way you were. Really consider it. Does that seem like it's worth losing? Friendships are hard. But they are always meaningful." She gives us pointed looks and says, "That's all. You're dismissed. Go decipher that code."

We go. This time, there's no awkward shuffle at the door: I walk out first and Shikamaru follows me like there is absolutely nothing wrong.

"Would you mind if I took a look at the photograph?" I ask, breaking the silence we've carried with us since we left Tsunade's office.

Shikamaru flips the photograph toward me, holding it between his middle- and forefinger like a playing card. I take it by the corner, careful to keep a designated amount of space between our fingers, and he lets it go. Holding the photo at an angle to prevent the sun glaring off its glossy surface, I read the numbers over, muttering them under my breath like it might trigger something.

"Does it remind you of anything?" Shikamaru says. "Anything you might have heard or seen while you were—away?"

He says _away_ vaguely, like he doesn't know where I'd gone. I scoff and say, "No. I don't remember going near the Akatsuki, even when we had finally managed to locate Itachi. Although I suppose that's not saying much since I don't, like, remember anything."

I can see Shikamaru's face contorting into a scowl in my peripheral. I smooth my thumb over an edge of the photo that has been folded down and ask, "D'you think he'll go after whoever killed Jiraiya? Naruto, I mean. Revenge does seem like the thing to do around here."

Shikamaru pauses before he grumbles, "I told you I was going to come back."

"That wasn't my question," I say, and Shikamaru turns to look at me, his brow pressed together like he doesn't understand.

"It sounded like your concern, though," Shikamaru says and I shake my head, unable to believe that Shikamaru and I are in an actual, genuine dispute where there is animosity between us and a general dislike for each other. For as long as I've been friends with Shikamaru, the worst things have ever gotten was when I woke him from a nap to ask him to train. But I guess this is part of growing up and part of being a teenager, because despite the lives with live, we are first and foremost teenagers.

But more importantly, we are shinobi.

"You should have trusted me to do the same," I say before I can stop myself. "To return to the village, too."

"I would have if you had told me—_anyone_, really—where you were going," says Shikamaru. "Or even what your plans were."

And the momentum gathers.

"At least I had the decency to bring Ino and Chouji along," Shikamaru goes on, "whereas you had _sneaked out_ through _a hole in your backyard_. Don't think we didn't catch on to that. Kakashi had his dogs search your house for your scent so we could try to track you."

"I was _with_ people," I say, careful not to clutch the photo so hard that I ruin it. "And I had told Tsunade. And she hadn't explicitly objected to my plan, so no one can say I went against the Hokage's orders. Even afterward, when news of my disappearance had spread, she didn't send teams after me. She knew I knew what I was doing. She knew my plan had more flesh to it than any of Sakura's or Naruto's attempts! And, like, in some weird way, I think she trusted me to bring Sasuke back."

"But that didn't happen," Shikamaru says, and I stiffen. "Obviously."

"A lover's quarrel?" someone cuts in, causing me to jump. Kakashi approaches us from behind, his book flipped open in his hand, but his eye focuses intently on us. "You know, if you don't want people spreading rumors about you, you should have your disputes in a more private place."

"Shut up, Kakashi," I say. "As though you have any right to talk."

"At any rate," Shikamaru says, slipping the photograph from my hand and passing it over to Kakashi as I cross my arms in irritation. "You were just the person we wanted to find. Would you mind having a look at this? It was something Jiraiya-sama left behind before he died. It seems to be a kind of code, but it's nothing the cryptologists have seen before. They think it might be meant for someone Jiraiya spoke to before he passed away."

Kakashi puts his book away and inspects the picture. He inclines his head, hums, and says, slowly, "Well . . . one hundred six was . . . but, no, it couldn't be. That doesn't seem relevant." He gives back the picture and adds, "Why don't you try Godaime or Naruto?"

"We just came from the Hokage's office," I say. "And Naruto . . . well. He knows about Jiraiya's death by now, doesn't he?"

Kakashi nods solemnly. "I'm more worried about him than I am about the code," he says, "but do what you can, okay?"

"I'm not expecting much," Shikamaru says, his posture sagging.

"Before you two head over there," Kakashi says as he walks away with a wave to us over his shoulder. "I'd have your dispute worked out. The atmosphere around you two is so tense it makes it hard for anyone to think straight. It's like a kid caught between his parents in an argument. Naruto doesn't need that right now. Just a word of advice!" Kakashi says when I curse at him.

Bastard, always thinking he knows what's best. I wait until he disappears around the corner before I whirl in the direction of Naruto's apartment, saying, "Let's just get to Naruto's and be done with so I can go home."

"Ren," Shikamaru says as I sigh, knowing by the tone of his voice—exhausted and relenting and understanding—he intends to make good on Kakashi's advice. I don't want to hear it, so I start walking. Shikamaru catches up to me easily, determined to talk. He says, "I told you I was going to come back. You could have waited for me to come home and go with you."

"Because I need that kind of support system all the time," I say, and Shikamaru looks affronted. "Shikamaru, I didn't ask you or Naruto or Sakura on the mission for the same reason you didn't want me on yours—"

"I didn't want you getting hurt," Shikamaru says stiffly, and I swear if I weren't so mad at him and he weren't so mad at me, I would hug him until I crushed his lungs.

"It was more than that," I say with a short laugh. "You didn't want me to see you like that. You didn't want me to see you as a full-fledged shinobi: ready to kill without qualms. And, just as well, I didn't want you to see me as I am when Sasuke is in control of me with the bond. I mean, granted, I can't remember anything about it clearly now, but—do you see? This is how it works."

"He wiped your mind with the Sharingan," Shikamaru reasons, and I blink. Although Ibiki and Inoichi had said the same thing in the interrogation room, the offhanded way Shikamaru mentions it makes the ideas in my head click. "You couldn't help that. You just think, all the time, that you can do everything on your own, and that's why you left. You think—"

"No," I say, and Shikamaru says, "Ren, hear me out—" and I say, coming to a halt, "_No_. He couldn't have. Sasuke couldn't have used the Sharingan to wipe my memory," I explain when Shikamaru stops a few steps ahead of me, brow furrowed together in tired curiosity. "I was—after the battle with Itachi, Sasuke collapsed. He wouldn't have had enough chakra to activate the Sharingan again and make me forget everything. I remember that. I remember he wasn't strong enough, Shikamaru, he wasn't—"

My vision blurs for a minute, like a kaleidoscope twisting, and I rub my eyes, letting out a groan of frustration. This will happen often, I realize, any time I think too hard about Sasuke, any time I try to remember more than I do.

"He wasn't," I say again, lifting my gaze and startling as I find Shikamaru standing in front of me, slightly hunched so that our eyes are level. His lips are curved in concern, and—I don't know why—I laugh, pressing my hand to his face and shoving him away.

"Let's go to Naruto's," I say, shaking my head as Shikamaru grunts in protest. "I am getting _sick_ of hanging out with you when we're like this, Shikamaru. Too many heart to heart moments. I can't handle it."

I walk ahead of him, but his strides are long and he catches up. We walk together, two people who appear to be friends at the very least, walking in the same direction with the same goal in mind.

That's all I could ask for.


	80. Of Love and Loss

**Bound  
Chapter 80: Of Love and Loss **

When we get to Naruto's house, Shikamaru rings the doorbell a number of times without an answer. He grumbles, "Is he not home?"

I drum my fingers against Naruto's door, feeling the vibrations move across his floor, up the posts of his bed, and wrap around his body. "Definitely home," I say, stepping away from the door, suddenly nervous as I remember the way Naruto had walked out on me earlier. He could still be angry with me, could still resent the fact that I was able to chase down and get close to Sasuke, but still lose him all the same. To top it all off, his sensei has just been killed by the very organization that always seems to step in our path and throw everything off track, despite our best efforts to fight back.

"Maybe we should come back at another time," I suggest as Shikamaru rings the doorbell again after a momentary pause. "Considering everything that's just happened to him, he could use the time alone to think."

Shikamaru sighs, rubs his neck. "We don't have time to put this off," he says as I feel the vibrations shift on the other side of the door. "If this code is something important—"

I straighten as the door opens a crack, cutting Shikamaru off. Naruto peers out of the sliver of darkness that leaks out of his room. He's hunched and wears a plain shirt and pants, as though he's just crawled out of bed and is having trouble rising into the sunlight. When he speaks, his voice is a croak of a sound.

"Shikamaru," he says. Slowly, dazedly, his eyes slip to me. I tense, but they don't change. "Ren. What are you guys doing here?"

"Can we at least come in?" Shikamaru asks, and Naruto relents, creeping back to open the door wider and let us through.

His apartment is dark, the shades drawn across the window. If I had to bet, I would say they hadn't been opened all day. Parts of his apartment are in a state of disarray—leftover food left on his table and magazines strewn across the floor—but otherwise, it's well put together. There isn't much to the apartment; Naruto has the basic essentials in regards to furniture and décor: a nightstand and picture frames, a worn orange blanket crumpled at the foot of his bed, which he climbs into, crossing his legs and asking, "So what do you want?"

Shikamaru settles at the table, propping his elbow on his knee. "We're here on an assignment from Godaime," Shikamaru says, extracting the photo from his pocket and giving it to me so I can pass it on to Naruto.

Our fingers brush as I hand off the photo and Naruto jolts. He flinches away from me, then shakes his head and takes the picture. I quickly recoil, folding my arms over my chest and leaning against the wall adjacent to his bed.

Naruto squints at the photo, saying, "Isn't this—that grandpa frog?"

"You recognize it?" I say, and Naruto lips part like he means to confirm verbally, but then he just nods.

"That's a code Jiraiya-sama left for us before he died," Shikamaru elaborates. "The guys at the cryptology lab couldn't figure it out; they assume it's a code Jiraiya-sama made on a whim before he died to prevent the enemy from knowing what he'd figured out. One of the cryptologists think that someone close to Jiraiya-sama might know the key to cracking the code."

"Nice terminology," I say, trying to ease my discomfort at the situation. "Very official. Very secret agent-y."

Shikamaru dismisses my comment with a roll of his eyes and says, "In any case, we've talked to both Godaime and Kakashi-sensei about it, but they don't have a clue about what the numbers could stand for. You're our last hope, so to speak. What do you think, Naruto? Does it make any sense to you? Naruto?" prompts Shikamaru when the boy in question doesn't respond.

I lean down to try to catch Naruto's eye. "I think you've lost him," I say. Though he appears to be staring at the picture, Naruto's gaze is thoroughly unfocused, his eyelids drooping as each second passes, like they threaten to press him into sleep. "Naruto? Hey, Naruto!"

He jerks back, dropping the photo into his lap and saying with a sheepish laugh, "Sorry, sorry. What was it again?"

"The photo," I say, tapping the edge of it. "The code. Do you—"

"Never mind it," Shikamaru says, getting to his feet. I regard him with confusion but Shikamaru crosses the room and plucks the photo out of Naruto's hand, pocketing it. "Come with me for a minute."

"Where?" Naruto inquires. Shikamaru remains cryptic, though, and takes Naruto by the arm, lifting him out of his bed, and leading him to the door. I think, briefly, as I follow the two boys out of the apartment, that Shikamaru would be good with that cryptologist; at least she would be able to figure him out.

[+]

I know where we're going before long. I visited the hospital every other day for the past three years—well, up until I left for the Sand—so I know backward and forward every path that could lead there. The walk is just as awkward as my first walk with Shikamaru had been. Naruto and I avoid each other's gazes as best as we can and keep Shikamaru between us for the most part. The uneasiness between me and Naruto must be palpable because Shikamaru leans in to me and says, "Have you come back to the village on bad terms with everyone?"

The question tempts a laugh out of me. "That does seem to be the case," I say. "I'm really good at isolating people. Anyway," I say evasively when Shikamaru gives me a look of displeasure. "I don't mean to. I'll fix things. Eventually."

Shikamaru sighs as we take a corner. He turns too tightly, pressing me into the wooden fence that blocks off a property, and slows down to let me pass first. I knot my brow together, wondering why he had done that, until he comes up on my right, unconcerned as ever, and Naruto is on my other side. I realize what he's done and am about to reach out and strangle him for it when I hear the small squeak of Naruto's voice.

"You," he says, keeping his eyes trained on the path, "haven't . . . _felt_ anything from Sasuke, have you? Anything that would have told you why he didn't come back?"

Of all the things to ask me first, his mind goes to Sasuke. While this ticks at my heart, I say, "No. The bond remains the way it was before I left. I don't know and can't remember why he's gone. I'm sorry."

"I'm not mad at you," he says, surprising me. "The other day, when I walked out of that meeting, I was . . . _frustrated_. Even if you had stayed home and gone with us on that mission to track Sasuke, we still would have reached that place too late. We were so close," he whispers, holding out his hands. "But Sasuke somehow manages to slip through our fingers every time."

He clenches his hands into fists, then drops them back to his side. "You were right," he says. "Given the chance, I would have done the same thing you did. I would have gone after Sasuke without hesitation, no matter what anyone said. Anything if it meant bringing Sasuke home."

I am all at once reassured by Naruto's forgiveness and overwhelmed by his sadness. I want to cradle him, smooth down his hair, and tell him that everything will be all right, that we'll get Sasuke back, even if I don't believe it, even if it's all a lie.

Because Sasuke hasn't returned to us for, undoubtedly, his own selfish reasons. Sasuke hasn't found his way home because he doesn't care, doesn't want to care about anything or anyone else other than himself. I had seen it in him before we left, seen it in him when—when I was with him, I think, although there is no specific detail I can recover to use as an example. There is an inexplicable guilt that tugs at my heartstrings as I think poorly of Sasuke, but I dismiss it because whatever happened between me and Sasuke over the time we were together, he has made me forget and, by extension, erased anything he may have done to redeem himself.

Anyway, I am more comfortable hating Sasuke than I am feeling like Naruto and Sakura do about him.

We reach the hospital a few minutes after my conversation with Naruto. "What are we doing at here?" I think to ask as Shikamaru stops us outside the hospital boundaries.

"Wait a moment," Shikamaru says, more patient than I have ever heard him. "We should be right on time."

"For what?" I say, but Shikamaru doesn't answer. I settle with watching the hospital doors as he seems so keen on doing. Through the sliding glass doors, I can see nurses walking leisurely past, the nurse behind reception answering phones and handing clipboards to passing personnel. I see patients getting up as they're called and wonder once more if I should start picking up shifts at the hospital again. The hospital doesn't appear busy, but it would give me something to do, a way to readjust to being in Konoha. Maybe I can ask the Hokage to put in a good word for me after I've rebuilt my relationships with my friends.

I start to grow tired before long, and am about to complain when I see the whirling hair of a woman I recognize. Her stomach has swollen since I've last seen her and my happiness at seeing her multiplies tenfold when I realize what that means.

"Kurenai!" I say before Shikamaru can point her out, startling him and the very pregnant woman waddling out of the hospital. I laugh and rush up to her as Naruto shouts something about Kurenai having eaten too much barbeque while I say, "You look fantastic as ever. The baby has gotten so _big_!"

"Ah, Ren," she says, blinking at me as though she can't believe I'm here. "You've—returned?"

"Something like that," I say sheepishly. Kurenai smiles at me, resting a hand on her stomach, which takes up most of the space between us. The maternity dress hugs the curve of her belly, flattering her body shape better than I thought could be possible for a pregnant woman. I reach out and ask, "Would you mind if I . . . ?"

"No, go ahead," Kurenai says. I giggle, too giddy for my own good, and lay a hand against her belly. I feel the terse little beats of the baby's heart with the vibrations, and shivers run up my spine.

That life can be created and sustained like this is truly a miracle.

I straighten, beaming at Shikamaru when I see him watching me, and pull away as Kurenai and I discuss the finer details of her pregnancy, whether she's been sore from the weight of the baby at all, what she can do to prevent her backaches, herbal teas she can drink to ease her heartburn. She tells me the baby should be due any time in the next month and a half, and says that she wants to keep the baby's sex a surprise, something I confess I don't think I would have the patience for, personally.

"I never took you for someone who liked children, Ren," Kurenai says as I finally allow her to walk to the hospital gates.

"No, I hate kids," I say, dismissing the notion with a wave of my hands. "It's babies I like, though. More the miracle of it all. How they grow so amazingly, how you can feel how much they look forward to coming into the world. All the potential they hold when they're born! I think it's all very wonderful," I say quietly, and Kurenai chuckles.

"Well, I'm glad to see you again," Kurenai says, adjusting her bag on her arm. "Usually Ino is the only one to dote about the baby, although Shikamaru does his fair share of checking up on me. You don't have to come every day," she says, addressing Shikamaru.

"Every day?" I repeat, turning to him. "Is that why you were here when I saw you yesterday?" And here I was worried about his wellbeing for nothing.

He shrugs and says, "I'm afraid I do have to keep tabs on you, Kurenai. Asuma made me promise."

My heart fills up at the sweetness of Shikamaru's sentiment and I smile. Kurenai mirrors my expression, although she is considerably more amused, and leans down to say, "He's a keeper, this one. Make sure he stays close."

I laugh, shaking my head, and Shikamaru quirks his brow, curious to know what Kurenai has whispered to me. We wave her off as she waddles home after declining our offers to walk with her. Once she's out of earshot, I say, breathlessly, "I almost forgot about the baby."

Shikamaru's shoulders lift in a halfhearted shrug. "You were gone," he says, and I faintly remember him saying the same thing when I had returned home from the Sand and expressed my distress at missing everyone. He said it the same way he says it now, like it's something that couldn't have been helped, like he believes that I had made the right decision in leaving and that I wouldn't have been able to return to my old self any other way.

I don't think he means it as sincerely as he had then, but Naruto squeezes between us at that moment and says, "What are the two of you talking about?"

"The baby," I say, not dishonestly. "It's lovely."

"That kid's gonna be my pupil one day," Shikamaru says, and Naruto regards him with surprise. "Asuma left it in my care." Shikamaru takes a deep breath, like he doesn't know if he'll be able to handle the responsibility. I go against my urge to take his hand and give it a reassuring squeeze; just as well, Shikamaru dips his hands into his pockets and says, "I know all about what happened, Naruto. I lost my teacher, too. I know what you're going through, but—nothing will happen if you keep hesitating."

At this, Naruto frowns, defiant, and narrows his eyes at Shikamaru, who remains unfazed by the other boy's demeanor.

"It's time you leave that spot behind, too," Shikamaru advises.

"What're you talking about?" Naruto asks sharply, irritated to be lectured.

Unflinching, Shikamaru says, "My teacher taught me a ton of things. Some of it was invaluable; some of it was completely useless. Yours did too, right? He must have taught you lots of things—countless things. We're on our way there too, you know. To their side," Shikamaru explains, moving forward. "The side that leaves behind instead of inheriting. It may be troublesome, but it's the way of the world."

I clasp my hands together, say, "A few months ago, in the Sand, when Chiyo-sensei had sacrificed herself to revive Gaara, she told me something, something not unlike what Shikamaru is saying." I close my eyes, recalling her words. I haven't thought about Chiyo so deeply since she died, and I feel as if her spirit fills me at that very moment. I smile as I say, "We will lead a great generation. Our sensei trust in us to carry on their teachings and use them the way they did, and in all the ways they wish they would have. But we have to be willing to carry it on."

Shikamaru's mouth lilts up and he walks forward a few paces before he stops and turns to face me and Naruto. Although he's only two meters in front of me, there is a tugging in my gut that makes it feel like he has walked another world away.

I shift toward him, moving haltingly at first because I can't be sure, after all I've put him through, if Shikamaru wants me by his side anymore, if he can tolerate all the trouble I put him through and will probably continue to put him through because I am me. But then Shikamaru's lips curl into a smile that reaches his eyes and I return it tenfold, taking my place beside him and standing so close that our arms bump because I will never mess this up again. Not as long as I can help it.

"Pretty soon, you'll be treating some kid to ramen," Shikamaru says to Naruto. At such a close proximity, I can feel the vibrations rumbling through his body as he speaks, his voice soft and optimistic and warm. "And he'll call you 'Naruto-sensei.' We can't stay kids forever. Not if we wanna be kickass shinobi like Asuma and Jiraiya-sama."

Naruto regards Shikamaru in wonder for a moment before lowering his eyes, weighing the other boy's words. When he raises his head, he's grinning, determined, resolved, and thoroughly alive and himself again. Shikamaru unearths the photograph from his pocket and holds it out to Naruto, saying, "Get a grip. You've got a job to do."

Naruto snatches the photo out of Shikamaru's hand and pushes past us, talking loudly about how he'll go home and wash up right away, and maybe eat some ramen before he gets to cracking the code. He says something about the hero always arriving late and that he should have expected that it would have come down to him to solve the case.

I laugh, shaking my head as Naruto continues to recede into the distance, and say, "You are a natural poet, Shikamaru. I don't know how you manage to know just what to say and do to make people believe in themselves again; you really have a way with words. You're going to be a fantastic sensei for Asuma's kid," I add quietly as I turn to him. I can smell the grass on him, the faint scent of everything I have ever missed and loved and cared about in this life on the fabric of his shirt.

I clear my throat and step away, pushing the fringe of my bangs out of my face. Shikamaru watches me as I gather my thoughts and say, "I'm not . . . _sorry_ about what I did, Shikamaru. I didn't like leaving you like that, and I'll admit that maybe it wasn't the best plan I've ever had, and you can hate me and be mad at me for it, but I don't regret it, and I still—you're still my best friend," I say, and I can hear the pleading of my own voice, like I am begging him to stay my best friend. And I suppose I am because without Shikamaru—well. I don't know.

That's it: Without Shikamaru, I don't know.

Shikamaru sighs, cocks his head to the side, and says, tiredly, "I've said it before, Ren: You might show up late, but you show up eventually. It's the same idea: you might leave, but you always come back. I don't worry about that. I worry about whether you're going to be okay."

"I'm always okay," I say, a peppiness to my voice that Shikamaru sees right through.

He gives me a look of displeasure, his lips drawn in a thin line. He says, "Don't you get sick of saying that? Of pretending that you can handle everything on your own?"

I laugh, adjusting the fabric of my headband off my eyebrows. "No," I say. "Never. Because, maybe if I say it enough, it'll be true, and everything will be okay."

[+]

I'm not much use when it comes to the decoding. Mostly, I lean against the bookshelves and flip through the cryptology books I can't understand. Shikamaru doesn't bother calling me over because he knows I'm useless at this kind of stuff. Shiho, the cryptologist girl who had flustered at the sight of Shikamaru when we returned to the lab, offers her opinions on the numbers, tries to prompt Naruto's mind with other ways codes have been figured out in the past, but nothing works.

She addresses Shikamaru as "Shikamaru-san."

She is saying his name again when I look up to see if they've made any progress. Shikamaru shakes his head in response to her question, which I've missed, and then looks to Naruto. He says, "You haven't said anything this whole time. I already tried Godaime and Kakashi-sensei, and they had nothing. I have a strong feeling this message is for you. Actually, I'm sure of it. There's some connection to you. I know there is."

"If you think of anything," Shiho adds, "anything at all, just tell me what to do. Unless it's like 'decode it now' or something."

Naruto hums as I go to the table and adjust the photo so I can look at it again, although I have no real hope in understanding what it could mean. But seeing as how they're not making any progress, I pick a pencil up off the table and pull a piece of paper toward me.

"What are you doing, Ren?" Shikamaru asks, irritated. "You're not helping."

"You're right," I say, tapping the pencil on the paper. "Which is why I'm doing something right now. Here."

I begin to redraw the characters on the paper. My strokes are fast and thin, and sometimes when I don't pick up the pencil fast enough, a streak of graphite runs from the bottom of the previous number to the comma, then to the top of the next number. I write them all in a row, then in pairs, then exactly the way they had been written on the back of the frog.

"Maybe seeing them in a different context," I say, holding my numbers up to Naruto, "will help you notice something about them that you hadn't before. I find I'm like that when it comes to potions and stuff. List the herbs one way and I don't know what you're talking about. Reorder them in the way I learned them, then I'll whip you up the most potent form of that potion I know."

"That," Shikamaru says as Naruto squints at my writing, "isn't a bad idea."

"Your confidence in me is overwhelming," I say as Naruto picks up the photo of the numbers and holds them side by side with my writing.

"I thought so," Naruto says before Shikamaru can answer. He explains, "There was one thing I thought when I first saw the photo. I thought, 'Why is everything a number except that first katakana character?'"

We regard him dubiously and he turns the paper and the photo around, sliding them across the table to Shikamaru and Shiho. He says, pointing to the first number in the sequence, "Here, see?"

"That's not a katakana," Shikamaru says. "That's a nine, right?"

"I thought so too," Naruto agrees, "at first. But I'm not sure. I think it's a katakana for 'ta'. Look."

Naruto flips to the paper I had written on, points to the nine. "See how Ren wrote her nine?" he says, pointing to the first digit. "The top of it is rounder, and it's tail isn't as severely slanted at an angle. Plus, Ren's doesn't have this second tail on the round part of the nine like in this picture. The nine in the picture is actually a katakana, I'm sure of it."

"Now that you mention it, I'm starting to see it too," Shikamaru says.

"Ero-sennin was an author," says Naruto. "He was constantly working on his new book, and since I was the only one with him for three years, he made me proofread all his handwritten drafts. He'd say, 'Give me your opinion,' and I'd say, 'This is boring as hell.'"

For a moment, Naruto gets lost in the memory, his eyes glazing until the sunlight shifts, slightly, and he snaps out of his reverie. He shakes his head, flashes a sheepish smile, and continues, "Anyway, whenever there was a 'ta', I'd get confused. Because his 'ta's always looked like nines. So . . . you know."

"Right," Shiho says, adjusting her glasses. "It was just his handwriting. Like this." Shiho takes another sheet of paper and pencil and crouches to write. Her handwriting is smooth, precise, everything about it calculated. She copies the katakana from the photo and labels it "Jiraiya-sama", and then prints her own katakana of 'ta', labeling it "Normal". "Jiraiya-sama had a habit of drawing the first stroke of 'ta' short, and joining the third stroke to the very bottom of the first one. He also put a slight curve to the second stroke, making his 'ta' look like a number nine."

Shiho straights, pushes her glasses back up the bridge of her nose where it had fallen when she leaned over to write. She beams and says, "Frankly, I think this could be the link we've been looking for!"

"Please, no need for applause," I say, holding up my hands in mock modesty. Shikamaru scowls.

"Why didn't you say anything sooner?" he demands of Naruto. "This could be a huge clue!"

"But what does knowing that even do for us?" Naruto says. Shikamaru blinks as though it hasn't occurred to him to figure out the step after this. Shikamaru presses his fingers to his forehead, thinking, and then snaps when it comes to him.

"The book," he says.

"The book," I repeat, crossing my arms as I lean against the wall. "As in the book Jiraiya was writing while he and Naruto were together? I don't think—"

"Ah, yes, Shikamaru-san," Shiho says, quick to jump on Shikamaru's side and I scowl. "The clues to the code could be hidden in the book! The numbers could be page or line numbers, word markers. This is definitely leading down the right path."

I mean, I'm not saying Shikamaru isn't right; I know he's on to something with this line of thought. I only wanted to warn them about the _contents_ of the book, given the kinds of books Jiraiya wrote. Unlike Kakashi, I doubt Asuma was a huge perv and read the Jiraiya's series of porn in front of Shikamaru and his team while they trained. But I think I'll let them figure it out for themselves.

"Okay," I say. "We need to get the book then. But is it _the_ book Jiraiya had been writing, or could it be any one of the books Jiraiya has written? Should we grab them all?"

"Naruto?" says Shikamaru. "What do you think? Did you notice anything significant relating to the character 'ta'? Or do you know what number the book was slated to be?"

Naruto stutters for a response, which leads Shikamaru to dismiss him. Not wanting to waste any more time, Shikamaru decides, "We'll just need to get all the books then and do some research."

"I tried saying this before," I start, but then there's a tapping on the cryptology lab window, and we hear the sound of it sliding open. Kakashi has pried his finger into the small window opening and now leans through the completely open window, holding a bright orange book.

"I believe," he says, his voice smooth and lethargic as always, "that you'll find this volume especially riveting."

"I sincerely hope," I say as Shikamaru notices the 'ta' in the title of the book, _Icha Icha Tactics_, "that you're in the middle of _reading_ that book, and that you don't just carry around the complete series with you always."

"I'm just rereading it," Kakashi says, but even that leaves me less than reassured about his habits. "Anyway, I was curious to see how things were going, and I ended up overhearing your conversation. This is the newest and final book Jiraiya-sama released before his death. The one he wrote while he was training you, right, Naruto?"

Naruto confirms and Shikamaru brightens. Shikamaru says, "I would have never noticed if Naruto hadn't said anything—"

"And Naruto wouldn't have said anything unless _I_ had intervened," I say. Shikamaru rolls his eyes.

"The volumes are numbered. If the first character of the code is 'ta'," Kakashi says, "Jiraiya-sama might have been leading you to the _Tactics_ volume, compared to the _Paradise_ or—"

"We really don't need to know what the rest of them are called," I say, shutting Kakashi down. "Let's just get this over with, shall we? Where should we start, Shiho?"

The girl rolls up her sleeves, pushes her hair behind her ear only to have it flop back into her face. "We might have to try multiple methods," she says, "but let's start with looking at the page numbers first. Disregarding the first character, which led us to the book, and the commas, which probably only act as delimiters to mark where one number ends and the other begins, we'll have to look at pages thirty-one, eight, one-hundred-six, seven, two-hundred-seven, and fifteen. That's six pages in all."

"Right," Kakashi says, and flips open the book. "So, page thirty-one. Where should I look?"

"The most common method," Shiho says, "is to look at the first letter on the page. We might need the word's context, too, so if you could please read the whole sentence out loud."

Kakashi's expression drops, his eye flicking to the first sentence on the page, skimming it, before his face turns a bright red that seems to bleed through his mask. He stammers, backing away from us until Naruto says, "Come on, Kakashi-sensei! It can't be that hard!"

I smile and Shikamaru raises his eyebrow at me while Shiho inclines her head to the side, waiting for the first sentence. "Yeah," I agree. "Out with it, Kakashi. It can't be very hard at all."

* * *

**A/N:** 80 chapters in and going strong. I can't believe it. I'm so grateful that people are still discovering this story and enjoying it enough to add it to their list of favorites, alerts, etc. Even after three years and more than half a million words, I can't believe there is anyone in the world who genuinely enjoys reading something I genuinely enjoy writing. Thank you for all your support.

I feel like I should reward you somehow? Any ideas of what you would like to have? I thought about picking a random reviewer and writing a story around a prompt they give me, but given my schedule I may not have time for that. Still, if you have a better idea, feel free to suggest it, and if I like it enough maybe I'll do it.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and come back for the next installment. Thank you for your time and please review!


	81. Decode

**Bound  
Chapter 81: Decode**

There's not much for me to do after that. The code is figured out after some embarrassing reading on Kakashi's part, and celebrated after it's figured out. Except none of us really understand what it means—_The real one isn't with them._—and they decide it's best to take it to the Hokage and see what she can deduce with any other information she might know.

Throughout this process, I watch Shiho and how she interacts with Shikamaru. It's sweet, really, the way she blushes every time he looks at her, how she is perpetually fixing her never-in-place hair, how everything about her body language calls for Shikamaru's attention. And then the tipping point: when Shikamaru says, in response to Kakashi's suggestion that we find someone named Fukasaku, "I'll ask Godaime to find this Fukasaku guy right away," and she says, "May I come with you?" and he says, "Yeah, please," and Shiho beams, fussing with her hair in the mirror and smiling so brightly that I have to look away.

Shikamaru turns his back to her to speak to me, says, "Come on, Ren, let's go. What? What's the matter?" he asks when I take a deep breath.

"Nothing," I say, offering him the best smile I can muster. I gather the papers, and as I hand them to him I lean in and say, softly, "She's really very enamored with you, you know."

"What?"

Naruto, brilliant timing as ever, cries, "Come _on_, guys! You're really slow today, you know that?"

"We're coming," I say, grabbing a pencil and rewriting the code on a new sheet of paper so that it's clean and presentable. "Just wanted to clear some things up first. Here," I say, and hand him the paper as I approach him. "You show it to Tsunade or whoever we're going to talk to right now. That seems to make the most sense."

Naruto grins and we go to meet up with Kakashi outside of the cryptology lab, leaving Shikamaru to walk beside Shiho. The journey to the Hokage's office is short because of the pace at which Naruto walks, excited as he is to see what this phrase could mean, whether it is the key to defeating Akatsuki.

Naruto must view this as an opportunity to avenge Jiraiya's death. I mean, this isn't the first time that Akatsuki has crossed us—there was that time with Sasuke in Otafuku Gai, and then with Gaara, and then Asuma—but Jiraiya's death is really the cherry on top of all they have ever done wrong to us. And this time, it's more personal than ever.

While Naruto is nothing like Sasuke, he is still human. Anger and pain are universal, and I think that is the worst part about all of this.

When we reach the Hokage's office, Naruto bustles in with a crash. The door slams into the wall adjacent as he opens it with a flurry, and Kakashi is left apologizing for his pupil's rowdiness. Sakura is beside Tsunade's desks, apparently caught mid-sentence, and leans on the desktop as Naruto says, "We've got it figured out!"

He waves the paper in the air before slapping it down on Tsunade's desk so hard I swear I hear the wood splinter. "We need to talk to that grandpa frog right away! Where is—"

Naruto is interrupted by a small croak. We face the sound and find a small frog donning a cloak and sitting on top of a plush cushion throne. Well, it's a throne for the frog, which sits no bigger than the palm of my hand. The frog on which the throne is harnessed, however, is as tall as my knees and has a sullen look on its face, like it sees the travesty in being a frog that carries another frog on its back and doesn't appreciate it.

The smaller frog leaps to Tsunade's desk. I roll my eyes, unable to believe that we need to consult a _frog_. The action doesn't go without notice by Kakashi, who elbows me and says, "Careful. This is a very powerful and respected frog we're speaking to right now."

Sorry. Should have thought better than to roll my eyes at a frog. I bite my tongue and smile tightly, saying instead, "Yes, of course," much to Shikamaru's amusement. He raises his eyebrows to the heavens, and I fight the urge to roll my eyes again.

"All right, Jiichan-Sennin," Naruto says, flipping the paper toward to frog. "What do you think? Does it make any sense?"

The frog takes it in his wide—er, frog hands and reads the sentence. The long white hairs that make up its eyebrows meet in the center of his forehead as he considers the words that we have decoded only moments ago. By the way his eyes flick, he doesn't understand it. "Dunno," he says at last, giving Naruto the paper back. "It's too vague to give a definitive answer."

Shikamaru lets out a long, exasperated sigh. "Okay," he says slowly, "but what was your first thought when you read it? However useless it might sound, we might be able to draw something from it, like how we figured the code in the first place."

"I've already told you what I know about Pein," he says, his accent thick and informal. I realize after he says this that _I_ don't know very much about whoever it is who has killed Jiraiya. I make a mental note to ask about it later. "These are men who revived themselves from the dead. I ain't gonna start making guesses. It'd be suicide to try and take him on now. We gotta figure out the truth behind them."

"What about the other clues we've got?" Naruto demands, looking to Tsunade and Sakura, who shakes her head and leans against Tsunade's desk. "The autopsy and the interrogation?"

"It'll be a while before either of them is done," Sakura says, displeased. "I can't tell how l can't tell how long, but—a while."

Naruto begins to protest, claiming that we don't have any more time to waste. Sakura cuts him off sharply, saying, "Obviously the interrogation will take time if they want to be thorough, and if we want the autopsy to be of any use, we need to be extremely precise with the cellular analysis and other examinations!"

"Don't bother with the technical terms, Sakura," I say, crossing my arms and slumping as the conversation begins to devolve. "You know that never does any convincing, especially when it comes to Naruto."

"In _any_ case," Sakura says with a huff, "all of that takes time. You can't rush these things."

"It'll be at least a week before we know anything," interjects Tsunade. Naruto groans, discouraged, and Shiho makes a lame attempt at comforting him that causes me to scoff. Shiho blinks at me in surprise, apparently confused by whether my reaction was drawn by Naruto's griping or her comment. I don't give her the comfort of making myself clear.

"So what's our next step, Godaime?" asks Shikamaru, elbowing me. I purse my lips.

"Shizune's in charge of the autopsy," Tsunade says, "so it should be quicker than usual, but we still have to wait for her to finish before we can move forward."

Naruto straightens, turns quickly on his heel, and begins to stomp out of the room. He says, "I'm gonna go tell her to hurry up," and Sakura, affronted by his actions, says, "Naruto, I just told you we can't rush this kind of thing! If you mess with Shizune-senpai's work, I'll throw you through a wall."

Sakura shoots me a look that tells me that I too should be trying to stop Naruto from being foolhardy, so I say, "Hey, Naruto, just have patience. We'll figure it out in due time."

Naruto comes to a halt, surprising Sakura and me. I wonder if my convincing had actually worked, but am highly disenchanted by the idea when Naruto says, softly, "I'm going to avenge Ero-sennin. I'm not spending one more second waiting."

_Avenge_. The word rings in my head as I take a deep breath and move my gaze to the wall. This is what it comes down to, what it will always come down to in the world of shinobi. There is no way for us to escape our feelings of loyalty to someone or someplace or something, no way for us to give up the idea that we were meant to make sure everyone understands that the lives of those who matter to us, personally, are the most important ones of all.

"Naruto-chan," says the throaty voice of the grandpa frog, breaking the silence that has settled around us after Naruto's statement. "Now that the code's been decrypted, there ain't nothing more for you to do."

Naruto's anger flares, his eyes glaring at the frog. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"Easy, boy," the frog says. "I only mean that you don't stand a chance against Pein, not yet. That's why you need to come with me." The frog grins mischievously, his thin lips pulling on his skin like a long worm split across the mud. "Come to Myouboku Mountain and train yourself in Senjutsu if you think you can handle what we put Jiraiya-chan through."

Naruto blinks at the frog, his body relaxing. "That'll be enough for me to beat Pein?" he asks, his voice rising at the end in a note of hope, a note that screeches in my ears.

"Dunno," the frog answers with a shrug. "But you sure ain't gonna beat them like you are now." The frog turns to Tsunade, who remains unchanged since we've entered her office. "You don't mind, do ya, Tsunade?"

"Absolutely not," Tsunade says, and then adds as though the plans have already been made, "Naruto, train hard and hurry back."

"This is gonna be the nastiest, harshest training you'll ever endure kid," the frog says severely. "You up for it?"

Naruto grins, his hands clenching in anticipation. "Ero-Sennin did it, right?" he says, and the frog nods. "Then there's no way I'll let him out-do me. Bring it on!"

Indefatigable as ever, Naruto rushes out of the office before anymore can be said. Collectively, it seems, everyone left in the office sighs as we watch his back recede into the hallway. Simply being around him wears me out. Forget training on some mystic mountain with a bunch of amphibians. If Naruto just stood in front of this Pein guy, he could probably annoy him into forfeiting all the Akatsuki secrets.

"Well, I suppose I should get back to the lab," Shiho says, bowing to us. "Thank you for allowing me to accompany you here, Shikamaru-san, Kagiru-san."

"Hey, it's nothing," says Shikamaru, though I doubt Shiho will think this is, as he says, _nothing_. "You had just as much of a part in helping us as anyone."

"I'll make sure your superiors hear of this and reward you accordingly," Tsunade says, picking up a pen and writing Shiho's name down on a memo pad. "Thank you for all your help today."

Shiho reddens with humility, bows deeply to Tsunade and then to each of us in the room. When Shikamaru offers to walk her back to the lab, she becomes so red that I'm afraid she's going to burst. Sakura smiles at the sight of it, then regards me expectantly, like I'm supposed to pay a compliment to Shiho too. I do nothing of the sort. No need for her to get an inflated head.

As Shikamaru escorts Shiho back to the lab, the rest of us go to Konoha's front gates to wait for Naruto. The way he is, his packing only takes a few minutes, but it's long enough for Tsunade, Sakura, Fukasaku, and I to stand around in a silence that is probably only awkward to me. Kakashi leaves to handle whatever business he handles in his free time, so I'm left at the mercy of Tsunade without any other adult figure to look to for comfort.

I wonder if she's still angry with me for what has happened, if she still, in a way, holds it against me. She doesn't look at me as we wait for Naruto arrive, but then again she doesn't really look at anything. Her gaze is set on the trees outside the village gates, but her eyes are unfocused, her face blank and unrevealing. Sakura casts Tsunade furtive glances every now and then, worried, but doesn't say a word.

I had noticed it back in the office too. She was uncharacteristically unresponsive, withdrawn. She was interested enough in what we had to say, but she glazed over Naruto's reaction as though it didn't bother her in the slightest.

And perhaps, given the circumstances, it hadn't because she is probably as interested in avenging Jiraiya's death as much as Naruto is.

Shikamaru turns up at last, wonders where Naruto is just as the boy in question appears from around the corner. He offers us a cheery smile and a salute, taking his place beside Fukasaku, who says, "Well, we're headin' out. Say your goodbyes, Naruto-chan!"

"I'll see you guys later," Naruto says, adjusting the strap of the knapsack he has slung around his shoulders. "Figure out that code, Shikamaru, Ren."

"Don't worry about me," Shikamaru says, and I add, "Yes, with me helping, I think we'll have the thing figured out in no time at all. I really am a very good sleuth."

"I don't think that's the right word for it," Shikamaru says, and I elbow him.

"I'll send word when the autopsy and interrogation have both concluded," Tsunade says, propping her hand on her hip.

"And I'll leave you a transmission frog," Fukasaku says. "Anything happens, you let him know."

Tsunade nods and Sakura pumps her fist into the air, sending her words of encouragement to Naruto, who flashes a cocky smile and says, "Right! Let's roll." He turns and marches into the forest, eliciting a scoff from me, especially when he turns around and says, sheepishly, "So . . . which way is Myouboku Mountain?"

Just like Naruto, barging along without knowing what he means to do. I shake my head as Fukasaku says, "It'd be about a month on foot. They call it a mountain of mazes. If you don't know the secret paths, you'll never make it through." As Naruto slumps, defeated at the prospect and what it implies is to come, a scroll appears in Fukasaku's hand in a puff of smoke. It unravels, showing Naruto something I can't see from where I stand, but Naruto seems to recognize it as Fukasaku says, "Naruto-chan, you've already signed the contract with the frogs. There ain't no need to put up a fuss. We'll be off," he says to us, cutting Naruto off.

Tsunade bows her head, says politely, stiffly, "Please take good care of him."

"Hey," Naruto says, quirking his brow. "What do you mean, 'Don't put up a fu—'"

Naruto disappears in a smoke cloud midsentence, startling us. "Reverse summoning," Tsunade explains tersely and Fukasaku winks at us, pressing his hands into a sign and saying, "I'm counting on y'all too." And then he and his throne disappear as well.

From there, Tsunade tells us to double our efforts. Shikamaru and I head back to the cryptology lab while Sakura goes to see what progress Shizune has made with the autopsy. However hard we try to theorize and figure out what the code means, by the end of the day, we still have nothing.

When we leave the lab, Shiho says, "Will I be seeing you tomorrow?"

I think she means to ask the both of us, but her attention is focused solely on Shikamaru. He confirms her inquiry and she smiles widely, adjust her hair. He waves goodbye to her as we leave. He says, under his breath, "Hopefully we'll be able to figure something out tomorrow."

Shikamaru explained the situation to me, how Jiraiya had been fighting a man named Pein, who seemed to have five other versions of himself that all worked in unison to kill Jiraiya. Jiraiya had managed to kill a few of them, according to what Fukasaku had reported, but they came back to life and ended up collectively killing Jiraiya in the end. I had made an offhanded comment about how it was impossible to think that there could be such a thing as being resurrected. "It's not," I'd said, "like they're immortals or anything. Now _that_ is impossible."

Shikamaru's expression had fallen, then, and he avoided my gaze. "It's not so impossible," he had answered, "when it comes to the Akatsuki."

"We always figure something out," I say now, not wanting to see him return to that defeated state. I rub my eye as we near the exit, and Shikamaru furrows his brow.

"Are your allergies acting up?" he asks, holding the door open for me. "You haven't stopped rubbing your eyes since we got to the lab. Maybe some of the dust from the books is affecting you?"

I make a noncommittal noise as I walk past him. "It's nothing," I say, drumming my fingers on my stomach, which has been cramping and twisting along with the tightness in my chest. "Something probably got in it when we were seeing Naruto off. I'll just rinse it out when I get home."

"Are you sure?" he says as he leads me out into the waning light.

"Shikamaru," I say, elbowing him. "I'm a medic. I think I'd know if I were getting sick."

He doesn't look convinced but drops the conversation. I'm really not sick or getting sick, but this isn't normal either. And while I have an inkling as to what it could be, I don't want to admit it.

I tell Shikamaru I have a few errands to run before I head home so we part ways at the next crossroads. I watch him disappear around the corner before pivot on my heels, walking back to the cornerstone of the official buildings. Although it's late, I can tell from the lights shining from the windows that the majority of the buildings are still in operation—well, from the buildings that _have_ windows.

I enter the building at the end of the block, shuffling quickly down the halls and passing people who give me suspicious looks. One of them finally thinks to stop me, tell me they have half a mind to arrest me for sneaking in a high security area, until I tell them who I am, why I'm there. Then I'm ushered into a white room with nothing but an old wooden table and two stiff wooden chairs set opposite each other. I have to wait only ten minutes before a man enters, snapping his black leather gloves taunt against his fingers.

It's Ibiki. He says, "Inoichi will be here in a moment. You said you felt something?"

"Yes," I say, standing from the chair I had been seated at. Ibiki motions for me to sit back down and I do, clasping my hands on my lap. "It's been happening all day. This pain in my chest and stomach and my eyes. It was the eyes that really got me. My eyes never hurt or itch or water unless—unless it's him."

Ibiki's mouth sets in a grim line. He says, "Do you have any other clues as to what might be happening to him that would be causing this in you?"

I shake my head. "Not really, but the pain has been something else. After everything I've felt, I can only assume he got into some kind of fight. And hope he has died from the wounds he acquired."

"Let's not be hasty," Ibiki says as the door opens and Inoichi enters, looking worse for wear. He greets me with a half-hearted smile, says, "You felt something?"

I nod. "I'm here because I think it can be traced, this feeling I've been having. When I—ran away, I escaped with this girl named Kannagi Rei. She's a shaman and when I got this ping from Sasuke, she was able to trace it. So, I think—"

"I should be able to do the same," says Inoichi, nodding. "I see. Phew, and here I thought I would actually be able to get a break on my break."

I twist my hands together, sheepish, and say, "I'm really sorry. I would have come earlier, but—I was helping to decode the message Jiraiya left behind. I didn't want to leave."

"Understood," Inoichi says. "Ibiki, go overlook the interrogation. I'll take it from here."

Ibiki leaves, gives me a small salute as he closes the door. Inoichi moves the open chair from the other side of the table to a spot beside me and sits down. He releases a heavy sigh, slumping in his seat, and I see now how prominently the bags under his eyes stand out in the light.

"How are the interrogations going?" I ask hesitantly, hoping he isn't reluctant to share the information with me because, well, I'm me. "Have you guys discovered anything helpful yet?"

Inoichi laughs, deflated. "No, not yet," he says. "It was a bit like inside your head, Ren. There are safeguards everywhere. But these memories have only been locked away. Nothing like what the Sharingan is capable of. It still astounds me that Sasuke was able to do that."

"Oh!" I say, sitting up straighter. Inoichi raises his gaze, curious. "That reminds me. I realized something the other day: Sasuke couldn't have been capable of putting these safeguards in my head. I say that—_know_ that—because I can remember him after his fight, after he killed Itachi. He was weak, too weak to do anything on his own, and I hadn't properly healed him yet. He couldn't have had the stamina to activate his Sharingan and wipe my memory. He couldn't even hold himself up after the fight."

The words come out in a rush, as if, if I don't say them fast enough, I won't remember what needs to be said. And it seems like the more I speak, the more clear everything is, the more I can't understand why I hadn't remembered all of this before.

Inoichi sits stiffly in his seat, tensed. He mulls over the information I've given him, and I reach up to rub my eyes again. At first, it had only been the left eye that had burned and been irritated. But the aching had gradually spread to my right eye, causing both to water until it seemed like I had been crying. I had hidden my face in my arms, then, pretended I was too tired to raise my head and offer helpful thoughts on the code. It was after that that Shikamaru suggested that we go home, an offer I quickly took him up on, only to end up here, in a white room reserved for criminals.

"I see," Inoichi says quietly, and then lifts his hand. "I'll share this with Ibiki and the Hokage and see what they think. Before that, though, let's see if I can't track your pain. Hold still."

[+]

The pain worsens when Inoichi gets inside my head. I know I'm not supposed to feel it, but next thing I know I'm awake. I'm breathless and Inoichi has me gripped tightly in his arms, as though I had fallen out of my seat. He cradles me like I am his own daughter and asks me, gently, "Are you all right?"

"No," I say, and my voice cracks, splits until I am gasping for air through the pain that bursts in my chest and stomach and eyes. The pain rips through my body; I feel like I'm imploding and I want to release the sobs that threaten to break my diaphragm, but I can only choke on them. Perhaps that's for the better. I am already humiliated enough as it is.

Inoichi carries me into the hall where he calls medics to my attention. They lay me on the floor, which is cold and hard and grimy with the dirt tracked in from countless sandals. The cold seeps through my clothes, my skin, seems to trigger the pain and make it multiply.

And my head. God, my head is splintering. A knife twists its way through my temples and splices the back of my eyes, drags down my nose and mouth and to my chest, where the skin that stretches over my throat and rib cage burns.

The medics don't do much for me. One of them thinks to inject me with a drug that numbs my muscles, but it's not my muscles that hurt. It is everything inside of me, everything that can't be touched by morphine or heat or cold.

It's the bond. I know it's the bond. Even though this is the worst pain I have felt from it ever, there is something about it that remains detached from me, from Sasuke. There is something about it that feels like this is all me, acting up, and not because Sasuke has gotten himself in over his head once again.

Maybe it is all me. Maybe this is a side effect of trying to work around the mental blocks that are intricate enough to have been placed on me by a Sharingan, but not by Sasuke's. Who, then, would have been able to do this? Itachi? He is the only answer, but—he couldn't have. Not after what he had been through in his fight with Sasuke. That I can remember, too.

Inoichi has me escorted home by one of the medics. They carry me on their back when I grow too tired to walk and even tuck me into bed. I'll admit that I like being taken care of, like the way the medic rolled me in my blankets, the way they had petted my head in comfort before they left me. I like the sound of the door closing when I am already half-asleep, the way the vibrations felt as footsteps walked away because for a minute I am reminded of my parents and when they were still alive.

I fall asleep slowly, and then all at once.

[+]

I go to see Inoichi in the morning and ask him if he had managed to get anything from the bond. He shakes his head, says that the blocks in my head got in the way and caused me to lash out at him, which I don't remember doing. "A fail-safe," he says, "to prevent and make sure that no one could get through."

I tell Sakura and Shikamaru about it when we meet at the cryptology lab to decode the message. Sakura wants to know if Inoichi had been able to find anything, if I had managed to reach Sasuke, if only for a moment, to make sure he was okay. I tell her there was nothing, that we had tried and failed to pinpoint his location, and it had resulted in me passing out on the floor and having to be carried home and tucked into bed. She shuts up after that, looking sad and embarrassed of her eagerness to know if Sasuke was all right but not ask after me.

Shikamaru only wants to know if I am all right. He says, "If anything like that happens again, you tell us right away, got it? No suffering through it like yesterday. You need to take care of yourself, too."

After not making any progress with the code, I return home, defeated. I collapse on my sofa, my eyes still raw and aching from the night before. I find myself wishing Rei were with me. She would have been able to track that feeling, somehow, and she wouldn't have looked at me like there was a perpetual threat of death looming over my shoulder. She would tell me like it is.

It's as I think this that I hear a creaking echo through my house. Normally, I would have dismissed this as the wind, but the floorboards creak in a steady rhythm, like footfalls I can't ignore.

I sit up, listening, waiting, impossibly, for Rei to emerge from the kitchen where we often hung out. Despite knowing that she's not going to magically appear for me, I get up and slurk toward the kitchen, sliding open the door and peering inside.

It's dark. The only light that illuminates the room cuts in through the kitchen window. The patch of silver glows against the floor, perfectly framing the loose floorboard that doesn't jut out as much as before, thanks to the efforts of Nao and Hiro while they were here. My eyes do a final sweep around the kitchen, seeing the ghosts of Rei and Hiro and Nao shuffling around, reorganizing all my things and making themselves at home.

I retreat to my room, and that is the end of that dream.


	82. Up in Smoke

**Bound  
Chapter 82: Up In Smoke**

"The code reads: _the real one isn't with them_," Shikamaru says a few mornings later. He thinks that if he says it over and over, something will click in his head, reminding him of what the code is supposed to mean. The technique has so far yielded no results, but he's trying and for that I suppose we can't say anything against him.

"So," he says, rubbing his chin in thought, "so perhaps those six 'Peins' were just using genjutsu and the female Akatsuki member who Jiraiya-sama ran into beforehand had some kind of special technique. She could have launched the real attacks at Jiraiya-sama while they hid her."

Sakura and Shiho occupy one side of the table in the cryptology lab while Shikamaru and I sit on the other. I'm opposite Shiho, which seems to make her nervous. Every so often, when I peer over her shoulder to look out window, she flinches and Shikamaru shoots me a warning glance. I check the window over her shoulder now, and although she doesn't flinch as badly as before, Shiho lowers her head and clears her throat.

Sakura makes a noise of dissent at Shikamaru's hypothesis and says, "I don't think so. Remember what that elder frog, Fukasaku, told us. Jiraiya-sama was physically stabbed and killed by all six of them at once. Though Jiraiya-sama killed three of the six with a weapon himself, they came back to life. It could have been done with an extremely complex genjutsu, but it's too far-fetched."

Shikamaru's face darkens and he pointedly turns away from me. "There's no too much of anything when it comes to Akatsuki," he says, crossing his arms. "This is a group that had two honest-to-goodness immortals in their ranks."

"Even so," I say, drumming my fingers against the table and ignoring the way Shikamaru talks as though he's speaking from experience. I know he is, know he's thinking about how he had gone after the two Akatsuki members who had killed Asuma, but I also know better than to allow him to dwell on the memory. "The fact that three men were brought back to life shouldn't be quickly labeled as immortality. The woman who was with them could have been a medic rivaling Tsunade's skill. She could have revived them."

"We would have heard about someone like that," Sakura says, frowning.

"In any case," Shiho says, "we'll have to continue following whatever patterns we can find until new information comes in."

They continue to deliberate what the code could mean, and I sit forward, pursing my lips and pretending to be considering the code before us. Really, I'm thinking about the pain that I had endured a week ago, what it could have meant for me or for Sasuke.

They're going on about whether the people could have been puppets when I sit up, shaken into alertness by the rumble of the vibrations in the village. They are faint, a small earthquake as they bump against my feet. I shouldn't think anything of it, but when it comes again and again, increasing minutely in strength, I narrow my eyes out the window, waiting for a signal to see if something really is wrong.

Shiho takes my expression the wrong way. It is made worse tenfold by the fact that she is speaking currently, and cuts off when she notices me glaring over her shoulder. She turns a furious shade of red that offsets her light blonde hair. She stammers, "O-of course, I don't know much about being a shinobi so my theory could just be a bunch of—"

I shush her, holding a finger to my lips as I concentrate of the vibrations. The way they bounce against the buildings and each other tell me that the disturbance is the result of explosions, massive ones, ones that cause structures to fall over and crumble. I can feel the ripple of vibrations as they move through the earth, continually spreading from the center of the village.

"What is it?" Shikamaru says as I stand from my seat.

"I keep feeling," I say slowly, quietly like danger is immediate, "these disruptions in the vibrations. I don't—"

I'm caught off guard when the building quakes, causing me to lose my footing. I stumble and catch myself on Shikamaru just as he extends a hand to steady me. Loose books on the shelves fall, collecting in piles.

I pull Shikamaru out of his chair as Sakura bolts out of hers, Shiho scurrying after us as we race to the window. Shikamaru pushes it open wide and leans out as Sakura squeezes between him and the window to see what's happened. I lean over Shikamaru, finding dark stacks of smoke blooming from the greater part of the town. Smoke rises in columns not just in that area, but multiple, staining the horizon in all directions.

"Come on," Shikamaru says, and leaps out the window. Sakura quickly follows suit, and I'm about to go after them when I notice Shiho backing into the depths of the lab.

"No point staying here," I tell her, offering her my hand. She blinks at it dully, and I wonder how she can be so clever with codes but not understand what I am trying to do. "Come _on_," I say, grabbing her wrist and dragging her out the window after me.

"Sakura," Shikamaru is saying as Shiho and I catch up to him. He is anxious to move out as another blast rips through the village. He says, "Sakura, Ren, we need to split up and take each part of the village that's being attacked. Make sure the villagers are being evacuated safely and calmly so they don't hurt each other. If the higher-ups don't know about this yet—"

The blast that comes next creates such a great aftershock that the four of us stumble into each other and feel the winds from the explosion blowing dirt in our faces. Shiho coughs, her glasses already coated with a thin layer of grime, and I hope I had made the right decision in bringing her with us.

"They know about it now," Shikamaru grumbles, tensing. "I'm going to head to the far side of the village and get people evacuated before whatever this is reaches them."

"I'll go closer to the blasts," Sakura says, "in case anyone has gotten hurt."

"Take Shiho with you," I say to Shikamaru as Sakura departs. "She'll be safer going to the parts of the village that are clear, and you know how I never pay attention to other people."

Shikamaru nods, waves Shiho forward. She shuffles toward him, more quickly and willingly than when I had reached out to her. I brush this technicality out of my mind as they start off toward the untouched parts of the village. Before they get too far away from me, though, I think to shout, "Hey, Shikamaru!"

He stops, twists at his waist, and wears an expression of irritation. I know he wants to get to his part of the village as soon as he can, not only to evacuate the villagers but to evacuate Kurenai in particular. She lives a ways beyond the buildings at the end of the road, and the longer we dawdle, the more time we give the smoke and destruction to spread to the as of yet unexposed parts of the village. So I make my message to Shikamaru concise before following Sakura to the more damaged parts of the village to see what healing I can do.

"Be safe!" I call after him, cupping my mouth with my hands so that my voice carries. "Come back! You understand?"

He only stares at me for a moment before he gives me a grim salute and runs to Kurenai, Shiho tight on his heels.

[+]

The streets are a mess. Not only because of the rubble but because of the disorder that these attacks have caused us. People are desperate to get out of the village, pushing and shoving each other out of the way as though any past camaraderie they might have felt never existed in the first place.

The residential district that I land in has been evacuated so far as I can tell. I don't hear anything through the smoldering of buildings on fire, can't see any dark shapes emerging from the smoke. The vibrations relay only the faint drops of rubble crumbling and settling.

I'll admit that I'm not in this part of town for wholly unselfish reasons. Just as Shikamaru had run to where Kurenai would be, I ran to—of all places—my house. There's not anything particularly valuable there, but seeing the village in disarray made me want to go back to the place where there was, at least, a semblance of how things used to be.

Old medical books I haven't bothered to throw away still cover the shelves in my house. Old pots and pans and bowls and plates I had used when I was younger still stock the cupboards. Even old clothes my parents and I used to wear are stacked in brown boxes in my parents' room. Though the house has been painted and the wood replaced, it is still the place I had grown up and still the place I feel like I can go back to without fail.

I want to grab my headband. I haven't been wearing it lately because I haven't been on any official business, but with the current state the village is in, I want to have it just to—reassure myself, I suppose. This is my village, my loyalty lies with it, and this headband confirms it.

I have it in my hands within seconds of entering my house and am about to leave and reenter the fray when I hear the same creaking from a few days ago. Since the streets around my house have been evacuated, it's eerily quiet, excluding the soft crackle of a nearby fire that burns up someone's sweet shop. The sound of the wood creaking makes me stop, glance to my kitchen. And, on a whim, I go into my kitchen again to take in the emptiness.

When I open the door, there is an explosion that knocks me to my knees, blows out my windows, and causes my front door to rip out of the frame. I push myself to my elbows, coughing through the dust that has bloomed from the rubble that now scatters across my kitchen floor.

I wipe my face with my shoulder, blinking as the dust begins to settle, realizing slowly that I don't know what's happened. I get up, tripping over my own feet in my rush to the window and falling on my face once more. A shard of glass gouges into my cheek, releasing a current of blood that spills over the floor and soaks the right side of my face. I let out a hiss of pain, easing the shard out of my cheek and healing myself as I turn over, leaning against the cupboards under my sink. It's then I realize I hadn't tripped over my feet but the loose floorboard that has popped up a substantially because of the explosion.

I blink at it, unable to comprehend the emptiness that interrupts my fear and panic. And then my anger shoots up, finally getting a hold of itself and crushing the emptiness. I crawl toward the floorboard, gripping it in my hands, feeling how satisfyingly weak it is, how satisfyingly in control I am.

I yank up the floorboard, sick of its inconvenience, sick of how it always gets in the way, sick of how, despite all my efforts, _it just won't stay_. Just like the bond, just like Sasuke, just like my consistency.

The floorboard breaks with a crack that ripples through the air. Splinters of wood fly at me as I tear the board up from its roots. I'm about to toss it over my shoulder, impale it into the wall, when I notice something.

The whole of the floor is coated in a grey film of dust from the decimated drywall, from the cement that has exploded over my sink. And while the cement that sets the foundation of my house blends in with the dust, there is a square piece of something that glows to my eyes, bright though the lighting is dim, heavenly in its plainness.

Yellowed parchment juts out from the remanding half of the floorboard, folded over three times to jam between the cement foundation and the wood. It looks worse for wear, blotched with black tracks and stuck through with rocks and splinters. But it is inarguably there, real, and as I take it between my thumb and forefinger, my lungs are heavy. God, my lungs feel like they're being crushed beneath the weight of my house as I lift the parchment into my lap, run my fingers over the wax seal of my family and the Uchiha crest layered over another; a fan impaled through the center with an oblong shape, like a link in a chain. I press my fingers into it, digging my nails into the seal, scraping it up. The dull red flakes catch under my nails like dirt. Like blood.

"My parents used to hide things under your floorboard all the time," I said what seemed like eons ago, while Sasuke scowled at me and I pulled the key out from beneath the floorboard in his room. "Just in case."

"Just," I say again, clipping my finger under the seal. "In. Case."

The house quakes, drawing me out of my reverie. What's left of the windows vibrate in their frames. I clench the parchment in my hands as I see smoke rising from the other side of the village, birds bursting from their nests for higher ground. I stuff the parchment into my shirt as I remember this is no time be sitting around my house. I need to get out there. I need to fight.

I scramble to my feet, making sure the parchment is secure, and run to my door, skidding to a stop just outside on my porch.

I grip the doorframe, the parchment stabbing into my fishnet undershirt, digging into my ribs. I turn back toward my house, looking through the foyer, through the open doors that lead to the hallway and the rooms beyond. There's nothing I need to worry about leaving behind or losing should the destruction reach and engulf this part of the village. But still. There is something that I feel like I have to do.

So I go back to my kitchen, yanking open drawers and cupboards, pulling out all the plates and bowls and letting them clatter, crash, break on the ground. I gather what rags I can find, tying them together at the ends. I trail them over the counter, thinking to go into my parents' room, picking up the most hopeless looking, moth eaten clothes, tying them all together, end to end, and bringing them into the kitchen to fasten to other rags.

I do this all quickly, in a matter of minutes, so fast that before I can comprehend completely the meaning of my actions, I'm turning on my gas stove, the fire flickering brazenly underneath the metal grate as it clicks under its highest setting, and I'm throwing the rags over the flame.

The rags catch in a raging ball of anger and resentment and all the sadness I have ever felt in my life because of my family and this bond—god, this bond, which I have finally, finally been able to find and which I now have pressed against my stomach. All of it, bursting in a dance of fire. All of it, gone in an instant.

I jump back as one of the tongues lick out, scorching the very edge of my sleeve. I rub my wrist, trying to get rid of the heat that makes it burn. The oath crinkles against my chest, starts to slip out as I shift my arms. And I wonder if I shouldn't toss the oath into the fire too, watch it curl into smoke and ashes. That would destroy it, wouldn't it? That would end the bond sure enough.

But something stops me. I think it is the bond, screeching that I need to save the little piece of parchment that arbitrarily holds it together.

I get out of my house as the wood splinters, lets out a sickening crack and the house caves in on itself and everything burns up. All of my past, everything my parents had ever owned, turns to ash in front of my eyes, and I can only feel an immense happiness that borders a drug-induced euphoria. I can't catch my breath fast enough, and even as the next blast ripples through the village, I can only watch my house go up in smoke. I can only, very briefly, very quietly, think: I have lost everything.

There is a loud roaring that splits the air behind me, surprising me so much that it brings me to my knees. I don't turn around—I can feel from the vibrations that whatever beast had released that sound, like fingernails on blackboards, isn't near enough for me to be worried—but the fire has reached such a level that I can feel the heat warming my face, feel the fire as it destroys every piece of me inside that house. I reach up to touch my cheeks, relieve the fire from my skin, and come away with water that catches on my fingers and drips to the ground, creates dark spots in the white ash and rubble. I lick my lips and taste the salt in the water and on my flesh and I close my eyes and get to my feet.

I run.

I run past smoldering shops, past houses that no longer resemble homes so much as pits of long dead fires. I run through long evacuated streets, lifeless in every sense of the word. I run until I trip in a particularly destroyed area of town. My foot catches on a piece of metal that has twisted and bent into a whirling rod, like a whirlwind has ripped through it. The metal cuts an angry checkmark on my foot and begins to burn, reminding me of the fire on my cheeks.

I pull my foot toward me, letting out an angry hiss of pain as my fingers brush the raw wound. I'm about to heal it when someone flies over my head, casting a large shadow over me for a brief moment before passing on without a second glance at me. I watch them as they continue over the half-caved in buildings, cutting through and leaving their shape in the smoke that rises into the sky.

Seeing another person—another _alive_ person—after so long stuns me. I faintly recognize the chakra before sensing another flickering one that alarms me. My eyes dart over the rubble, searching until I find him, and then I jump to my feet. Ignoring the stabbing in my foot, I hobble toward the bear of man who lays spread eagle on a conveniently smooth surface while the rest of the area around him is in disarray. It's Chouji's father—Chouza is his name, if I remember correctly—and his breath comes weakly against the contusion on his heart muscle and fractured ribs.

I hold my hands over the man's chest, healing his bruised heart, the ribs that prod it, and feel his breathing become relieved and his pulse returning to a normal rate. It's lucky Akimichi clan have such a robust physique, otherwise whatever pressure had caused these injuries would have burst his chest open completely.

I run over the rest of his vitals, determine him okay minus the depleted chakra and small lacerations on his arms and face. A bit of rest should do him some good, and while I'm about to heal the rest of his superficial wounds, I sense a smaller, weaker chakra that at once catches my attention. I look up and around, searching for it frantically. Chouza will be fine without my care. In the meantime, I have to find—

"Kakashi . . . !"

He's buried from the chest down in the wreckage, and his head lulls as his chakra diminishes. I climb over the debris piles to get to him, kneel down beside him, and take his face in my hands. My fingers smear blood across his skin when I touch him. "Kakashi," I say, lifting his head to meet his eyes with mine, but they're already lidded, already half-gone.

"_Kakashi_," I prompt, shaking him only hard enough to wake him a bit. His eyes flutter through the curtain of silver hair that has fallen loose with his headband gone. "What happened? How has this happened?"

"Pein," he says, and I tense, wanting him to repeat himself to make sure I had heard right, but not wanting him to waste his breath. His Sharingan is dull in comparison to how I've seen it before.

I lean into Kakashi saying, "Okay, well, I'm going to heal you and then you're going to tell me exactly what happened. Hey, don't quit on me now, Kakashi," I say when his eyes droop. "Hang in there and I can get you healed up. Just wait for me. Wait."

He lets out a heavy breath, a breath that sounds like the culmination of his life coming to an end, and says, "You were always . . . a good student, Ren. A loyal . . . student."

I laugh weakly, press my hand into his cheek, heal the bruise that is blooming there, and a hand to his forehead, where I can see where most of the blood is coming from. "It's," I say, and swallow a sob that sticks in my throat. "It's in my blood, right?"

Another heavy exhale. "No," he says, and the weight of his head falls in my hands, no longer trying to resist the pull of gravity.

"Kakashi," I say, sucking in air through my teeth, and I feel his lips turn up into a smile against my palm.

"It's all you," he says. And exhales.

"Kakashi," I echo. "Sensei, please. Stop. I'm right here, I can heal you, I promise I can heal you, just . . . _wait_," I say, my voice losing all steam until it is nothing but a hoarse whisper. "Kakashi, don't you _dare_—"

But he is gone. I want to shake him again, want to shout until he opens his goddamn mismatched eyes, but I know it won't do any good. So I sit there, smoothing my thumbs over Kakashi's reddened cheeks, swallowing the flood that threatens once again.

This is not happening. I cannot have lost my master in this ambush on the village. He had survived Orochimaru's attack—but I suppose he hadn't gone up against Orochimaru himself. Plus, that snake had only been one person, whereas if the reports are true, there are probably six men attacking this village at the moment. Six men have been able to cause all this destruction, have been able to make it seem like the village that is my world is going to come to an end if we don't stop them soon enough.

I'm only shocked out of my reverie by something slimy and cold that hits my foot. I kick out, throwing a white blob across the pile of debris on which I sit, and hear a small, quaking voice say, "Easy, easy. I'm only a slug."

I follow the voice, finding a small white thing similar to the one I had just kicked off of myself crawling up Kakashi's shoulder, onto his back. It seems to suck on him, its antennae waving up and down.

"I am Katsuyu," it says. "Tsunade's summons. I'm here to heal the citizens of Konoha, and you have an injury on your foot."

I wrap a hand around the cut, the warmth of the blood oozing through my fingers. "Forget my foot. I can heal it later. But you'll take care of Kakashi?" I say desperately, although I know the question is naïve.

The slug constricts, shudders. "I'm sorry," it says, and leaves it at that.

I slump. "But," I want to say. "But!" Only that is just as naïve as my initial question.

"You should find others," it says. This time, its voice comes from beside me. Slinking toward me is another slug, about the length of my forearm. "There is a safety in numbers. Take me with you and I can lead you to the closest cell."

"I," I start, and when I can't find anything else to say, I scoop up the slug and prop it on my shoulder. I smooth my fingers over Kakashi's cheeks one last time before I jump over the rubble that covers him and run. I run past decimated buildings, past other bodies that I see are crawling with Tsunade's healing slugs. But they just look like maggots, and I avoid looking at them as best as I can. Still, they distract me, and it's when I see a particularly still body covered with nearly a dozen of the slugs that I can't look away and end up ramming into a body that catches my by the shoulders and squeezes me.

It's Shikamaru, his eyes wide but thoroughly relieved to see me as he holds me at arm's length, saying, "Ren—"

"Shikamaru!" I say, noticing that Shiho has remained with him and his father has joined him, standing watch while we have our reunion. "Shikamaru!" I say again, unable to have my words catch up to my thoughts.

"Where have you been?" he demands. "Are you all right? Your hands are covered in blood."

I wipe my hands on my pants, smearing the blood on the black fabric. I can nearly forget it's there, except my hands are still tinted pink. "I—it's not my blood. I'm all right," I say lamely, and point to the slug on my shoulder. "Katsuyu, Tsunade's summons. She's a healing slug, so if any of you are inured—"

"We know," Shikamaru says, and steps aside to show me the three significantly larger slugs that have gathered behind him. Their antennae wave as though in greeting, and press my hand to my chest, remembering the weight of death, of not being able to do anything for Kakashi, of wondering, if I had found one of these slugs sooner, would they have been able to save him?

Instead of feeling that weight on my heart, though, I feel and hear the crinkle of paper. And although I know I shouldn't, I shake Kakashi from my head, shake the rest of the destruction and disarray I have seen from my train of thought, and remember and focus on the one thing that presses against my chest, has rubbed me raw as I ran.

"I have something to tell you," I tell Shikamaru breathlessly as he releases me. I reach into my shirt and extract the parchment that sticks to my dusted fingers. He stares at it, uncomprehending, until I say, "I found it. The bond, Shikamaru, I found the bond! Under the loose floorboard in my house. I can break it now, I can be free and the village can't hold this over my head anymore!"

Shikamaru is kept from responding by a blast that resounds through the village and sends shudders through the surrounding buildings. I realize now may not be the time to rejoice in having found the bond and tuck it away. Shikamaru acknowledges my movement with a nod and I know he'll remember to talk to me about it later, after this is all cleared up. And when it is, I need to remember to ask Shikaku if I can stay with his family for a while, since I've burned my house down.

Despite not having a house to return to, despite being in the middle of this chaos, I revel in the fact that I have, at last, found the bond. I choose to focus on this to motivate me and move me forward as our village sinks deeper into turmoil, because once this is over, it can only go uphill from here.

Shikamaru and his father exchange quick words about what to do next. I think to keep lookout while they speak, wondering if any of the men who have attacked our village are nearby. Hoping they aren't.

The vibrations pull, yanking harshly toward the sky overhead, drawn up like the strings of a puppet. They become so tense that I fear a single movement from me and they will break, snap back and flatten everything around me with the force of the how they would slam back into the ground. I look up, trying to see if I can pinpoint what's stressing the vibrations in this way. I don't see much, but I can feel the vibrations going taunt, feel them ready to shatter at a moment's notice.

I close my eyes, pressing my fingers into a seal, and the Genshindou clicks into place. The vibrations rub hard against my skin. The pressure of it tells me that there will undoubtedly be bruises on my arms later. But I disregard the pressure, concentrate on the direction the vibration threads are slurring. They stretch a considerable distance into the sky, reaching, reaching, as though aiming for the heavens itself. They grow tighter, more compact as I follow them higher, and then they meet, knotting together in someone's body, someone suspended a kilo in the air like a god.

My eyes open, and I blink at the sky again, searching until I see it: a nearly invisible prick of black in the midst of blue. I extend my arm to take Shikamaru's shoulder when—

The vibrations break, flying toward the ground so fast that it will create a small sonic boom.

"Shikamaru!" I elbow him gruffly and he whirls around and hisses, "Not _now_, Ren! There's—"

"Look!" I cry, pointing up at the building, through which cracks have started to form. He pales as he follows the point of my finger. The cracks web from the center of the building, splintering across windows and doors and causing chunks of building material to come loose. And then, too fast for us to really comprehend what happens, a force like a blast from an explosion sends window shards flying through the air, and the bottommost floor of the building collapses, one side falling before the other three and sending the building toppling over us.

Shikamaru turns around for a moment, shouting for his father and pushing someone aside as I grab the sleeve of his shirt, trying to tug him the other way even though I know we can't possibly reach safety in time.

"Shika—" is all I can manage before he grabs me, ducking my head under his chin and wrapping his arms tightly around my shoulders. Shutting my eyes, I take him just as tightly around his torso, pressing my face into his flak jacket as darkness overcomes us.

But instead of feeling the building crushing my bones and the indubitable pain that follows, we're shoved to the ground and blanketed by something thoroughly dark and slimy. It slicks over my skin like worms and I shudder in disgust. I dare to open my eyes to slits and see nothing but the same darkness that was under my eyelids.

"Shikamaru," I whisper even though I can hear his ragged breathing beside me. I try to shift; my leg knocks against his and he gives a gasp.

"_Don't move,"_ Shikamaru hisses, squeezing my shoulder. "Ah, _fu_—I think—I broke something."

"Better than having broken everything," I say, my voice shaky, and slide my hand from Shikamaru's waist to the fleshy substance that covers us, wondering what it is. I shiver again—this time at the familiarity of it. And then: a memory.

I am stuck inside the mouth of Orochimaru's summons, the giant snake's saliva matting my hair and permeating my clothes. It's breath stinks of rotting flesh and makes me choke. Sasuke had grabbed me, pulled me into the snake's mouth, saved me, and holds me just as tightly to protect me from an incinerating blast

I was as close to Sasuke as I am to Shikamaru now, but the feeling is undeniably, absolutely, and entirely different.

There is a sick suctioning sound. For a moment all the oxygen is drawn out of the air. I choke, and then come up coughing as light floods into my eyes as whatever had covered us detaches itself, leaving a track of goo on my skin that both tries to stick to me and follow whatever it had been excreted from. I give a groan of disgust, shaking it off as I push myself up.

"Shikamaru," I say, wiping his face of the goo that sticks to his skin.

He lays beneath me on top of twisted skeletons of metal and boulders of building rubble. His breath is uneven as he says, voice still considerably strong considering the pain he seems to be in, "My leg."

"Broken?" I say, and move to check it before I notice something. The landscape around us is hauntingly empty. No buildings or trees obscure the sky, no lampposts or wires lining the blue. And I'm horrified to see as I scan the rest of the area that there is not a single thing left standing for miles around.

"Shikamaru," I say, scrambling off of him and pulling him into sitting position.

He winces, says, "Not so _fast_, Ren. You keep bump . . . ing," he manages before his sentence gets away from him as he realizes what I have.

"It's gone," I whisper. "Shikamaru, everything is gone."


	83. Same Wavelength

**Bound  
Chapter 83: Same Wavelength**

I watch as the dust clears, waiting hopelessly for the village to emerge from its wraps. But when it settles, I still only see rocks. Rocks and boulders and the twisted metal frames of what once were buildings. Nothing else.

I take a three-sixty view of the village. It's the same all around. We're in ruins as far as the eye can see. We've sunken into a crater of rubble. It's just all . . . _gone_.

This is not happening. This can't happen.

I close my eyes, press my hand to my chest again, feel the parchment that has lasted nearly two decades under a floorboard in a kitchen where feet had constantly been stomping over it. The vibrations still stick around me from the Genshindou, feeding off my chakra. They buzz as I charge the immediate layer of vibrations around me with my chakra, and then I release them, sending them flying into the sky, as far as my chakra will fuel them.

"Ren." A hand comes down on my shoulder as I deactivate the Genshindou. It's Shikamaru's father, dusted over with smears of debris. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," I say, turning. Behind me, Shikamaru has found Shiho. She sits on her knees beside him, asking how he is. Her lab coat has turned from white to a sandy color that nearly matches her yellow hair. I can feel her trembling through the earth. "I'm sorry," I say, remembering my place as a medic. "I shouldn't—how are you all? Are you injured?"

"I'm fine," Shikaku says as I reach out and take his arm, which he had been holding onto tightly. "Really, Ren, don't worry about me. Katsuyu did a good job covering us. Except for Shikamaru, none of us seem to have been hurt more than we were before."

"Shikamaru," I say, and look past Shikaku to his son, who sits scowling as he grips his leg.

"I tried to cover the both of you," a large Katsuyu says, nudging my foot to get my attention. "But I was too slow to cover _all_ of the two of you."

"It's okay," Shikamaru says as I sit down beside Shiho so that I'm closer to Shikamaru's leg. She gives me an apprehensive look as I ease my hand under Shikamaru's calf. When I straighten his leg, he winces and says, "_Careful_."

"You're injured. It's going to hurt no matter how careful I am," I say, frowning. "The good news is it looks like your leg is only fractured. Shikaku, could you find something so that we can prop his leg up to keep it level? Yes, perfect," I say when Shikaku moves a rectangular block under Shikamaru's foot. "We'll just want to keep the swelling down."

I place my hands over his shin, prodding his leg every few centimeters. He winces and watches me work quietly, until I find where his bone has splintered. It's a small break, but it should still be braced. As I heal it, I say, "Would one of you, Shikamaru excluded of course, be able to find a plank of wood for me? I don't need a big piece, just—"

"How's this?" Shiho says, whirling around to hand me a plank of wood about the length of my forearm.

"Perfect," I say, and remember to add, "Thank you," before I take it. Reaching for my headband, I unclip the metal band from the fabric, holding the metal in my mouth as I take the plank and rest it along Shikamaru's shin. I wrap it with the fabric of my headband and, removing the metal plate from my mouth, say, "I've ease the swelling and gotten your bones lined up, so that should help a bit. But healing the bone entirely takes too much work on my part and, frankly, if we need to fight, I don't want to have used all my chakra on your leg, as confident as I am that you'll protect me and all that."

"_Fight_?" Shiho repeats, biting her lip. "Do you think that, even after this, we'll still have to fight? The village is destroyed! There's nothing left to do to us."

"The village isn't destroyed," I say, standing up and securing the metal plate of my headband to the waistband of my pants. Shiho blinks at me. I can see the wonder through her glasses, which reflect the sunlight into my eyes. "We're still here, aren't we? So long as we're still here, this Pein character will keep trying to squelch us. Which means that he won't stop until we're all dead."

"Ren's right," Shikamaru says. He starts to say more and is drowned out by a boom that reverberates through the flatten village. I turn toward it, honing in on the vibrations so I can sense the way they fluctuate around whatever power has caused the explosion and get a figure of how close it is to us. A mushroom-shaped cloud of dust rises from the crater that sits in the center of the village, but other than that, I don't know what's happening.

"What was that?" Shikamaru asks, unable to stand and look for himself. "Is someone fighting?"

One of the large Katsuyus worm toward us, slinking up behind Shikamaru and allowing him to lean back on her. "It's Naruto," she says, her antennae waving.

"Naruto," Shikamaru repeats in disbelief. I feel a weight lifted off my shoulder, the relief of not having to fight against a man who called this chaos upon us. "He's back?"

"He's mastered the Sage techniques," Katsuyu confirms, "and is fighting Pein alone."

Shikamaru tsks, scowls at his leg and attempts to stand on it.

"Don't you dare," I say, pointing a reprimanding finger at him. His scowl deepens. "Shikamaru, you can barely walk! What do you hope to do?"

"No one is to interfere, anyway," Katsuyu says.

"What? Why's he trying to act all cool?" says Shikamaru, indignant. "Look at what Pein was able to do to the village. If Naruto fights him alone—"

"No," Shikaku says, startling Shikamaru. "Naruto has been in Myobokuzan, training with the frogs. If he's mastered the Sage techniques, we won't be able to keep up with him. The best teamwork we can do right now is to not get in the way. We'll just have to wait here, Shikamaru."

Shikamaru settles back into the rubble, displeased, especially as another boom rattles our bones. I sit down, pulling my legs toward me until I notice the cut on my foot that I have yet to heal. The blood soaks my sandal, coats my foot with a thin film of pink. The fact that I've let it get so bad without noticing is amusing and disgusting. I press my hand to the cut and heal it, using my sleeve to clean up the blood afterward.

A third boom, then a fourth, and fifth sound like cannons. Our heads perk up at the noise and then we slump again, unable to do anything.

I cross my legs and concentrate on the vibrations. If I can focus on them enough, then maybe I can see how the fight is going. But I'm distracted by my soiled hands, the hands that carry so much blood though I haven't killed a single person in my life. Naruto, Sasuke, even the timid Chouji and lazy, no-good Shikamaru have all killed someone, stained their hands for the sake of this village. Whereas my hands are only stained with my own blood, the blood of my friends, of both of my sensei.

"You said you found it?"

I look up from my fingers and find Shikamaru watching me. Shikaku has called Shiho from us and speaks to her in a low voice some distance away. I wonder briefly what he could be telling her before turning my attention back to Shikamaru.

He keeps one hand permanently stuck on his leg and uses the other to beckon me closer to him. "The bond," he prompts after I don't respond. "You said you found it."

My hands fly to my chest, where the contract sits, slightly leaning and prodding my arm. "Yes," I say, tempted to take it out and see it in a clearer light. But what if it gets damaged? What if the wind catches it and blows it away? It's an unfounded concern, but one that I have all the same.

"But what I don't understand," he says, "is I thought the bond was this . . . nonphysical connection you had to Sasuke."

"It is," I say, "but it's in place because of a contract my family made with the Uchiha. What I've found is that contract, the one that implemented and holds the bond together. It's . . . " I take a deep breath and scoot back so that Shikamaru and I sit shoulder to shoulder. Taking my chances, I reach into my shirt and pull out the bond—or _contract_, more correctly—and hold it in front of me. I smooth my thumbs over the ages-old parchment. It's thick, golden yellow with time. There are flakes of paper along the creases that are starting to fall away, like the threads that make up the parchment are so worn that it can't tear anymore, just melt into nonexistence. It is proof that this bond is dated, antiquated. A thing that must be put in the past and left there for good.

"It's hard to believe that something that existed long before the founding of Konoha has been able to last this long," I say. "All because two people who fell in love signed a piece of paper with their blood, so that even 'death do us part' can't separate them. What a world we live in."

Shikamaru sighs."I still can't believe it," he murmurs, and I smile half-heartedly.

"My dad told me that I'm the first in a century to have inherited the bond," I say, tracing the combined Uchiha and Kagiru symbol with my eyes. "He said, before I was born, the last person to have a bond with an Uchiha was born at the same time as the first Shodai and died around the time of the founding of Konoha. He said she was rebellious—not in the same way I am in regards to wanting to break the bond, but she saw the tragedy of the bond and wanted to change it. My father said that our family had been cursed by her behavior, that the gods had saw we were unfit to serve the Uchiha and bore our women only sons until we could prove that we were worthy."

I laugh and, in my bitterness, I clench my hands around the contract and cause it to crinkle. "Apparently a century was enough time for us to redeem ourselves. But that's why nobody outside the Uchiha or Kagiru really believes the bond exists. When the blood of the Kagiru existed in an entire family of men, how could they be bound to the Uchiha like the stories say? Then I came along, and the bond was real again, but still nobody believed, and our families decided to keep it that way so that I could be used as a secret weapon if the time ever came for it."

Sighing, I lay the contract in my lap, cover it with my hands as I slump back into the rubble. "I don't know exactly what that woman did to break the bond for that long," I say, "or even if the lull in the bond had happened because of her or just because of bad luck, but it doesn't matter. Because now that I have this, I can find a way to make it invalid and everything will be okay."

"Do you know how?" Shikamaru asks. "Did you manage to figure out a way to break it?"

"No," I say. "But I know someone who does."

And then I tell Shikamaru about Rei, the girl who he was supposed to fight against in the Chuunin exams, about the visits she paid me, about the conversations we had, and how she had helped me find Sasuke again. I tell Shikamaru about the relationship between her family and my family and what she can do with the spirits. How she will be able to unravel the bond.

I realize how much I have kept to myself. It has always been in my nature to stay quiet about things until they either explode on me or I act out so brazenly that things are only made worse. No matter what, I lose.

But I can fix this. I can save it all by telling Shikamaru everything. Even if I don't tell him everything immediately, I tell him eventually. I only need to keep my fingers crossed that it's not too late to be honest.

When I finish talking, Shikamaru has his brow drawn together and his arms crossed. His fingers tap against his bicep like he has a few choice words for me, but bites his tongue to keep from expressing them. He sighs, says under his breath, "All this time," and shakes his head.

"Sorry," I say. He continues to shake his head.

"So how are you supposed to call her back?" he says, pointing at my hair. "If you don't have that feather anymore, you can't contact her, right?"

I shrug. "She said to send out a distress signal," I say, "but I don't know what that means. And I don't know exactly how the spirits work, but earlier, just after this happened—" I gesture to the wreckage around us. "—I sent a ball of the vibrations charged with my chakra into the sky and dispersed it. Like fireworks. I don't know if that'll do anything, but here's hoping."

We lapse into silence again, and I can hear the continued rumblings of Naruto and Pein's fight. I want to know what's going on, but if it's anything less than Naruto beating Pein into nonexistence, I don't want to see it. Naruto must win. He has to take back the village.

I close my eyes, realizing I've almost been caught in the most destructive train of thought. The desire to avenge something or someone dear to us can only fuel us so far before it turns on us and causes us to rot from the inside out. Look at what's happened to Sasuke. I don't want to lose myself like that. I don't want anyone I care about to lose themselves like that.

I suppose that's me being a hopeless romantic of sorts. As a shinobi, I can't believe that we will be able to avoid feeling like that. I can't believe that my single desire to change the mindsets of the shinobi race will in fact make a difference. I mean, consider how hard it is for me to change myself. How can I possibly change other people when they are equally as stubborn and, at times, equally as self-righteous?

"Ren," Shikamaru says, and I open my eyes. He is staring at the contract in my lap, how I grip it like it is the only thing holding me here. "Have you read that? To see exactly what the bond entails?"

"No," I say, and show him the red wax seal, unbroken. "I'm . . . a little afraid to, actually. I don't want to know the technicalities of it. I just want it gone."

Shikamaru purses his lips. "Do you think," he says slowly, "there will be consequences to breaking it?"

I inhale sharply, look down at the contract in my hands. "Consequences," I repeat, considering the question because I hadn't even thought about it until Shikamaru mentioned it. Given how much it hurt when Sasuke severed it the first time, surely there must be some kind of backlash to breaking the bond completely.

But I am very willing to take whatever that risk may be.

Shikamaru must see my resolve to break the bond in the way I set my lips because he frowns at me, opens his mouth to scold me. Just in time to cut him off, someone calls his name and we turn. I quietly tuck the contract back into my shirt.

Ino's tail of blonde hair flows left and right in time with her steps as she climbs the mound of rubble on which we sit. Behind her trails her father, Inoichi, and an ANBU guard, who carries an unconscious woman in black robes. Noticing the way the woman is too still, I stand to greet them, taking the woman from the ANBU's back when they reach us.

"Are you all right?" says Shikamaru.

Ino nods, and then looks to me as I realize the too still woman is Shizune. I press my hands over her chest, flutter my fingers over her neck, her eyes. "It's no use, Ren," Ino says. "Shizune's—"

"Yeah," I say. "What happened to her? There aren't any injuries or weaknesses in her organs that could have caused this. It looks like she just . . . fell over and died."

Ino winces, and I apologize for my brusqueness. She says, "No, it's all right," and then goes on to explain what had happened, how Shizune had realized that the black rods on Pein's body are antennae that react to the real Pein's chakra, allowing him to control them from a distance, how they had been overheard and Shizune had been caught by one of the Pein, who promptly pulled the life out of her body.

"If we had been more careful," Ino says with glossy eyes as she looks over Shizune's body, "this wouldn't have happened."

"Well, we'll just have to keep things like this from happening again, then," I say, taking her shoulder. "With Naruto fighting Pein and us barred from getting involved, we've had nothing to do, but with the information you've given us, now we're not completely useless."

"Ren's right," Shikamaru says, and my brow raises to the heavens. "What?"

"Just . . . wow," I say, crossing my arms. "This may be a bad time, but can we take a moment to revel in the words that have just come out of Shikamaru's mouth? 'Ren's right'. Don't hear that very often, do we?" I say to Shiho, who blinks at me, uncomprehending.

"_Anyway_," Shikamaru says, a corner of his mouth pulling into a frown while I hold my hands up in deference. "We can't let Shizune-senpai's death go to waste. We need to use what information she's given us and find where Pein's real body is before we do anything else."

"Shikamaru," his father says unsurely. "I think we could stand to take things more slowly."

"No, Shikaku," Inoichi says without reserve. "I'm with Shikamaru on this. The best thing we can do right now is uncover where the real Pein is."

"Then," Shikaku says, "skilled as you are, shouldn't you be able to track Pein's chakra back to its source, Inoichi?"

Inoichi pauses, then shakes his head. "I've tried," he says. "But Pein is constantly changing the frequency of his chakra so I can't keep track of it."

"So what do we do?" says Ino, sitting forward as I let Inoichi's statement simmer in my head. There's something about it that has caught my attention and made me feel important, but I can't place my finger on it. It isn't until Ino asks, "What's the use of the information Shizune was able to extract if we can't even trace the frequency of Pein's chakra?" that it clicks.

"Frequency," I repeat, blinking at Inoichi who quirks his brow. I drop my fist into the palm of my other hand and say, "That's it, isn't it! Frequency! Where's that antenna or rod or whatever? Do you still have it?"

Inoichi pats himself down, looks to the ANBU and then his daughter, who both shake their heads. "Shizune was carrying it," he says. "She probably dropped it when she was dragged away by the Pein that caught up with us, though. Why? What have you realized?"

"Frequency," I say again, clicking my fingers. "The vibrations go off of frequencies! If you had one of the rods with you, then I could try to trace Pein's chakra through the vibrations. They'll latch onto the chakra and stay with them, even when they change frequencies."

"But we don't have the rod," Ino says, distressed. "So now what?"

"Do you think you could still track it, Ren?" Shikamaru asks, and I shrug.

"I'll try," I say, getting to my feet and moving three paces away from the group so there's a buffer between me and everyone's chakras. "But don't get your hopes up."

"Right. In the meantime, we can continue gathering information," Shikamaru says, shifting his injured leg. "We can use Katsuyu to get in touch with everyone who's been in contact with Pein. We can even gather information from the people who have died. The point is that our search is thorough, even if we have to carry bodies out."

I sit on a pile of rubble that gives me a vantage point. I can see across the stretch of rubble that eventually slopes down into the crater, where Naruto and Pein are currently fighting. There is barely any movement. From what I can see, the fight is at a stall, though I don't know why.

I've lost track of the conversation happening in the group when Inoichi calls for my attention. "Listen!" he says, cupping his hands around his mouth so his voice reaches me. "Pein is probably transmitting his chakra from somewhere high up. Whatever chakra frequency you can sense, make sure it comes from a source that isn't level with us; in fact, the higher it comes off, the better. Do you understand?"

"Got it!" I say, giving him a small two finger salute.

Shikaku taps Inoichi on the shoulder, hands something off to him. Inoichi nods and then turns back to me, saying, "Here, take this!"

What I see is a small Katsuyu sailing through the air. I stretch out my arm, catching the slug before she goes flying over my head. She's shivering in shock as I shelve her on my shoulder and Inoichi says, "We're also going to split up to the highest points in Konoha to see if we can find him. Katsuyu is going to relay this message to the other villagers as well. Use her if you find him before us."

I'm about to confirm when we hear an enormous boom. Our heads turn like a bird's to the sound of danger, and then I feel the wave of chakra so powerful and disgusting that I suck in a deep breath. I stand, watching as the dust continues to plume from spot after spot in the crater below, leaving no time in between for the earth to settle.

"Naruto," I say, twisting my hands together. I close my eyes, activating the Genshindou, which immediately causes the vibrations to latch onto the greatest source of chakra around me. They fly toward the depths of the crater, barely able to contain themselves as they leech off of the Kyuubi's chakra. It's darker and more violent than I have ever felt it, and I wonder why Naruto has allowed it to overwhelm him.

The vibrations begin to hum by my ear. Katsuyu is talking to me, I realize, and I have to use the vibrations to figure out what she's saying as the Genshindou turns everything into a buzzing. " . . . six-tails. Hinata tried to save him and fell in the process."

"Hinata?" I say, alarmed. My eyes snap open: I see blurs of shapes moving out of the crater, the maelstrom of the Kyuubi's chakra running into the forest just east of the Hokage monuments. "Where are they going?"

"Pein is running away from Naruto," Katsuyu says, and I find a chance.

"I'm going to Hinata," I say. "Tell the others—"

"Sakura is already down there with Team Gai. They've just returned from their mission," says Katsuyu. I'm about to argue that it doesn't matter, I need to see how Hinata is doing, but then the vibrations snap and pull into the air around the Kyuubi. The earth has torn up from its roots, dragging up trees and animals that I can feel dropping to their deaths. The rock encases the Kyuubi, who lets out a mournful cry that is quickly stifled by layer after layer that begins to cover it. But then the vibrations hike up again. The very air rumbles, like encroaching thunder, and then the earth bursts, eight red tails breaking through the miniature planet. The tails writhe like tentacles and the vibrations shake so violently that my fingers start to go numb—before the energy drops away, the red chakra evaporating, and I'm left blinking in surprise at the empty air.

There is a moment of pause, a moment when the vibrations drop away from the Kyuubi and latch onto another energy that is, while not stronger than the Kyuubi's chakra, just as prevalent.

The chakra fluctuates and then settles on a new wavelength. But it remains the same energy, reeling toward the same source, and I realize: This is Pein's energy.

I sit back down, press my fingers together in a basic hand seal, and concentrate. With the Kyuubi's chakra suppressed, I can feel the waves of chakra humming from the earth that floats like a small planet east of the village. I can feel the chakra that holds it together streaming from a point on the ground, and from that point I can feel that chakra pooling in from a point farther east that grows weaker in the distance.

The frequency fluxes again, pitches to a shorter wavelength. But the vibrations hold onto the chakra. And I've found him.

"Katsuyu," I say. "Send a squad to the east. There, just beyond where that large ball of earth hangs in the sky, they'll find Pein."


	84. Inheritance

**Bound  
Chapter 84: Inheritance**

"Shikaku and Inoichi are heading that way now," says Katsuyu, and I stand, deactivating the Genshindou. I shake off the numbness that has started to settle on my skin, skidding down the pile of rubble to where Shikamaru remains with Shiho, Ino, and Shizune's body.

"So?" Shikamaru says when I stop beside him. "Where you able to find anything?"

"Yeah," I say, pushing my hair out of my eyes. "I relayed a message to your fathers. They're following the lead I've given them. How's your leg, Shikamaru? Are you three fine here?"

Shikamaru nods, then thinks to ask, "Why? Where are you going?"

I flash Shikamaru a smile, endeared by the fact that he always knows exactly what I mean to do, however annoying it can be at times. "I want to scout the area," I say, adjusting Katsuyu on my shoulder. "I want to see if there's anyone injured I can help. I'm going to take Katsuyu with me, and there's no chance I'm going to get involved in that," I say, and jerk a thumb over my shoulder to indicate the massive ball of earth that still levitates in the air. Just then the ball begins to crumble, chunks of debris raining down over the nearby forest. We can hear the wood splintering from where we are, the avalanche of rock slamming against one another and sending shocks through the ground.

I blink at the carnage, then turn my back on it definitely, walking in the opposite direction. "Like I said: No chance. So don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

"Oh, just let her go, Shikamaru," Ino says when Shikamaru begins to protest again. "Just because _you're_ useless doesn't mean everyone else has to be."

I wave to her in thanks over my shoulder, glad to be moving. Ino is right: Shikamaru's only fussing because he wants to be the one scouting and poking his nose around for Pein. Even though, since the danger is confined to Naruto's fight with Pein and I don't have to worry about fighting, I could fix Shikamaru without worrying about him getting involved, I'm not going to. He's safer staying where he is.

Maneuvering through the debris is harder than I thought it would be. Flat surfaces to walk across are few and far between, and most of the rubble is too cracked and jagged for me to find a sturdy surface to climb up. I eventually give up trying to find flat surfaces to walk on and end up haphazardly jumping about and keeping my fingers crossed that I stick my landings. At one point, my sandal gets caught on something and I trip. My ankle twists and my sandal is dragged off my foot as I fall against a vaguely recognizable column that probably used to hold up an important building in the village.

When I recover from my fall and get up to retrieve my sandal, the sole of my exposed foot is cut on the corners of the broken rock. I draw in a breath through my teeth, biting my lip and reaching down to heal my foot when an overwhelming sense of déjà vu stops me short.

My foot throbs, blood warming my sole. I can remember this. I can remember stumbling over jagged edges of stone like this, the decimation colored over with the gloomy grey of an overcast sky. I can remember the pain in only one foot being so distracting that I kick off my other sandal to bear the pain of cuts burning the bottoms of both my feet.

And Sasuke.

I lose my balance in the shock of the memory and press my hand over my mouth, closing my eyes to see if I can reach inside my mind and recover more. But beyond that, there is nothing, and the bond gives out a small wail.

The bond. This is the first I've heard from it since losing Sasuke again. It is a weak, miserable thing, barely able to draw itself up. It doesn't last for more than a second, and I start to think: maybe this is the true end of the bond. It can only take the abuse and abandonment for so long before it gives up too, just like anything else in this world.

"Are you okay, Ren?" Katsuyu says, her voice clear in my ear.

The memory isn't significant enough for me to bring it up. I remembered how I lost my sandals before returning to the village. That doesn't bring me closer to finding out what happened to Sasuke after his fight. So I brush off Katsuyu's concern with a shake of my head, heal my foot, and pull my sandal back on to continue searching for people to help.

There are a considerable amount of dead bodies lying around. I pause to examine each one I come across, trying to determine their cause of death until it starts to wear me out. The first time I notice a dead body without stopping, Katsuyu whispers, "I couldn't cover them all."

I understand. There's only so much one person can do before they reach their limit.

"Is there anyone alive around here?" I think to ask, pushing my hair out of my face.

Before I can check with the vibrations, Katsuyu says, "Yes. A hundred meters to your left, Ren."

I follow Katsuyu's instruction, careful this time as I cross the sea of broken buildings. There are metal frames here, mangled and threatening. It seems impossible that we'll be able to salvage anything from this mess, especially given that there is a massive crater that sinks through hundreds of layers of earth in the center of the village. Do they expect us to fill it slowly, leveling out the land so that we can rebuild on top of the soil? Maybe the second foundation won't be as easily blown away as the first. But I have a feeling that's the way everyone always thinks, and, always, everyone is wrong.

As I clamber over a pile of rubble, someone calls my name, catching my attention. It's Chouji and his father Chouza, sitting up and looking well, with a large Katsuyu sitting between them and wagging her antennae at us. They beam as they see me, relieved to see another living person, and wave me toward them.

"It's good to see you guys," I say, making sure that Katsuyu stays on my shoulder as I slide down a pile of rubble to get to the Akimichi boys. "How are you? Did Katsuyu take care of you?"

"Yes, we're fine," Chouza says, his voice rumbling, comforting. "What about you, Ren? Have you heard from any of the others?"

"Yes," I say. "I was just with Shikamaru and Ino. Inoichi and Shikaku-san have gone to track down the real Pein right now. But most importantly," I say, kneeling down to inspect Chouza, who I remember I had stopped healing abruptly. "How is your chest feeling? No weird pressure or anything? It doesn't hurt when you breathe, does it?"

Chouza shakes his head, gives his chest a hearty thump that causes me to wince. "You can't get Akimichi men down easily!" he says. "I woke up from my fight with Pein feeling better than ever."

"Good," I say, smiling. "That's good. And you, Chouji?"

He jumps, like he had been hoping that I wouldn't look at him. He shifts, says quickly, "Fine, fine."

"Chouji," I say, reaching for his shoulder, but then I see what he's been trying to cover up. Behind him, a man's body lies too still, like Shizune's, and though Chouji manages to shield the upper half of the man's body from me, I know who it is. Chouji wouldn't have tried to hide him from me if it were anyone else. But I already knew.

I swallow thickly and approach him. Chouji says, "Ren, I'm—"

I cut him off, say, "It's okay, Chouji. I know. Just—let me see him."

Chouji remains in my way until his father calls him off. "Even you had a chance to see your sensei, Chouji," Chouza says as he draws his son out of my way. "Come on. Let's give her some space."

They can only sensibly move a meter to the left if they want to remain sitting. I don't mind them still so close to me, though; the more people there are around me, the less likely it'll be that I cry, and I don't want to cry. They turn their backs to me, which is all I could ask for as I kneel beside Kakashi, pushing his flattened silver hair out of his face.

His hair is crusted with blood that chips off when I touch it. His skin is the same way: flakes of blood stain his forehead, thicker where it has settled into the lines on his brow. I nearly want to laugh seeing where I can tell his wrinkles will lie when he becomes old. His forehead will be saggy from all the times he's raised his eyebrows in reaction to something stupid one of us has said. God knows what the rest of his face will look like. I wonder if he'll keep his mask perpetually covering the bottom half of his face when he goes into old age.

If he _had_ grown into old age.

I clear his forehead of the matted blood, brush off the dust that has gathered on his mask and jacket and the shoulders of his shirt. I want him to look presentable when Naruto and Sakura see him. Your sensei always set the bar for you, like your parents do. So there's nothing more disarming than seeing your sensei disheveled—like, if your master can be defeated, what hope do you have of surviving anything?

I find Kakashi's headband lying on the other side of him. I lean over him to grab it and begin folding the cloth under the metal plate when I feel the vibrations jerk and shudder. I stop, looking up at the sky, clear blue and empty in the wake of destruction. It seems unnatural that on a day like this the sky can be so pure and undisturbed, so I'm slightly comforted when the vibrations continue to rumble, tugging at the pit of my stomach.

"Katsuyu," I say, and the slug on my shoulder waves its antennae at my cheek. "Is something happening?"

Before she can answer, Chouji says, "Dad—look!"

Chouza follows the point of his son's finger and I follow suit. Streaks of white glitter in the sunlight. Wisps of clouds or steam shoot through the sky like stars trailing out of the night. I'm about to stand to figure out where these clouds are coming from and why they're appearing when one of the streaks flies right at me, over my head, and then is absorbed by Kakashi's body.

The three of us stare at Kakashi for a while before I think to drop his headband and press my hands to his chest, drum my fingers over his lungs and sternum and on the nape of his neck.

And, everywhere, I feel it: the faint _ba-dump_ of his heartbeat, reawakening.

"Kakashi," I breathe, cupping his cheek with my hand. Can it be that he's really . . . ?

And then, slowly, unbelievably, impossibly, Kakashi's eyes open, squinting at the sunlight. He pushes himself up, his voice weak and hoarse as he asks, "What's happened?"

I make a noise of strangled surprise at the sound of his voice, prompting him to meet my gaze, his mismatched eyes stirring my heart and making my lungs and eyes well up with gladness. "What's happened," I say, my voice quaking, "is that you've just been brought back from the dead. I—how is this possible?" I laugh, the sound bordering hysteria in my happiness, and shake my head, saying, "Kakashi. _Kakashi_, you stupid, _stupid_ man, scaring me senseless with your deadness and you are going to owe me big time to make up for all this—"

Kakashi drops a hand on my head, pets me endearingly like he used to, and I'm afraid, regardless of all the people watching, I will cry from the familiarity of his gesture, that I will be able to feel the kindness and comfort of it again and again and again because he is alive.

"Like I said," Kakashi says quietly. "You are a good student. I am very happy to have watched you grow up."

I scowl at him, determined to not cry. So I turned to the Katsuyu on my shoulder, say, "How _did_ this happen? Was it Naruto?"

"Yes," the large Katsuyu says. "I'll explain everything."

And so she does, and we listen in awe and pride and disbelief as Katsuyu tells us about Naruto's and Pein's conversation, how Naruto had managed to talk Pein, whose real name is Nagato, out of his anger and hatred and give him hope that Naruto would be able to lead the world and break the cycle of pain and revenge.

I squeeze Kakashi's forearm throughout the story, unable to wrap my head around what Naruto has been able to do. I mean, we live in a world of malice and violence and vengeance. That Naruto can convince someone to not destroy the entirety of our existence through words alone is a miracle. When I grumble this, Kakashi says, "That's Naruto."

And I suppose it is. Naruto, with the mysterious power to change someone through his passion and kindness alone. Naruto, who, as Chiyo predicted, might possibly lead the new generation of shinobi into a revolutionized world.

Kakashi unhooks my hands from his arm and stands, taking his headband and wrapping it back in place. As he pulls it down over his left eye, he says, "How is Naruto holding up, Katsuyu?"

"He is uninjured because of the Sage Technique," she says, "but his physical stamina is waning. His chakra stores are nearly depleted. He won't be able to make it back to the village from where he is."

"Lead me to his location," Kakashi says, and plucks the little Katsuyu off my shoulder and places her on his own. "I'll bring him home."

"I don't think so," I say, standing in a hurry. "You need to be examined before you do anything, Kakashi. You've just been raised from the dead!"

"Despite that," says Kakashi, "I feel better than I have in a long time. Must be a side effect of being resurrected. And I'm sure that if there were anything seriously wrong with me, you would have noticed by now, Ren."

"Stop trying to flatter me into letting you go," I say, indignant.

"It's working, though, isn't it?" says Kakashi, raising his brow. And this little idiosyncrasy is what convinces me to let him go, because he _is_ perfectly fine and if he is already amused by my behavior, he must already be wholly normal again.

"We should start to organize everyone together," I say to the larger slug that remains with us when Kakashi leaves. "We can recuperate now that this is over. Katsuyu, please gather the shinobi. Bring them round to where Naruto and Kakashi will be returning. I think everyone will want to see him before we start rebuilding the village. Try to herd the injured into one area, and medics that same way. Chouji," I say as the boy begins to stand. "Ino and Shikamaru along with Shizune and a cryptologist named Shiho are about two hundred meters east of here. Shikamaru can't walk on one leg, so can you go help brace him?"

Chouji affirms and I thank him before he takes off. Katsuyu says to me as I watch Chouji go, "Everyone is being led to the safe houses where some of the officials will be organizing capable shinobi into teams to rebuild the village. For now, they are concerned with raising medical tents to help the injured."

"I'll organize that," I say, and then remember. "Katsuyu, do you think you could get me in contact with Sakura? I want to make sure she's okay and that Hinata is doing well. Hey, are you all right yourself?" I ask when she shudders and her antennae fall.

"It's Tsunade," she says. "She used all her chakra to allow me to save everyone as Nagato destroyed the village, and doesn't have much energy left so far as sustaining my presence here goes. I'm afraid I'm at my limit."

I purse my lips and nod, wondering what shape Tsunade is in right now and hoping that she will be all right soon. After all, with the village bouncing back from this level of destruction, we're going to need a Hokage to guide us. "You rest until . . . you're called back to wherever summons go. I'll take care of it from here. Thank you for everything you've done, Katsuyu."

She heaves a sigh and lays against the ground as I move around her. "Chouza," I say with a small bow of my head. "Will you be all right getting to the rendezvous point by yourself? I want to go around and make sure everyone has gotten Katsuyu's message, so I might be a bit delayed."

Chouza smiles and says, "Yes, thank you, Ren." Just as I'm about to leave him, Chouza adds, "Look at you kids. First, Naruto saves the day. Now here you are, taking charge of bringing us back together. Sometimes I forget that my time will end and the next generation will rise up to lead us."

I laugh, running my hand through the short crop of my hair. "Whenever anyone talks about that," I say, "about how it's time for us to inherit the world, they always make it sound like we're going to lead a revolution and overthrow everything."

Chouza stands, exhaling a grunt in the process. He says, "You may as well be doing that. With kids like you and Chouji and Shikamaru—and especially with a boy like Naruto—you can't possibly do any worse than us." Chouza claps one of his giant hands on my shoulder, causing my knees to buckle slightly. "I look at all the things you kids do," he says, "and it gives me hope for the shinobi world. The way it is now, we think that nothing can be changed, that the cycles of hatred and animosity must continue because we are capable of avenging our loved ones. But Naruto has proven that we're wrong about that. And if kids like that are going to be inheriting our responsibilities, then I absolutely believe that our world can change for the better."

[+]

The bodies that I had passed on the way over here now move and lift with life and breath. I make sure each of them don't have injuries that could prevent them from getting to the safe houses in a timely manner, but, like Kakashi, everyone who has been revived is feeling "more alive than ever," as one man tells me.

I direct everyone toward the safe houses, and soon there is a flood of black dots shifting up and over the rubble, following the light like ants to a food pile. I'm glad to see everyone go, and it isn't long before I'm able to follow everyone myself. My hands are considerably dirtier than when I had began my excursion, and there are a few cuts that line my foot and arms where I had been careless and rubbed against sharp, jagged rocks, but otherwise, I am perfect.

When I reach the safe houses, I find everyone gathered outside. Families that have been reunited are knotted together in each other's arms, and friends laugh and clasp hands, pulling each other into one-armed hugs that express their happiness that their comrade is alive.

In the light, everything shines despite the layer of grime that covers everyone's skin and the matted blood that crusts the cuts in people's clothes so that their wounds are not so much lacerations of the flesh as they are designs on their shirts and pants. The survivors who are still streaming in from the village blink dazedly at everyone, not sure how to react to the other people who are alive around them, as though no one had expected anyone to come out alive.

But we are indubitably alive.

The crowd's words start out as a murmur, and that murmur turns into a cheer, and that cheer becomes a roaring maelstrom of relief at the end of a war and love of kinsmen and hope that we will be able to survive one more day. The roaring drowns out the misfortune, the death, the misery that has been thrust upon our people. And in that moment, we are a people, a singularity in every sense of the word.

"Ren!"

Sakura comes up beside me, lets out a sigh of relief as she stops. I notice her eyes are red, smears of dirt smudged in tracks down her cheeks. "I'm glad I found you!" she says, taking my shoulder. "I'm glad you're all right. Have you seen that idiot Naruto?"

I shake my head, laughing. "No," I say, "but I'm glad to see you're okay, too. How is Hinata? Katsuyu told me you healed her."

Sakura pauses, glances over her shoulder where I see Hinata being berated by Kiba, who has apparently heard of her foolhardiness from Katsuyu. Sakura says, "She's all right. She was brave."

I'm about to agree when I feel the vibrations shift far outside the edge of the crowd. I recognize the chakras that approach, one that had flickered and left me and then miraculously returned, and the other that had exploded and then caught itself to save everyone. My cheeks begin to ache with smiling, but this is a pain I am willing to endure, that I would endure for the rest of my life.

"Sakura," I say, brushing her wrist. I point to the edge of the forest where two figures are emerging, one carried on top of the other. She stiffens, pulls her lip into a frown as the villagers nearest the forest's edge shout and cheer, "_Naruto_!"

They ebb toward him, reaching out to pat him on the back and shake his hand and send him their well wishes and thanks as Kakashi lets him down off his back. People squeeze past me, reaching to touch the savior of the village and celebrate him. They barrage Naruto with questions—"What was the real Pein—Nagato—like?" "How did you do it?" "How are you feeling?"—and step on his feet in their over-eagerness.

"He must be loving this," I grumble to Sakura before I realize she's already pushing through the crowd of admirers, her feet stomping little clouds of dust into the air. "Ah, hey, Sakura! What do you mean to—"

The crowd parts for Sakura as they notice her determination and watch her, grinning as she approaches Naruto like they expect her to greet him with a kiss and a declaration of love. Naruto, though, doesn't seem to have his hopes as high as he sees the expression she wears on her face, the way her arms swing. He says, "Sakura—"

Only to have her cut him off with a punch to the gut that makes him double over in pain. He grips his stomach, trying to regain his breath as I catch up to Sakura, who is saying, "Why do you always have to be so _rash_, you _idiot_!"

Naruto grits his teeth as he endures the abuse and winces when Sakura takes him by the shoulders. But she merely lifts him out of his half-bow, raising him up before she steps closer to him and wraps her arms around his shoulders, hugging him. His eyes widen in surprise, his arms falling limp at his sides as he looks between me and Sakura, unable to understand what's happening. Hero or not, Naruto remains ever the idiot.

"Thank you," Sakura says quietly, and I reach out to them, wrap my arms around them both, and pull us closer together.

"Thank you," I say too as Sakura's arm goes around my shoulders, squeezing.

.

Pause.

For a moment time stands still. I know that sounds cheesy and, frankly, weird coming from a person like me, but it's the only way I can explain what happens. With our arms around each other, leaning into each other, grateful that each one of us is alive and well, Naruto, Sakura and I are unified, together and at peace in the middle of this chaos, in the middle of this crowd who, until a few minutes ago, knew and thought nothing of us.

And it still doesn't matter what they think of us now. It doesn't matter that they respect Naruto for saving what's left of the village, that they are massively indebt to him for resurrecting them like a proverbial son. It doesn't matter that they think Sakura and I are endearing friends of his who stand by and support him like there is nothing more important to us. None of it matters because we are still us—Naruto, the brazen idiot who always somehow manages to save the day; Sakura, the temperamental kunoichi who's medical skills will make her revered one day; and me, the girl who runs away but always comes back.

We are so full up with admiration and appreciation and love that I wish we could stay like this forever. I wish we could remember this forever, no matter what happens. I wish there was nothing to get in the way of us feeling this way every moment for the rest of our lives.

I wish we could forget the pain we felt beforehand, the pain we feel when we are reminded of Akatsuki and Sasuke, and how he won't come back to us.

There is a small part of me that wishes he were here to cherish this moment with us too, that his arm connected us, sealed us in, made us absolute.

But, of course, there is an impossibility in all that. But that impossibility makes me cherish this moment so much so that it becomes hard for me to snap back into reality and—

Unpause.

.

Someone begins to clap, and the clap turns into a full-on applause, and then the other shinobi surround us. I pull away from Naruto, going against the crowd to escape the tight space as they pick Naruto onto their shoulders and toss him into the air, hip-hip-hooraying as he glints in the sun.

In the fragments of the mayhem born out of gladness born out of the end of mayhem, I see the faces of the people I have grown up with, teenagers who have mutated into adults in the midst of battle. They clap each other on the back and their lips break into smiles. There is one face specifically that I am elated to see, and it shines golden in the light refracting off of everyone else. His eyes—dark, sharp, sweetly brown—flash as they meet mine, and I straighten, grin.

While I can't say I know what I'm doing when it comes to inheriting the world that our forefathers have built for us, I can agree with Chouji's father on one thing: with these people beside me as we grow older and take on the responsibilities our sensei and mentors and fathers and mothers hand down to us, I have the utmost confidence that we are fostering a better world.


	85. Newsworthy

**Bound  
Chapter 85: Newsworthy**

As the crowd continues to shower Naruto with praise, I find some shinobi officials and begin to organize medical tents for the injured. True to her word, Katsuyu has managed to direct the injured into a little area before she disappeared and returned to Slug Land or wherever summons go. Due to Katsuyu's diligence and Nagato's revival technique, many of the injuries are minor, and we're able to get patients in and out of the infirmary without pause.

Shikamaru is in one of the secondary tents that have been raised. I go to see him as soon as I hear he's in. His injured leg has been put in a real splint instead of the one I had made for him, and he sits scowling as medics walk past him, checking their clipboards for who to treat next but not acknowledging him.

"My leg's already been healed," he says when I come to his bedside, "but they're keeping me here for a few minutes to make sure my bone has completely set before I walk again."

"Sounds reasonable to me," I say, flicking his forehead. His scowl deepens. "But if you're really that anxious to be up and about again, I'll check your leg now and if everything looks good to me, I'll let you go."

As I remove his splint and press my fingers to his shin, feeling the small bump where the flesh of his leg is still slightly bruised from the injury, Shikamaru says, "That reminds me. Here, this is yours."

He extracts a band of blue fabric from his pocket and holds it out to me. I take it from him, running my fingers over where the cloth of my headband has worn so much that I can see through it.

"Thank you," he adds as I stuff it into my pocket. "The medics told me that if it hadn't been for that splint, I would have had to sit in here for longer than I already have to."

"Only doing my job," I say, healing the final remainder of the bruises on his leg. "And, in doing my job as a medic, I, Kagiru Ren, dub you, Nara Shikamaru, well enough to walk around and assist in the restoration of Konohagakure."

Shikamaru rolls his eyes and stands from his cot. He leans his weight on his previously broken leg, bending at the knee and raising it to make sure everything is okay. Satisfied with my handiwork, he says again, "Thank you."

"Thank _you_," I say, giving him a small two-fingered salute. "If you hadn't been trying to save me, you wouldn't have gotten hurt in the first place. Granted, Katsuyu would have protected us anyway, but I appreciate the effort."

Shikamaru tucks his hands into his pockets, shaking his head. "It's still hard for me to believe," he says, looking around at the other medics and injured shinobi. There are only a few remaining in the tent compared to the dozens that had been brought in initially, but they, as well as the destruction that awaits us when we leave the tent, are a reminder of what has become of our village, how we will have to rebuild everything from the ashes of what once was.

Ashes. Which reminds me. I press my hand to my chest, where I hear the crinkle of the bond. Shikamaru hears it too and blinks at me.

"The bond," I say, sheepish. "I've forgotten all about it in this mess. Ironic, isn't it, that the thing that haunts me my entire life can be pushed aside so easily?"

"I'd say it was warranted," Shikamaru says. "Where did you find it, anyway? If you've been looking for it for so long, how did you just manage to stumble upon it moments before the village was destroyed?"

I pull the contract out of my shirt, holding it out at arm's length to examine it. The thick parchment remains the same rotted yellow. Along the edge of the paper, however, I can see where the frayed edges have melted even farther.

"To tell you the truth," I say, sighing and tucking it back into my shirt, "I don't really know. I went back to my house to get my headband and gather some supplies, and then for some reason I went into my kitchen. I tripped over that goddamn floorboard that never stayed down and—I don't know, with the village under attack and being tripped like that, I was just so angry that I decided to tear the floorboard out. And—ta-da! Bond contract."

Shikamaru scowls in disbelief. "What luck," he says. "Have you heard back from that girl yet? Rei? So what are you going to do with it in the meantime?" he asks when I shake my head.

I shrug, chewing on the inside of my lip. "Hold onto it, I guess," I say. "What else can I do?"

Shikamaru considers my question, and then says, "I know you told Sakura and Naruto about the bond already, but have you told them about finding the contract?"

I laugh, pushing a hand through my hair. "No," I say. "I don't know about telling them about this. Chances are they're going to tell me not to break the bond until I can reconnect with Sasuke and maybe find out where he is. But maybe nullifying this contract right away is what's going to bring back my memory."

Shikamaru's brow pulls together. He begins to speak when he's interrupted by someone calling for me. It's Sakura, poking her head through the opening of the infirmary tent. She waves me me down and, with Shikamaru at my side, I go to her.

"We've been looking for you everywhere," she says, frowning. "Come on. Now that everything's been sorted, Naruto wants to meet with Tsunade-sama."

"What does that have to do with me?" I say, propping a hand on my hip.

"It's Naruto," she says, and that seemingly decides that. I part ways with Shikamaru, telling him to take it easy, and he tells me likewise, giving me a pointed look that I pointedly ignore. I leave with Sakura, walking past rows and rows of timber that have been neatly stacked in piles that sit taller than me. It's beyond me how we've managed to conjure construction teams so quickly to put our village back together. I don't recognize half of them; they aren't shinobi, and they wear clothes that aren't characteristic of Konoha fashions. They must be allies, people of neighboring villages and towns that Konoha has helped in the past.

I guess the menial missions we send our Genin on pay off in the long run.

On our walk, Sakura asks, "Have you heard about Tsunade-sama's condition?"

"Not totally," I say. "But I can guess. Katsuyu told me Tsunade's used up most of her chakra reserves to protect the villagers. If that's the case, she can't possibly still be conscious right now. To protect so many people at once would have killed anyone else."

Sakura nods, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Naruto doesn't realize the effort it took," she says, "so I don't think he's aware of how she's doing. Kakashi is going to try to prepare him, but—it'll be a shock. I want to prepare you, too, Ren. This is Tsunade like you've never seen her before."

"I think I can handle it," I say, mostly because this situation reminds me of when I had seen my mother in the hospital, pushed into that self-induced coma that had made her dead but not dead.

Unconvinced, Sakura pauses in front of a tent that has been separated from and is larger than the rest. I notice there are men shrouded in black cloaks surrounding the area. The ANBU allow Sakura to the entrance of the tent without a word, and as she reaches to grab the tent flaps, she glances over my shoulder and says, "If you're sure. Here come Naruto and Kakashi."

The two appear from around the corner, the severity of the situation evidently resonating with Naruto as he greets me with a stiff nod. It's been four or five hours since I saw Naruto being whisked away by the crowd of admiring fans, and there is something different about him that I can't put my finger on. He follows Sakura into the tent, and I go in after them with Kakashi picking up the rear.

Aside from a small chest of drawers undoubtedly containing medical supplies, the inside of the tent is bare. In the center of the tent is Shizune at the side of an old woman I barely recognize as Tsuande.

Tsunade, who is usually young and vibrant, an appearance kept up by some sort of jutsu, is a sunken cheeked woman now, with wrinkled and swallow skin that pulls taunt against the veins of her neck and bones of her body. Her hair is an ashy blonde, and her breathing is so shallow that it seems unlikely that she will have many more to follow each one that escapes her mouth.

Shizune's lips are pressed in a thin line of worry and her brow squashed together as she watches over Tsunade. She turns as we enter, her attention drawn by the fluttering of the tent flaps. The sight of me seems to displease her more, but she turns back to Tsunade and informs us, "Her condition hasn't changed."

Sakura sighs, knotting her hands together in her lap as she takes a seat beside Shizune. "She used Katsuyu to protect the village," Sakura explains to Naruto, "and she's been unconscious ever since. I don't know when she'll wake up."

When. The question is more _if_ she'll wake up than _when_.

This is a situation that happens more often than we like to see. Not all of them are the result of the complete destruction of something like it was for my mother, with the collective of the Kagiru and Uchiha clans, and Tsunade, with the village. Normally when it happens, there's a very low chance of recovery because of how the body is starved of chakra. It could produce more, replenish itself, but with so little chakra to begin, it can't hope to sustain itself while simultaneously trying to restore itself, but based on the amount of chakra activity I can still feel spurring inside Tsunade, I have no doubt she'll wake up. She is the greatest medic of our age. She will wake up. She has to.

Shizune ushers us out of the tent before long, telling us that there are better things for young shinobi to do than to worry in such an environment. We need to help rebuild the village, she says, so we attempt to find a starting place. We come across a pile of long wooden planks at the far end of the village, but end up sitting on them instead of working when we realize we don't know the first thing about construction.

Naruto and Sakura remain tightlipped and sober as the sun bathes us in heat. I drum my fingers against the wood, feeling the vibrations rumble against the pile and seeing if I can estimate how many planks are in the stack. It's a good way to distract myself from the situation at hand, and also from the paper tucked inside my shirt.

"There's so much I want to tell Tsunade," Naruto says, sounding remorseful, as though Tsunade is on her deathbed. I suppose she is, but that's no way for Naruto to think because it's not right, but mostly because it's Naruto. Naruto, who never loses hope. Naruto, the one who has a reckless optimism about him.

"Don't _worry_," says Sakura, flashing the brightest smile she can muster. "I'm sure she'll wake up soon! She's the Hokage. She's a strong woman. She'll be . . . fine." Sakura sounds like she's trying to convince herself of the fact as well, and when she realizes that her false cheerfulness isn't working, she looks at me sharply to add on.

I can't think of anything to say, so I'm glad when someone shouts, "Hey!" catching our attention. We look up to find two people coming toward us with towels wrapped around their necks to gather the sweat that beads down their faces. I gape at them, unable to understand how they're here when the older of the two says, "Long time no see, Sakura! Naruto! And _you_, Ren—I feel like it was just yesterday you were mooching off at my house!"

Inari and Tazuna stand before us, grinning widely as Inari says, "I never thought I'd see you heroes again, Naruto."

We leap to our feet to greet the two, Naruto beaming and looking between them, trying to take in every detail of them that he's missed in the past three years. "Inari!" he says. "You're all grown up! And Tazuna: you look even _older_, Gramps!"

Tazuna huffs, propping a hand on his waist and complaining, "Give me a break. We come all this way and this is the thanks we get?"

"What _are_ you doing here?" I say, and Inari explains. Some of the surrounding villages had received messages that Konoha had been attacked and needed their help rebuilding while our forces recovered. Tazuna, being a carpenter, jumped at the opportunity to offer his services and come to our aid.

"We didn't get to talk about it when you stayed with us, Ren," Inari says, earning me curious glances from Naruto and Sakura that I ignore, "but I've taken an apprenticeship under Grandpa. I'm a carpenter now too!"

"I'm so glad that we're here so I can thank all of you," says Tazuna with a generous bow of his head, and Inari follows suit, grinning. "I'm sorry about what happened with Gatoh, but it's because of you that the Land of the Waves is prosperous again."

"And I thought I'd try to find you guys while I was here and say hi. You look so pretty, Sakura," Inari adds, and Sakura blushes and thanks him, fixing her hair.

I'm miffed by his reaction to her compared to his reaction to me when I had first reunited with him. He had given me a sort of backhanded compliment whereas Sakura is told outright that she is pretty. Regardless, I brush it off and say, "It's wonderful to see you again. Thank you for your help."

"It's the least we can do!" says Inari, wrapping his hands into determined fists just as Kakashi rounds the corner of a stack of wooden planks. He comes to greet them, thank them for their concern during a time like this, and for a second I'm caught up in how familiar this all is. Despite the circumstances, being with Inari, Tazuna, and Sakura, Naruto, and Kakashi reminds me of our time in the Land of the Waves—although there is one person missing, and it's as I think this that the same thought seems to occur to Tazuna.

"Where's Sasuke?" he asks, looking around as though expecting Sasuke to appear like Kakashi had. "I wanted to talk to him, too. Weren't you able to meet up with him, Ren?"

I startle, alarmed to find all eyes on me. "Uh," I say, "that is—I—"

"Sasuke and I had a fight, so he left the village for a little while," Naruto says, clasping his hands behind his head. "Ren went to try to convince him to come home, but he's still angry with me. But I'll bring him back soon! You can say hi when he gets back. I'm sure Sasuke would love to see you again."

"What was the trouble?" Tazuna says, and then eyes the three of us, searching our faces for a clue before guessing, "Some sort of love triangle?"

"Of course not!" Naruto says, and I scoff, crossing my arms. It isn't long after that Tazuna figures he and Inari need to get back to work. We wave them off, wishing them the best and thanking them one last time. We watch as they disappear into a crowd of men carrying wooden beams and waving silver saws with teeth that glint in the sunlight.

The reminder of Sasuke has, once again, brought down the mood of our group. Sakura leans against the nearest pile of timber, pressing a hand to her forehead, and Naruto's eyes have been pinned to the ground since Tazuna and Inari turned their backs. I avoid looking at both of them, briefly smoothing my hand over the contract that sits visible and invisible under a layer of fabric.

"I understand," Naruto says, breaking the silence. He raises his head, his blue eyes flashing with epiphany. "How Sasuke felt, I mean. I know what revenge is. I thought I understood him, but really I didn't, not until now." He gives a short laugh and his shoulders deflate. "No wonder nothing I said got through to him."

Naruto takes a deep breath, re-inflating his lungs, the whole of his stature. He props his hands on his waist and says, matter-of-factly, "If I can't understand his pain, I can't laugh with him. That's why he wouldn't fight me. And it might hurt a lot, but I want to fight with him for real the next time I see him. 'Cause I want Team 7 to laugh together again. Sasuke included!"

So he felt it too, the nostalgia of the moment with Inari and Tazuna, and how fantastic it had felt to be able to have those memories and those kinds of bonds to fall back on. While his determination is endearing and his hope contagious, unlike Sakura and Kakashi, who are encouraged enough to smile at Naruto's statement, I remain unconvinced.

I know I had left to return Sasuke home without consulting Naruto or Sakura, but I still stand by my previous belief that Sasuke doesn't need to be saved like they seem to think—and neither do I any longer believe that he needs to be helped. Because I have helped him; I've lost years of my life and a handful of my memory helping him, and look at where it's gotten me.

No matter what Naruto says, he can't possibly help a boy who refuses to come home even after accomplishing the one goal he had harbored for the whole of his life, even after making promises because Sasuke is nothing like Naruto. These feelings may be universal, but what we choose to do with them is up to us.

Sakura notices the way my expression remains flat. She starts to ask me what's the matter, but is cut off by the sound of dirt scuffing under large feet—or _paws_, really, once we see Kiba rounding a pile of wood. He sits on top of Akamaru, who lets out a hearty bark when he spies us.

"There you are!" Kiba says, his hands tightening around Akamaru's fur. "Listen. I've been around the village helping transmit messages, and I've just heard: Tsunade's been dismissed as Hokage! They're replacing her with some guy name Danzo, who's been named the sixth Hokage. I don't know about him, but from what I've heard he's pretty shady."

As though to confirm Danzo's suspiciousness, Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi tense at his name, although the name does nothing more than bristle a faint recollection for me. Kakashi had mentioned him, I think, when we were talking about Sai, and Naruto and Sakura's initial mission to recover Sasuke. Something about Danzo being Sai's superior, and how he had a distaste for the way the village had been handled during Sandaime's, and so by relation Godaime's, reign.

"That's not the only thing," Kiba adds after Kakashi expresses his ill feeling about the shift of leadership. "The new Hokage has given permission to dispose of Sasuke as a missing-nin."

Naruto and Sakura's mouths fall open, their eyes widening in fear and disbelief. Even I am struck speechless by this news. I might never have been in favor of rescuing or helping Sasuke, but the idea of killing him has never occurred to me, especially not with the attitude Naruto and Sakura have about him.

"What the hell do you mean?" Naruto demands, indignant, and Kiba shakes his head and holds his hands up in defense. He's only the messenger; Danzo's intentions are as clear to him as they are to us. And while Sakura and Naruto may not hold Danzo in high regard—I can't help but feel that the man knows what he's aiming for by declaring that we are free to kill Sasuke should he cross our paths.

"They're not willing to wait for Godaime to recover," says Kakashi. "It's not surprising. And it's true Sasuke is a missing-nin. The usual punishment for that is death. It's only because the Hokage was so lenient that he hasn't been killed yet."

"I'm going to see Danzo," says Sakura, turning on her heels and stomping in the direction of where the main base is.

Kakashi grabs her by the shoulder, stopping her, and says, "Wait, Sakura. Storming in there and yelling at him won't solve anything."

"But Tsunade-sama hasn't even woken up!" she says, shrugging him off. "It's not _fair_. And then there's Sasuke-kun to think about. I can't stand by and let this happen."

"I'm going to see him, too," Naruto says, stepping out of Kakashi's reach before the Jounin can rein him in. The tail of Naruto's headband flaps behind him as he moves to go where Sakura has left off. With a quick signal from Kakashi, I take Naruto's sleeve, preventing him from going.

"Ren, what are you _doing_?" Naruto demands, tugging out of my hold to no avail.

"I mean, consider our village, the situation we're in," I say, tightening my grip on him. "If you calm down and think this through—"

"How can I be calm?" Naruto says and I am taken aback by the way he looks at me like he doesn't know who I am anymore. With that look, he weakens my defenses enough that he's able to pull out of my hold and continue toward the main base. "Danzo has practically put a bounty on Sasuke head," he continues, his voice shaking in his anger. "I won't let him lay a finger on Sasuke!"

Kakashi releases an exasperated sigh and moves forward to take Naruto by the wrist and pull him up short. "I said _wait_!" Kakashi repeats more forcefully. "Danzo _knows_ you'd react like this. What are you going to do when you see him, anyway?"

"I won't _attack_ him," Naruto says plainly. "I'm just going to ask him to change his mind about Sasuke."

"I know you can't just leave it at that when it comes to Sasuke," Kakashi says, his voice level and soothing. "The Jounin may not have voted on his official appointment yet, but Danzo is still Hokage for the time being. One wrong move and you could get thrown in jail."

"I don't care," Naruto says, yanking free. "I'm going!"

Sakura agrees and is at Naruto's side in a matter of seconds. I can see their resolve in the way they have their jaws set, can see how they expect me to side with them and follow them to Danzo in the way their eyes stick to me.

But I won't.

"Naruto," Kakashi says, overlooking the silence I keep. "You have the Nine-Tailed beast within you. If you so much as seem like you can't control yourself, Danzo will make a plea to the Council saying you're unstable and order a mandate to make you stay in the village. You'll be playing right into his hands if you blow up at him. Then you won't be able to look for Sasuke at all. So stay calm."

As Naruto crosses his arms, deliberating on what his next move should be if not storming wherever Danzo is set up, I turn to Kiba, who has been watching the showdown with an air of anxiety. "Kiba, we're the first you've told about this, right? Good," I say when he nods in affirmation."As for the others, I think it'd be a good idea to gather them and tell them as a collective. Could you do that for us?"

Kiba nods, gives Naruto and Sakura a wary look. "Don't worry about them. They'll be okay," I tell him, and scratch Akamaru behind his ear before he and Kiba take off.

I turn around and Naruto and Sakura look up from the whispered conversation they had been having. Naruto says, "Ren. We're going to find Sai and see if we can uncover anything about Danzo and what he wants to do with the village now that he's Hokage. Will you come with us?"

I raise my brow, wondering why he has to ask, and then realize he's read through my actions—or lack thereof—the way I hadn't protested about Danzo's legislation like he and Sakura had, but hadn't tried to keep them calm in the same way Kakashi had. I had tried to convince him, however momentarily, that Danzo had it right in ordering Sasuke be killed.

Still, I answer, "Of course," as though there's no other answer I would rather give. He doesn't brighten or beam and I don't expect him to. "But first," I say and reach for the contract. "There's something I want to talk to you about."


	86. Decided

**Bound  
Chapter 86: Decided**

Sakura and Naruto regard me with wide eyes, too stunned to know how to respond. Kakashi, on the other hand, maintains the same grim face he had adopted when I first launched into how I had found the contract under a floorboard, how I had called Rei and hope she comes and helps me break this because I do plan on breaking it.

"Come on, Kakashi," I say, drumming my fingers against the parchment. "You're making me nervous. If you have something to say about this, I would rather you say it out loud than have me deduce how you're feeling."

Kakashi sighs, presses a hand to the side of his face as he thinks. "I know you're not going to like hearing this, Ren," he says, and I can already feel my heart and hopes sinking, "but, given our current circumstances, I don't think breaking the bond right now is a good move. Of course," he adds quickly when I lower my eyes, "the choice is up to you because it is, ultimately, your life and your decision to make. But if this is the only way left for us to contact Sasuke—"

I flinch and Kakashi stops talking and I tuck the contract back inside my shirt, right over my heart. "It's kind of a long shot, anyway," I mumble, "to think that breaking the bond might uncover the memories of my time with Sasuke. Even if Sasuke had been too weak to work me with his Sharingan or give me an order to forget with the bond, whatever is causing this selective amnesia could be any genjutsu."

Kakashi gives me a plaintive look, scratches his head. "I'm sorry, Ren," he says. "But for now, there's too much at stake."

I give him a weak smile and wave it off, knowing it can't be helped. This seems to make Kakashi pity me even more, so I say, "Let's go find Sai, yeah?" and Sakura and Naruto comply.

We don't speak as we make our way through the village, observing what progress we have made from ruin to restoration. There are a number of intricately designed buildings already erected where the rubble has been completely cleared. I am in wonder at how we have managed to build this so quickly, but one of the people we pass mutter, "If only Yamato could keep this up, we'd have everything back where it was in no time," and that is explained away.

As we pass into a deserted part of the village where officials spot the walkway every now and then, Sakura says, "Ren. I want to say: thank you for—for keeping the bond—"

"Don't," I say, feeling my lungs constrict. "Let's just don't."

The sentence doesn't make sense, but evidently Sakura understands and stays quiet. And that is the end of that conversation.

It's lucky we find Sai coming toward us not long after to save us from the silence pressing in my ears. Sakura and Naruto run to catch him, waving him down. He's surprised, his eyes sliding from Sakura to Naruto and lingering on me for a moment longer than the others before he turns back and says, "Hey. What's the matter? You all look so serious."

"We want to ask you something," Naruto says and Sakura, ever eager, says, "Tell us more about Danzo."

"Easy, easy," I say as Sai looks between the two, bewildered. "Sorry to ambush you like this, Sai. We heard Danzo has taken over leadership of the village, and seeing as how you're one of his subordinates in Root, we thought we could get some insight into what he plans on doing with the village."

Sai purses his lips and I look to Sakura and Naruto to see if there's something else that needs to be explained. Only, when I meet eyes with Sakura, I'm caught by the way she regards me like I am an entirely new being to her. She frowns and shakes her head, excusing herself when I quirk my brow inquiringly.

"Well?" Naruto prompts when Sai doesn't answer. "What can you tell us?"

Sai sighs, says, "Nothing." When Naruto and Sakura begin to protest, he holds up his hands in defense and say, "It's nothing personal. I really . . . _can't_. Let me show you."

He takes a deep breath, and with the exhalation bares his tongue to us, revealing a black imprint along the length of it, like tire tracks. We blink at it in confusion before Sai retracts his tongue and says, "It's a seal. It prevents me from ever speaking about Danzo. If I try, my whole body will be paralyzed and I'll be unable to talk or move. Danzo puts it on all the members of Root. Danzo and Root are top secret, after all, and we've done a lot of dirty deeds to protect the village, so he has to make sure no info can get out. Even if we're captured, no one can make us talk."

"How he could do that to his own men?" says Sakura, horrified.

Sai shrugs, says, "That's how he's protected Konoha. You may not approve of his methods, but undeniably he cares about the village."

"Then why did he go back on Tsunade-sama's promise?" Sakura demands. "He's planning to kill Sasuke-kun!"

Sai is equally as stunned by this news as we had been upon first hearing it. He sputters, insisting he hadn't known about this, and I say in his defense, "That's the thing, though, Sakura. It was _Tsunade's_ promise to keep Sasuke safe. Now that Danzo has the reins—"

The vibrations whirr, splitting as something sharp cuts through the air. I lean away in time to avoid a sword to my shoulder, and glare at the dark-skinned girl with glowing amber eyes and deep red hair that reminds me of—

Someone, although I can't remember who I've ever meet with red hair.

She has a boy with her, a boy with white hair and matching skin, and dark, sharp eyes. He appears less interested in us than the girl does, but exudes the same kind of suspicion the girl wears on her face. She says, "Tell me everything you know about Sasuke, since he seems to be a friend of yours."

I knock the sword out of my face, ducking as Naruto yanks Sai's tanto sword off his back and swings it at the girl, who jumps back. Naruto lunges forward, ready to elbow the girl, but the boy with her sinks forward, catching Naruto's elbow on the butt of his sword. The girl rolls over the boy's back, lashes the sword out at Naruto, who creates a shadow clone to catch the blade before it cuts him.

With the girl caught, Sakura reels her arm back to punch the girl, but then the boy leaps over his partner's back, narrowly avoiding the kick Sai is about to land on him. The boy manages to kick Sakura and send her flying toward the stone cliff that lines one side of the pathway.

The real Naruto goes to catch Sakura, while the other girl elbows the Naruto clone in the neck, making him disappear. The two shinobi leap away, landing on the pool of water on the other side of the pathway, and glare at us from a distance, their disgust with us evident in the way their lips curl.

I have to take a moment to admire the way they worked so well with each other, though. If Sasuke and I—

I shake the thought free and focus on these strangers before us. With the way we're letting people in and out of the village because of the state we're in, these guys could be from anywhere. I think to check their foreheads at the same time Sakura does and finally see the headbands they wear. Oval shapes smeared together are carved in the metal plates, indicating their affiliation to Kumogakure, the Village Hidden in the Clouds.

"Is this how shinobi of Kumogakure treat the people of their host country?" I say, jabbing a finger at them. "Especially during a time when you can obviously see we're in need. Who are you? What are the likes of you doing here?"

"You were talking about Sasuke," says the boy, disregarding my questions and pointing his own accusatory finger at me. "Tell us about him!"

"What does he have to do with _you_?" Sakura snaps as she regains her composure.

"Everything!" the boy replies. "Uchiha Sasuke attacked our village!"

"That missing-nin Uchiha took our master," says the girl when we continue to blink at her, unable—or, perhaps more correctly, unwilling—to comprehend what we've her partner has told us. "We don't even know if our master is alive or not."

"N-no way," Sakura mutters, her fingers digging into the rough sand beneath her. "Why would Sasuke do that?"

The boy scoffs, and says, "How should we know what Akatsuki wants?"

I freeze and touch my temple, the faintest memory of something fluttering just beyond my grasp as Naruto asks, "What do you mean _Akatsuki_? What do they have to do with this?"

"Are you kidding?" the boy says, exasperated as his partner props her hand on her waist and adds, "Uchiha Sasuke—"

"Is a member of Akatsuki," I whisper at the same time the girl announces it louder than me, ensuring that nobody hears me. I press my fingers against my forehead, wondering how I could have forgotten a detail like that—how I could have _remembered_ a detail like that.

I purse my lips and am glad I don't have to try to fake the genuine disbelief that spreads across my face, though the reason for my shock is much different than that on Naruto and Sakura's faces.

"Raikage sent us here because _you_ let that missing-nin roam free," the boy continues, not giving us time to fully absorb the information, the phrase _Sasuke is a member of Akatsuki!_ ringing in our ears like the toll of a bell, annoying and unbearable as it clangs. "And now we have permission from the Hokage to kill him—we'll have our revenge."

"We'll destroy Uchiha. So," the girl says, straightening and pointing her sword at us. "Tell us everything you know about Sasuke, including his fighting style and techniques. We'll need everything you've learned about Akatsuki and Sasuke's allies."

"Y-you've got to be kidding," Sakura stammers, weighing the words in her hands. "How could Sasuke-kun be part of Akatsuki?"

The girl gives an aggravated sigh, tapping her foot on the water that ripples beneath her. "God," she says impatiently, "you're so annoying! What's Sasuke to you anyway?"

I hear Sakura inhale sharply, feel the vibrations pitching in her lungs, and I know what's to come. Sakura reaction to the girl's question ignites a fury in my stomach, and I step forward to block Sakura from our attackers as she presses her head into her hands, her shoulders beginning to shake with sobs. "What's any human to you?" I snap. "Get out of here; we're not going to tell you anything, not with your poor manners. If you want to find out about Sasuke, then you can get any and all the information you need from the village libraries."

"Especially since the order's been sent out to kill Sasuke," Sai adds, "I'm sure the village will be more than willing provide you with all you need."

"And can you be sure?" Naruto speaks up, sitting straighter. His voice is soft, tired, and wary. "That Sasuke's a part of the Akatsuki?"

"Yes," the girl confirms with a harrumph like our doubt is personally offending her. "We saw the Uchiha crest, and the rest of the description matches up too. Anyway, what are _you_ crying for? Your crying isn't going to return Killerbee or Yugito! If you have the energy to cry, why don't you tell us what you know about Sasuke?"

"We've told you all we have to tell you," I say, crossing my arms. "_Leave us alone._ It isn't any duty of ours to tell you a thing. Our village will tell you whatever you want to know."

"Like hell they will," the girl snarls, gesturing at me with her still unsheathed sword. "Our team leader is being briefed right now. We just thought we'd see if we could find out additional information."

"We're not going to sit around and do nothing," the boy agrees. "Not when we don't know what happened to our master. You guys can't understand how that feels!"

I let out a bark of laughter, digging my heels into the ground. "Listen, you—"

"Is your master," Naruto says, cutting me off, "a jinchuuriki?"

For the first time since our meeting, the two are startled. Their eyes go wide, and the boy says, "How did you know?"

"I'm a jinchuuriki too," Naruto says calmly. "Akatsuki is targeting those who are containers to the demon spirits. Akatsuki wants the jinchuuriki alive, which means it's possible your master is still alive. You should try to rescue him before going after Sasuke. I'll help you find him. I'll tell you everything I know about Akatsuki."

"Naruto," I begin, but he gives me a pointed look and shakes his head, standing.

"You're smarter than you look, blondie!" the girl says, brightened by the idea her master may not be dead. "You'll tell us about Sasuke too, while you're at it."

Sakura starts to give her line of protest as well, but Naruto remains determined. "Leave this to me," he says. But I notice he doesn't look at her, and I wonder what is going through his head.

Naruto meets the pair at the edge of the pathway and introduces himself to them. In turn, they introduce themselves as Karui and Omoi. Without a second glance at us, Karui leads Naruto away, Omoi taking up the rear like he expects Naruto to make a run for it. We watch as they round the corner and disappear.

"One of us should follow them," I say, offering Sakura a hand to help her up. "I don't trust those shinobi—and I don't trust Naruto to do as he says and tell them what they want to hear."

"I'll go," Sai says, already tracing their footsteps. "I'm trained for this kind of thing. I'll alert either of you if something happens."

"And are you going to be all right?" I ask Sakura after I thank Sai and he leaves. Sakura freezes in the middle of wiping her face of the tears she's shed, and drops her hands without finishing, like she's embarrassed to have been caught.

"Fine," she says with a terse sniff. "I'm fine. I'm going to visit Tsunade-sama, in case Sai comes looking."

I walk with her back to camp and we split up without another word.

As I walk through the village, wanting to help but too anxious about Naruto and the current situation to plant my feet down and do anything, I fiddle with my fingers. I'm stuck in an in-between, half-startled and half-expectant something like this has happened, that Sasuke has joined with Akatsuki and an order has been put out on his head. A part of me _wanting_ him to be killed.

But that's nothing I can admit because what are the chances anyone will agree with me and say these are the sensible steps that need to be taken? What are the chances anyone will side with me and say Sasuke needs to be killed?

Then there's the matter of the bond. Will anyone comfort me and tell me it won't be long before I can break it? From what Kakashi has said, it seemed I would have to keep it around until I receive a signal from Sasuke, which is an indefinite amount of time that promises me nothing.

I extract the bond, smoothing it out in my hands. The parchment is more crinkled than it had been before, folded in at the corners and ripped where it had been frayed. The red wax seal is partly melted from my body heat, smeared across the parchment like crusted blood.

I know I shouldn't keep taking it out in case, god forbid, something happens and I lose it or it tears completely or whatever. But to have it in my hands is comforting.

"You probably shouldn't take that out whenever you please. Knowing you, you'd lose it."

I purse my lips, frowning at Shikamaru as he approaches me from the other direction, his hands stuffed in his pockets and his face wearing his classic tired expression. "Ever acting as my conscience, aren't you, Shika?" I say, waving the contract in his face when he's near enough. "Don't worry; I'm not going to let this out of my sight so easily after all I went through to try to get it. What have you been up to since your leg's been healed? Were you able to make sure Kurenai is okay?"

Shikamaru nods. "I'm going to meet up with Kiba now. He found me and said he had some information to share with us about Sasuke. Anything you already know about?"

I sigh, tucking the contract under my arm. "Yeah," I say. "Kiba came to Naruto, Sakura, and me first and is telling everyone on our behalf. Since you've found me though, I'll tell you ahead of the others: Looks like Sasuke has been officially declared an enemy of the state and Danzo has given the okay for us to dispose of Sasuke as we see fit. _And_, to top it all off," I say as Shikamaru gapes at me, "Sasuke has apparently joined Akatsuki and attacked Kumogakure to capture their jinchuuriki. Isn't that something?"

"Wh-_what_?" Shikamaru says, and I can't help but laugh at his incredulity, pressing my fingers to my forehead. "Ren, what—"

"Some shinobi from Kumogakure told us," I say, dismissing his reaction with a flutter of my hand. "Naruto, Sakura, Sai, and I ran into a two of them. Actually, they attacked us. So that was good."

Shikamaru sighs, following my gaze to a nearby group of men who are lifting the frame of a building, their arms flailing through the saw-dusty air. "So what now?" he says. "How are Sakura and Naruto?"

"They are livid, obviously," I say. "Distraught. Just as anyone would expect."

Shikamaru inclines his head to the side, says, "And you?"

"I," I start and knot my fingers together. "I . . . am thinking: What if Danzo isn't completely wrong in giving this order? I mean, look at how much Sasuke has hurt Naruto and Sakura, and all the trouble he's caused the village. And now he's joined with Akatsuki—and look at what _they've_ done to us!" I gesture to the village, how we are inarguably putting ourselves back together, patting ourselves on the back for our resilience in the face of danger, but how there is the shadow of fear and doubt that these villagers hold on their shoulders, in their eyes and hearts.

"If he's allied himself with them," I say, rubbing the back of my neck, "and if this is what they have in plan for us . . . maybe . . . maybe killing Sasuke will be what's best for the village in the long run. But like hell if Sakura and Naruto will go for that."

Shikamaru appears displeased, and I mirror his expression, equally displeased by my monologue. I've said too much and Shikamaru doesn't approve either and now I'm going to be lectured on the meaning of friendship and how bonds transcend everything. But then he scratches his head, sighs, and says, "I agree with you, Ren. With our defenses so low, we can't risk having another enemy out there. Sasuke needs to be taken care of, and if that means we have to kill him then that's what needs to be done."

I blink at him, stunned to hear him agree with me, but mostly relieved. I end up laughing and, when he scowls at me, I say, "Sorry, _sorry_. I have a terrible sense of humor. But, well, with you on my side—" I bump his shoulder with my fist. "—I can't be too wrong, can I? Thank you for talking with me, Shikamaru," I say, smiling crookedly. "With Naruto and Sakura, I never know what to say in case I upset them. But you are just so good to me, always."

"What are friends for?" he says, shrugging, and then eyes the contract pressed to my side. "What are your plans for that?"

I touch the contract, brushing the length of it. "I told Sakura and Naruto and Kakashi. Kakashi says it wouldn't be a good idea to break it, given that we need to find Sasuke more urgently since the Hokage has issued the go-ahead to kill him. Kakashi says it needs to stay in case anything manages to break through and give us a sign as to where he may be. Which makes sense, but—god, I don't know anymore. I want it broken, Shikamaru, I want the bond broken so badly—"

"So break it."

A hand clasps on my shoulder and I turn, my eyes widening to saucers when I see Rei, all wild mahogany hair and heavy layers of clothing, just as I remembered. She grins, amused by my surprise, as she says, "I'll help you break the bond, you know. So long as you find a way to break it that doesn't involve, you know, death."

She winks at me, leaning on me heavily until she notices Shikamaru furrowing his brow at her. The gears turn in her head and recognition clicks in her eyes. She beams, then twirls around us and says, "Oh, to see _you_ again!" She flicks his nose, alarming him, and he looks at me like I could possibly save him from her.

"How wonderful! You know, if you're up for it, I would be totally willing to fight you again. To make up for ditching out on you all those years ago in the finals. Just look at the two of you!" she exclaims, and wraps her arms around our shoulders, pulling us together into a hug that crushes my face into Shikamaru's chest and his nose into my hair.

Any reservation I had had in accepting that this is actually Rei and not an illusion I have conjured up is at once dismantled by this one gesture. "_Rei_!" I say, shoving Shikamaru off and watching as Rei prances away, grinning. "What are you doing here?"

She gives us a flourishing bow and says, "You _called_, of course!" She points to the sky, raising her fists into the air and opening her hands to make like something is exploding. "A vibration bomb infused with your chakra. Very clever. Felt it from the other side of the country. Not that I was on the other side of the country. I was just a few villages east, actually."

"But," I say, looking between her and the boys who approach her from behind, apparently just catching up to her. Hiro and Nao give me a weak wave, catching their breath, and Hiro gives me an apologetic shrug. "But—okay," I say, calming down. "Okay. Well. First things first, I suppose. Shikamaru. This is Kannagi Rei, the girl I told you about—"

"You _told_ him about me?" Rei says, clapping. "This is really fantas—"

"And her teammates," I say over her. "Hiro and Nao."

"Sorry about her," Hiro says, offering us a small bow. "I don't know how she got loose. I hope she hasn't done too much damage."

"She hasn't scared him away yet," Nao says, propping a hand on his waist as Rei circles Shikamaru, taking him in. "That's always a plus."

"These are the guys who helped me find and meet up with Sasuke," I explain as Hiro grabs Rei by the collar and pulls her back to his side. "Hiro, Nao, Rei: Meet Nara Shikamaru, resident best friend."

"It's _very_ good to meet you officially," Rei says, giving another bow. "We are at your service, Shikamaru-kun. Tonakai." She waggles her eyebrows at me as Shikamaru repeats, "Tonakai?" and I say through my teeth, "Ignore it."

"We heard about what happened to your village," Hiro says, looking around and wincing at the emptiness of the land. "Even from what we'd heard though, I never imagined that it would be this bad."

"We intend to help you with the restoration process," Rei says, "but I also have a sneaking suspicion that is not why you called me, Ren."

"Ah," I say, reaching for the contract. Rei's eyes flick to it in curiosity, but she dismisses it just as quickly, indicating that she doesn't know what it is, hadn't heard how Shikamaru and I had been referring to it. I'm irritated that I'll have to explain it over to her, but then I pause and consider what Kakashi had said. I remember the way Sakura had cried and how Naruto had volunteered to tell Karui everything because—just maybe Naruto is starting to see too, what a danger Sasuke is to the village. And if that's the case and I can feel something from this bond to tell him where Sasuke is so we can end everything then—

My fingers fall away from the contract, and I say, "No. I was panicking. I sent that message for you after the village was destroyed and I thought you might have been able to help us track the guy who was attacking us. Trace back his spirit or whatever because—well, never mind. But everything is fine now, so—I would be grateful if you helped us rebuild from the attack."

Rei looks from Shikamaru to me, then back to Shikamaru. Out of my peripheral, I can see Shikamaru eyeing me with suspicion, so I elbow him. "All right, well," she says. When she turns her back to me, I take the moment to stuff the contract back into my shirt. "If you say so. Hiro-kun, Nao, where do you think we should begin? I'm not one for getting my hands dirty—"

Someone clears their throat, interrupting Rei. It's Sai, sheepish as he cuts in on our conversation. He approaches me cautiously, his head slightly bowed like he's afraid to make eye contact with me. "Can I talk to you for a moment, Ren?" he says.

I nod and say to Rei, "I appreciate that you came all this way, Rei, Hiro, Nao. On behalf of Konoha, thank you. Shikamaru can get you situated and help you—actually," I say, taking Shikamaru by the shoulders and turning him in the other direction. "I don't want the two of you together without me. At all. In any way. Shikamaru, don't believe anything she says to you while I'm not around."

"Oh, give me a break," says Rei, and I repeat, "Don't believe a word!"

Shikamaru scoffs and rolls his eyes, saying, "Okay, I get it. Stop pushing me."

"But hey," I say, sidling up beside him. "Tell the others about the developments on Sasuke and the Kumogakure shinobi. And make sure they're . . . okay about it, you know? You have a better way with words than I do when it comes to things like these."

Shikamaru says, "You take care of Naruto and Sakura, too. This probably isn't news they want to hear."

I blow my bangs from my brow, ruffling my hair. "Yeah," I say. "Definitely not what they want to hear."

With a final squeeze of his shoulder, I say goodbye to Shikamaru. I wave to Rei as I pass her on my way back to Sai, but she grabs me and pulls me into a hug. I groan and struggle out of her hold, smoothing down my clothes as I go to Sai. She grins and blows me a kiss, and I say to Sai as I reach him, "Sorry about that. What's up? What happened with Naruto and those Kumo shinobi?"

"Come see for yourself," he says.

We retrace our steps through the village, back through the building frames, through the people ushering each other along, out of the way of the dangerous materials. I think I see Inari and Tazuna in the fray again, but there's no time to stop and say hi to them, especially when, out of the blue, Sai says, "If I could say something before we reach our destination . . . you're harder to read than the others." I frown, wondering why it seems like I can never be properly complimented. "The books never tell me what to do with people who are as ambivalent as you—I can't even be sure that you like me. But even though we've never really fought on the same team—"

"You're friends with Naruto and Sakura," I say. "So far as I'm concerned, we've been on the same team this whole time, Sai. What do you need?"

* * *

**A/N: **This chapter goes out to Ninjagirl2211, who has been eagerly awaiting Rei's return for the past few chapters. Only to have to wait another probably four (read: ten) chapters before Rei returns with gusto. Aha, sorry about that, but thank you for your patience! And thank you all for coming back even after all this time! I figured the best thing I could do at the moment to show my thanks is to post twice this week as a kind of bonus. I hope it's satisfactory.**  
**

Remember to check out my profile for extras and a preview of the next chapter. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this chapter!


	87. Resemblance

**Bound  
Chapter 87: Resemblance**

Sai inclines his head to the side, considering his words. "I know," he says, "at least since he left the village, you've never had a fondness for Sasuke. But I can tell you care about Sakura and Naruto enough to want to bring Sasuke back, too. And I think I feel the same way. You don't want him back, though, do you?" he asks. "You agree with the Raikage. You think Sasuke needs to be killed."

I purse my lips, run my hand up my forearm, wondering what I should say. Finally, I shrug in surrender and admit, "You got me. How'd you figure?"

"The way you react whenever someone mentions his name," he says. "You might not say anything, but you flinch, like you're afraid they're going to turn to you and ask you to help them bring him home. Like you're scared they're going to confront you and you're going to have to admit you don't think it's a good idea."

I pocket my hands, say, "Who would have thought you would become so perceptive?"

"Books are just as a powerful weapon as any kunai or jutsu," he says, and I sigh.

"Yeah," I say, crossing my arms. "You're right: I don't want Sasuke back. I don't say it out right because, if I do, Naruto and Sakura get hurt and I can't . . . deal with that. Regardless of what I think, though, I'm going to help Sakura and Naruto with whatever they want to do."

"Even if it hurts them?"

Sai's eyes are wide and dark and sincere. I never noticed before how sweet he looks, why Ino was smitten with him when she saw him that first day in the hospital. He really does remind me of Sasuke in the way he looks and in how his allegiance is, at the very best, questionable. But he is kinder than Sasuke by far, more considerate and sympathetic, and in that way he is a better person than Sasuke could ever be.

Although I have a feeling I know what he's going to say, I ask, "Hurts them how?"

"Naruto and Sakura are continually disappointed by Sasuke," he explains. His words are soft buzz under the grinding of saws on wood. "They keep expecting him to turn around, remember them, how things used to be, and return to them. Each time he steps farther away, don't you think a part of them loses hope? Despite the façade they keep? To allow them to go on like this, chasing Sasuke even after all they've done only makes them tired and pained."

"So what are you implying?" I say.

"Exactly what you're thinking," he says, "what you've been thinking this entire time. I can see it in your face. We need to convince them to stop going after Sasuke, and I believe you can influence Naruto and Sakura into abandoning the idea of saving Sasuke and—end their pain," he says emphatically as I begin to shake my head and raise my hands to push the idea away. "You're the only one who's close enough to them to know just what to say."

"You would think so, wouldn't you? Everyone always does," I grumble, slicking my hair out of my face. "But I always end up saying the wrong things, Sai. I'm sorry. You're going to have to do this on your own."

He scratches his chin, disgruntled. He sets his jaw, wanting to say more, but then relents, "If you say so."

We've headed to a part of the village where there are mostly medical tents set up. I recognize a number of medics as we nearly return to the place where I had healed Shikamaru. "What am I being brought here for?" I ask, pushing the tent flap over my head as I follow Sai into a tent at the end of a row. "I thought we were going to see—Naruto!"

Kakashi, nonchalant as ever, and Yamato, a sour expression on his face, hover over Naruto, who sits on the floor, shirtless with a blanket thrown over his lap. When Naruto sees me, he shrinks underneath his blanket. It's not enough to hide the bruises that blacken his face and torso to a near darkness I've only ever seen at nighttime or on the dead. Blood drips from his nose and the corner of his mouth and the plump of his lip, his skin cracked open on the bone of his cheek. I reach out to brush his neck, where I can see finger marks darkening. I kneel beside him and demand, "What _happened_?"

Naruto attempts a grin and instead achieves a grimace that makes him suck in a sharp breath between his teeth. "I don't go back on my word," he says, and I get it. Naruto and his foolish loyalty. He probably didn't tell those Kumo shinobi a single thing they wanted to hear, and this is the result.

"Ever the idiot," I say, touching the swollen flesh of his cheek. He lets out a soft "Ah!" of pain, jerking away from my fingers, and I frown, saying, "Hold still, Naruto. If you can endure a fight with Pein and getting all these injuries, then you can handle a little bit of a sting."

As Sai gives me a first aid kit, Naruto grumbles, "It stings more when I'm not getting more injuries. Thank you, by the way," he says to Sai, who offers him a small smile in reply. "For interrupting when you did."

"That girl did this to you?" I say, hovering my hands over his arm to heal the bruises flowering on his skin. He avoids my eyes, and I know I've guessed correctly. I can't tell if I'm more angry at her for doing this to him or at Naruto for being foolhardy enough to let this happen.

"Why isn't Sakura here?" I say as I go through the motions of healing him. "It would have been faster getting to her. She's already in the area with Tsunade."

Naruto begins to stutter, leading to grimaces on his part, so Kakashi cuts in and says, "We didn't want to bother her or trouble her further. She has enough to deal with, don't you think?"

There's more to it than that, but I allow the subject to pass so I can concentrate on healing Naruto, who soldiers through his wounds. I heal him as tenderly as I can, but no matter how lightly my fingers brush him, he continually winces, releases hisses of pain. I'm putting away the first aid kit and Naruto prods some of the bandages I may have wrapped too tightly around his arm in my frustration as I say, "So. The real reason you didn't call Sakura to help you?"

Naruto stops, says, "I don't want her to find out. Kakashi's right: she has enough to worry about. Don't tell her about it, okay, Ren? Sai?"

I frown but agree, asking, "And how do you plan on keeping this a secret? She's going to see you at some point."

Naruto shakes his head. "No. I'm going to meet with the Raikage," he says, and by the way Yamato and Kakashi react, I can tell Naruto has decided this on a whim and just thought to announce his plan to the others.

I don't know whether to laugh or scoff at his proposal. "Meet with the Raikage? You're in no condition to _stand_ let alone travel to meet the Raikage."

"Anyway, they'll be holding the summit of the Five Kages soon," says Yamato, who has been sulking in his irritation since I arrived, "so it's not like you can simply walk out of here. Every village has placed restrictions on missions and who can leave."

"But," says Kakashi, ever the voice of reason, "humor us: What'll you do when you see him?"

Naruto says, without any hesitation, "I'm going to convince him to forgive Sasuke."

"I should have never healed you," I say, exasperated. "After everything he's done, Sasuke does not deserve your kindness! Do you think he's put you or Sakura into consideration at all ever since he's left?"

Naruto's fists tighten over his covers, and he says, "Why are you so unwilling to accept that people can change? You've done your fair share of changing yourself, Ren."

"Th—I have _a reason_ to want to change," I say, "but Sasuke has and cares for no one but himself! That's why he isn't going to change. That's why he _won't_ change."

Naruto is unconvinced by my reasoning, but when I meet Kakashi's gaze, I know _he_ at least sees where I'm coming from. I stand and say, "Fine, Naruto. I'm on your side—I am always on your side—but I don't like seeing you and Sakura getting hurt by Sasuke over and over. Besides, you should think about why Danzo has put this order on Sasuke."

Naruto remains resilient, says, "I'm going to convince the Raikage to call his men off of Sasuke's tail, no matter what."

"You don't have your seal anymore to block the Kyuubi from escaping," Yamato says, anger causing his voice to spike louder. "Eight tails were released last time you lost control! Not to mention, I have to help rebuild the village; I can't be with you at all times to make sure the Kyuubi doesn't get loose."

Unperturbed by Yamato's anger, Naruto flashes us his signature grin, crinkling the bandages I've wrapped over his right eye. I lean down, smooth the bandages against his face, and his smiles grows. "What are you so happy about?" I say, kneeling to more easily adjust his bandages.

He bows his head, allowing me to fix his bandages, and says, "I met Yondaime. He's the one who stopped me from completely transforming into the Nine-Tails when I was fighting with Pein."

I pause, press a hand against Naruto's forehead to check his temperature and make sure he can't be hallucinating as Yamato, sharing my confusion, says, "What do you mean? Yondaime is—"

"Not much is known about the Shiki Fuji Jutsu," Kakashi interrupts. "That's the sealing technique Yondaime Hokage used to seal the Kyuubi inside of Naruto," he explains when I regard him blankly. "He could have sealed some of his energy into Naruto in the process."

"So what?" I sweep Naruto's hair out of his face, untangling bits of it that have been caught in the wrapping. "Why should that compel us to allow you to see the Raikage? You saw Yondaime and he stopped you from transforming. But you can't expect that he'll reappear if you lose your cool again."

Naruto's expression hardens, and he shakes his head. "Yondaime spoke with me," he says, leaning into his words as though it'll add extra weight to what he says. "He told me the guy with the mask from Akatsuki was behind the Kyuubi attack on the village sixteen years ago, and he was so strong that not even Yondaime could challenge him. Yondaime said that guy's behind everything, that that masked man was just using Pein. And if Sasuke's joined Akatsuki, that masked guy is probably using Sasuke, too."

Masked man. The phrase rings a bell with me. I can't say why, though the reason is right on the tip of my tongue. My inability to place why the masked man is familiar resonates with me, reminds me of how Karui's hair had made the gears turn in my head but procured no memory.

I raise my head to meet Kakashi's gaze, find him already staring straight at me. Instead of acknowledging me, he says, "It's as Jiraiya-sama's feared, then. I noticed as he was leaving us to, presumably, get Sasuke after Sasuke defeated Itachi that the masked man also has the Sharingan."

I have recoiled totally from the others now, mentally and physically. There is no possible way that another person with the Sharingan is alive. I can't—more accurately, _won't_ believe it, not after everything I've seen, not after Sasuke has gone through all this trouble to avenge the slaughter of his clan.

This masked man—Kakashi looked at me like I should remember it. And as I think very hard about it, rewinding to the time after the battle, when I had held onto Sasuke, swept his hair from his face, the rain and sweat and dirt from his cheeks, the vibrations prickled against my knees. There was a slight disturbance not far from where I sat, and when I looked up, there was the masked man, sitting atop the remainder of the Uchiha base where Sasuke and Itachi had had their final battle.

The memory begins to skip, blurring like a faulty surveillance video, and my voice sounds scratchy in my own head. "Who are you?" I'm asking, pulling Sasuke into my lap, and the man cocks his head to the side. "What do you want?"

"A friend," he answers, "who wants to help."

"I'm going to need a more definitive answer than that."

And then he is before me, leaning down to push his face close to mine, and through the hole in his swirling orange mask, I see the glowing red indicator that he is more than he seems.

"Uchiha Marada," Kakashi says, and I choke as he explains to Naruto that Madara was the former leader of the Uchiha clan, said to have been defeated by the Shodai Hokage. Uchiha Marada, the only unaccounted for Uchiha left in the world after his defeat at the Valley of the End, where a statue of him stands today, facing the likeness of the Shodai, perpetuating their struggle on those cliffs. Perpetuating the shame and disgrace the Uchiha felt after they irrevocably lost a piece of their power, their legacy, the only thing that has ever mattered to them.

When I was little, I learned about Uchiha Marada as part of the required lessons that came with being bound to Sasuke. It was during these lessons that I learned the diluted version of how the bond came to be, about how the Uchiha had protected my family during those years of endless fighting, how, in exchange, my family had offered our medical abilities to them, and how my ancestor had fallen in love with an Uchiha man and made a pact to stay with him eternally.

It was also during these lessons that I learned about the woman who had preceded me in inheriting the bond, and why it was such an honor that I was able to have it. My aunts would tell me about her, not even daring to speak her name, only turning up their noses whenever they had to speak of her and calling her "that woman". They would say she was a poor excuse for a Kagiru, that she didn't understand the fundamentals of what being a Kagiru called for. That when Uchiha Izuna, the younger brother of the two most powerful Uchiha and her bondmate, gave up his eyes for his older brother, Uchiha Marada, it was his own choice, no one else's, and she was delusional if she thought otherwise.

But she did think otherwise. She believed that Marada had stolen his brother's eyes, essentially killed his little brother so he could go through with his great plot to bring the Uchiha to glory. Even after all Marada's efforts, though, the Uchiha at that time saw no reason to overthrow the command of the Leaf like Marada sought to do, and settled with becoming the commanding police force in the village.

By then, the damage was done. Izuna was dead and that woman—_the_ woman—was heartbroken without her other half and determined to seek vengeance on Marada and the Uchiha, who had allowed Izuna to die, who had bred this lust for power that had led to Izuna's death. She attempted to destroy the Uchiha—all on her own, of course, because who of the Kagiru would follow her?

Expectantly, she failed, was captured, thrown into solitary confinement where she tore up floorboards and peeled the wood off the walls and tormented everyone who would come in to deliver her food. It didn't take long before the head of the Kagiru clan at the time made an order for her execution. There was less of a fuss than usual because, since Izuna was dead, she didn't have a purpose anymore.

It was as they were drugging her that she laughed and cursed my family, telling the crowd of Kagiru who had gathered to watch her die that the bond would end with her and they would have nothing until they saw the truth. Until there was another like her who would see past the Uchiha's greatness and realize just how pitiful they all were, both Uchiha and Kagiru alike.

It's because of her actions and her words that my family then and for generations to come despised her and resented that we were related to a woman like that. A woman who turned her back on traditions and the Uchiha legacy and, ultimately, her family.

If only my family could see me now.

As a Kagiru, I shouldn't hate or fear Marada as much as I do. But there is a small part of me that can't stand the idea of him being alive. There is a small part of me that hates myself for falling victim to his Sharingan.

Kakashi finishes speaking as I twist the hem of my shirt, say, "Uchiha Marada can't be alive. It's been—_decades_. Shinobi don't last decades, especially not in the time when he was alive. Not through the wars and—no," I repeat, pressing my face into my hands. "I won't believe it."

"When it comes to Madara. I could believe anything, even that he's still alive," Yamato says. I can hear the displeasure in his voice, hear his reluctance to admit that what Kakashi says could be true. But it _can't_ be true.

"No!" I know immediately I've spoken too sharply, given cause for alarm, but this fear that multiplies in my stomach can only translate into anger. Standing, I cross my arms over my chest, fold in on myself, calming myself before I lash out and bite someone with my words. Slowly, I say to the boys who regard me with concern, "What kind of world would we live in if that man is still alive? I just—on top of everything. Why does this have to come on top of everything else?"

"What do you know about him, Ren?" says Kakashi.

_He killed his brother for no reason. He betrayed his family and mine, but I'm the only one who can see that._ To say these things wouldn't make any sense to any of them, so I ruffle my hair and say, "I—remembered part of what happened after the fight. It's not important, but it follows with what you're saying. That man you're talking about, the one in the orange mask, showed up as I was healing Sasuke. It was probably him who used the Sharingan to erase my memory, not Sasuke. And . . . and if he's really Uchiha Marada, then that explains why these blocks in my head are so intricate. He would be powerful enough to create these barriers."

Kakashi hums in agreement, snapping his fingers as a thought occurs to him. "If that's the case and he is alive, we have to tell the Elders. Sai, you can tell the Hokage."

The boy in question stares at Kakashi dully before the order and action connects in his head. He sounds disappointed when he accepts Kakashi's request, and gets to his feet slowly, gracelessly, like he expects to be given more orders. Kakashi, though, has his attention focused on Naruto, asking him, "Naruto, what did the Fourth tell you?"

Naruto, distracted by Sai's uncharacteristically sluggish movements, answers Kakashi's question with confusion. Patiently, quietly, thoughtfully, Kakashi says, "Fathers usually have things to say to their sons."

Fathers? The word hangs in the air as I look between Naruto and Kakashi, whose faces break into identical grins. Does Kakashi mean to imply what I think, that Yondaime is Naruto's father? I glance at Yamato, who reads the question in my face and affirms my question with a single, solemn nod.

I can't wrap my head around the fact. There are striking similarities—from what I can remember of the pictures I've seen of Yondaime, they have the same yellow hair that juts out every which way, the same brilliant blue eyes, and, to some extent, the power they both exude—but Naruto doesn't share Yondaime's last name of Namikaze. And who in their right mind would seal a demon spirit into their own child?

I suppose it has something to do with the parental instinct of trusting your child to do what's right and what you expect of them. Maybe Yondaime thought, if Naruto was anything like himself, the responsibility of being a jinchuuriki would be in the hands of a child who only wanted what is best for the world. Maybe Yondaime believed there would be pieces of himself in his son and there would be nothing for him to worry about. It would be a risky bet to take, but if Yondaime was anything as reckless as Naruto is, I wouldn't put it past him to have thought like that.

Father. Naruto's father is Yondaime Hokage.

It's no wonder Naruto is capable of so much.

"He said he had faith in me," Naruto says in answer to Kakashi's question, and Kakashi smiles and gives him a thumbs-up, offering his and Yamato's services to Naruto in his mission to find the Raikage and speak with him. I curl my fingers around the hem of my shirt, wondering what my father would tell me if I could meet him again. The reunion would be nothing like Naruto's, that I'm sure, and the thought leaves me sick.

I wonder if anyone who knew my father sees pieces of him in me.

I wonder if I would feel comfort if they did.

The sound of my name snaps me out of my reverie, and I come to in time to hear Kakashi say, "Ren will come with us."

"I—_me_? Why _me_? I don't even approve of this," I say, and Yamato agrees with vigorous nods of his head. "As a friend—as a _medic_—this is more trouble than it's worth with the state you're in Naruo. And I don't care _how_ fast you heal," I say over Naruto's reminder that, with the Kyuubi's chakra, the rate at which he heals is considerably faster than a normal person's. "This isn't a good idea for a number of other reasons."

"It won't kill you to come along," Kakashi says.

"Oh, it just might," I say, sullen.

Naruto lowers his eyes, says, "Even if Sasuke isn't the same Sasuke we knew, Ren, he's not incapable of remembering we were once his friends too, and we care about him. Maybe once he sees that, once he sees how far we're willing to go to bring him back, he'll change for us just like you did." A smile spreads over Naruto's face, his eyes closing as he imagines us together again, happy and whole. "Anyway, I made a promise to Sakura, didn't I? I told her I would bring him back for her, and I never go back on my word!"

"Hopeless," I mutter as Kakashi offers a hand to help me up. When I take it and he lifts me to my feet, he lowers his voice and says so only I can hear, "You had your chance to bring Sasuke back. Let Naruto have his. We can't lose hope in Sasuke so quickly."

I want to laugh. It's been three years since Sasuke's left us. For me, the process of losing hope in Sasuke had happened gradually, over time, and with good reason. But everyone maintains this irrational hope that somehow, someway, Sasuke will be convinced to come home.

Kakashi dismisses us to allow us time to prepare our things for the Land of Iron. I am the first to leave the tent as Yamato helps Naruto struggle to his feet; Sai is close on my heels as I weave around the medical tents to try to find my way to where Kiba may have gather the rest of our friends.

"Try convincing _that_," I say, jerking my thumb over my shoulder as Sai comes up beside me. "Do you see what I mean? There's no way they could ever be talked out of the idea of bringing Sasuke home. Sakura's too in love with Sasuke, and Naruto's too loyal to his word to change people to want to give up."

"Do you think," Sai says, "Naruto's determination has to do, in part, with his promise to Sakura at all? He's in love with her after all, isn't he?"

"Er, yeah," I say, faltering as I try to figure out where Sai's train of thought is going. "But that doesn't—"

"What I mean is," Sai says. "If Sakura knew how much Naruto's promise to her weighed on his shoulders, do you think she would be more inclined to free him of his burden and persuade Naruto to give up his search for Sasuke? Once she realizes how much she's hurting him, she'll want to stop his pain."

"So," I say, coming to a halt. "You want to guilt Sakura into feeling bad for hurting Naruto and, consequently, have _her_ convince him to give up on Sasuke?"

"Essentially," Sai says, and I purse my lips.

"As terrible as it is to say this," I admit, "I like that idea, Sai. I like it a lot."

Sai and I concoct a plan: I go to the Land of Iron with Naruto—not that I could have gotten out of that—and see what I can find out about what the Kage plan on doing with Sasuke other than putting a bounty on his head; meanwhile, Sai will remain here to see what he can do about Sakura.

"This really is for the best," I say when Sai expresses his concern that we are manipulating our friends. "Anyway, it's the truth. Chasing after Sasuke like this will only hurt them in the long run. They're better off leaving him behind."

"What about you?" he asks. I'm not sure how to answer.

"If you run into Shikamaru," I say instead, patting Sai's shoulder, "tell him where I've gone and what we're up to. He agrees with me on this, so maybe he'll be able to do some convincing of his own. I'm trusting you to do this, Sai. If it makes you feel better, think of this as saving them the trouble of prolonging their suffering. Now let's go. We have work to do."


	88. Ironside

**Bound  
Chapter 88: Ironside **

"Okay, all ready!" Naruto adjusts his headband, propping his free hand on his waist. The heavy cloak he wears over his shoulders in preparation for the cold and harsh climate in the Land of Iron flurries behind him. I punch his shoulder, effectively causing him to slump, rub his injury, and whine that I'm always too rough on him.

Naruto and I are just outside the village, waiting for Yamato and Kakashi's signals to continue on to the Land of Iron. With this thick cloak on, my body heats up quickly, uncomfortably, and I have to tuck the cloak behind my shoulders to keep from roasting.

"You've always sucked at this stealth thing," I say, punctuating my words with jabs to his forehead. "When we're trying to sneak out of the village, you don't go screaming your head off the moment you step through the gates."

Naruto straightens, defiant. "Kakashi is taking care of the guys following us. There's nothing to worry about now except getting to the Land of Iron to stop the Raikage!"

"Yeah, and _that_. It looks like someone else has followed us." I point down the path at a boy with black hair who stands to our shoulders. His face is pulled in determination as Naruto sees him. Konohamaru's hands fly to make a basic hand seal as he shouts, "Oiroke no Jutsu!"

I sigh, shielding my eyes from the showdown as Naruto simultaneously follows through with his own Oiroke no Jutsu. There is a scattering of girlish giggling and then a shrill shout of frustration before the jutsu is released and I'm free to drop my hand. Konohamaru is kicking up a fuss about how Naruto's jutsu still outshines his by far, how, even though they're supposed to be rivals, Naruto continues to get further away from him.

I watch as Naruto's triumphant smile melds into an endearing one. He plants a hand on Konohamaru's head and says, "Hey, I heard you used the Rasengan on Pein." He musses Konohamaru's hair, and even though the younger boy scowls in embarrassment, I know he is proud of himself when Naruto says, "Good job, Konohamaru! You're a hero, too."

It's amazing how Naruto can inspire everyone, especially those who are young and will inherit the world after us. We are barely breaking the surface of this world, and already Naruto is grooming the next generation to be brave do-gooders.

Kakashi appears from the bushes off the side of the road where I see he's covered two bodies with a handful of leaves. He gives me a thumbs-up to confirm his successful taking out and camouflage of the Root members who have been tailing us. I tap Naruto's shoulder. "Sorry to cut this short, but we have to get going if we're going to catch the Raikage before the summit starts."

Naruto nods, shines Konohamaru another one of his smiles and says, "You're learning faster than I did! Next time I'll show you how to make a bigger Rasengan."

Konohamaru pumps his fist into the air and gives a shout of eagerness as Naruto leaps into the foliage, disappearing as he follows Kakashi's lead. Alone with Konohamaru, I say, "Tell no one you've see us go, got it, Konohamaru?"

He smirks, snaps into a salute. "You got it, Ren!"

I grin. "With a mentor like Naruto, I have faith that you'll become a great shinobi. But _don't_," I say, my grin quickly dissolving into a scowl, "let me catch you teaching that Oiroke no Jutsu to any of the students at the Academy!"

I follow Kakashi and Naruto to the outskirts of the forests surrounding, where we find Yamato concentrating on planting a tracking seed on the Kumo shinobi. "They're the quickest route to the Raikage," Kakashi explains as Yamato finally receives a signal from his clone. "They'll probably rendezvous with him to tell him what they've learned from our libraries."

There is something inherently wrong with the fact that we are supplying people with the information they need to take out one of our own, but considering the circumstances, it can't be helped. If we had failed to comply, it wouldn't have reflected well on our village's moral character.

Of course, simply having Sasuke out there doesn't reflect well on our village's moral character.

The journey to the Land of Iron is a long and silent one. Mostly it's Yamato ordering us east and north, with the temperatures steadily decreasing and making me thankful for this well-insulated cloak. Occasionally, during our breaks, Naruto goes into a momentary daze that always results in him jerking his head up, as though he's catching himself falling asleep. Once, I find him staring at me dully, so absorbed in a daydream that he doesn't respond when I wave my hand in front of his face. I end up having to pat his cheek roughly before he comes to and apologizes.

"Why do you keep zoning out?" I finally ask when his lapses begin to disconcert me. "You're not feeling ill, are you?"

Naruto shakes his head, pulling absently on the bandage still covering his right eye. "Just thinking of what to say to the Raikage when we see him."

I chew on the inside of my lip. "Nothing will convince you? To stop going after Sasuke, I mean."

Naruto flashes a weak smile and says, "No. Sorry."

"I just want you to think really hard about what you're doing, Naruto," I say, reaching for his bandages and adjusting them as he's managed to mess them up with his fussing. "You're putting your own good name on the line for him. Do you want to risk soiling your reputation by placing your trust in a guy like Sasuke?"

He stops me from fidgeting with his wrappings and moves out of my reach. "I would rather lose standing for having too much faith than for abandoning my friends."

At that moment, Kakashi decides we should start moving and Naruto gets to his feet, giving me no time to respond. Not that I have anything to say to his statement, what he means to imply by it. So I stay quiet and hope Sai is having better luck back home.

[+]

The temperature continues to drop as we approach the Land of Iron, and I am marginally horrified when I realize the snow that's falling is sticking to the ground. As we move through the country, the snow piles become thicker and before long the entirety of the land is layered in snow. The snow doesn't appear to have the same stifling effect as rain does on the vibrations; I can feel each footstep that lands through the compact snow, and I take comfort in that.

I clutch my cloak around my shoulders, unused to the harsh cold, as Yamato tells us the Kumo shinobi are slowing and leads us aside. We take cover behind a large boulder that keeps us hidden but within hearing range of the Kumo shinobi as they catch the Raikage on his way to the summit. We hear their greeting, and then an ominous silence, during which Yamato and Kakashi exchange looks of displeasure.

Clipping away snow that has fallen into my hair, I'm about to ask what's wrong when, a moment later, we hear someone shout, "Come out, you Konoha dogs!"

Well.

Naruto is the first to step out of hiding, approaching the Kumo shinobi with his shoulders back and head held high. Yamato and Kakashi flank his right and left, while I trail behind him. The crunch of my footsteps in the snow sounds less firm than theirs.

There are six Kumo shinobi in total: the two who had attacked us earlier, a tall and voluptuous blonde who's face remains indifferent as we reveal ourselves, and the Raikage, accompanied by two personal bodyguards who have their eyes narrowed at us.

The Raikage is this bear of a man with dark skin and white hair that flares out in twiggy branches on his lip and clumps into triangular beard on his chin. His white hair is slicked back, exposing his thick brows that accent the sullen look in his eyes as he regards us. In this weather, he chooses only to wear pants and a lanky coat that he doesn't even close up, instead opting to expose his bare chest to the cold. If he weren't such an intimidating or powerful and influential man of the Five Shinobi Nations, I would already insulted his intelligence for choosing such an outfit for this climate.

The Kumo shinobi who had attacked us—Karui and Omoi—express their irritation that Naruto has managed to follow them, while one of the Raikage's guards compliments us on being able to track this squad. One of the other guards whispers to the Raikage, who's frown intensifies and says, "Did the Hokage send you, Hatake Kakashi?"

"No," Kakashi says, apparently unsurprised that he had been recognized by the Raikage. "We have a favor to ask you. Uzumaki Naruto"—Kakashi gestures to him.—"of Konohagakure wishes to speak with you. Please listen to him."

"Don't you think that's a little rude?" one of the Raikage's guards says, frowning at us. "You didn't ask ahead for an audience, and we're on our way to the Kage summit."

"I'm well aware," Kakashi says. "But we feel this is of the utmost importance, and it pertains to what the Kage may speak of during the meeting."

The Raikage's brow wrinkles, perpetually drawn together in irritation, it seems, and he says, "All right. This kid here, is it? Spit it out, then."

Naruto swallows, but otherwise wastes no time getting his point across. He says, loudly, over the rushing of the wind that carries snow into our faces, "I want you to stop Sasuke's—Uchiha Sasuke's execution."

All but the blonde woman and the Raikage begin to express their disbelief at Naruto's request, causing him to rush on and say, "I know it's a lot to ask, but I have to try! Sasuke is my friend. I can't sit back and watch him be killed, and I don't want Sasuke to be the cause of a war between Konoha and Kumo. I don't want either of us getting caught up in revenge!"

The Raikage sets his jaw, and for a moment it seems he's going to offer a rebuttal. But he merely tsks and grinds his teeth together, saying to his comrades, "Let's go."

"I'm begging you!" Naruto says, and falls to his knees, startling me. I reach down to comfort him, take his shoulder and lift him back to his feet, but he shrugs me off as he says, "I don't want anyone else getting killed for revenge. All Sasuke ever thought about was revenge. It consumed him and changed him. He was driven mad by it. He's not the same guy I knew anymore. I don't want this to happen to anyone else. I don't want people from Konoha and Kumo to be killing each other. So please."

Karui groans, crosses her arms impatiently, and mutters, "Stupid."

One of the Raikage's bodyguards expresses his own displeasure and says, "Is that it? We're in a hurry."

"When you went after Hyuuga's Byakugan," Yamato says, his brow twitching in annoyance, "Konoha never did anything to retaliate. Your actions could have provoked a war, but we swallowed our bloody tears in order to prevent that. Don't forget you exist because of our precious sacrifices."

"This young ninja before you may not be skilled at negotiation," adds Kakashi, "but he is begging you for the sake of both Konoha and Kumo. Raikage-sama, as one of the Kage, what is your opinion of this?"

The Raikage's lip curls up in disgust as he glares at Naruto's crumpled form. He turns up his nose and says, "A ninja should not be so quick to bow before another! Ninja respect actions and strength. There should be no compromises between ninja."

His foot digs into the snow, the ice crunching beneath his boot as he turns toward the summit. His subordinates do the same, taking up his sides and moving ahead of him in an arrow formation. "The history of the human race is a history of war," the Raikage says over his shoulder. While his voice has become softer, there remains an edge to it that makes it clear he doesn't respect Naruto's actions in the slightest. "Ever since the three Great Ninja Wars, every country, every village has fought for the strongest techniques. The weak are crushed. That is the inescapable truth of the ninja world. After today, Akatsuki will be internationally wanted criminals. Then the whole world will be after Sasuke, not just me. You beg for mercy for a criminal, for the safety of your friends, but in the ninja world, we do not call that friendship. Kid, think about what you must do. You won't get far in the ninja world if you keep acting stupidly."

Karui smirks, lets out a soft chuckle that doesn't go without my notice. I have half a mind to attack her, but Kakashi takes my shoulder and says, "Not the best time."

He's right. If I want to attack, I should do it someplace where there won't be so many witnesses or anyone to back her up. Just like how she had cornered Naruto.

The Raikage and his gang put their backs to us and are gone in a matter of minutes. The snow continues to fall as I kneel down beside Naruto, who punches the snow, sending a flurry of it flying into his hair to add to the flakes that had fallen on him during the conversation. I smooth my hand down his back, pursing my lips. The usual sentiments that would seem appropriate at the moment—"It's going to be okay" or "We'll change his mind"—are useless, meaningless. So I settle with brushing the snow from his hair and coaxing him to his feet.

He doesn't raise his head once he's standing. Clumps of snow stick to his cheeks where his tears have melted them to his skin. His jaw remains frozen in remorse, his teeth grinding together. I keep my distance, the petty and shameful voice in the back of my head telling him, _I told you so._

Yamato finds us a small hotel to rest in before heading home tomorrow. The lady in charge seems reluctant to let us stay when she sees our headbands, but is gracious enough to give us a room to protect us from the snow. Naruto immediately goes to the room, and while it's obvious he wants to be alone, Kakashi nudges me to follow Naruto up the stairs.

"He'll need someone with him," Kakashi says over my protests. To argue with that would it make it seem as though I don't want to help Naruto, so I turn on my heels and trudge up the stairs after him.

There are a few rooms upstairs, but only one room's door is wide open. I assume that's the one Naruto has entered, and find him lying spread-eagle in the room, his cloak thrown across the floor in a heap. Even though he doesn't welcome me in, I step inside anyway and close the door behind me.

Inside the room, the air is stifling, like a box that has been kept closed for too long. I'm at a loss for where to sit or stand so I linger at the door, waiting to see if Naruto will say something to me.

He doesn't. So I clear my throat and start the conversation myself.

"Well, that was quite the meeting, wasn't it?" I say. I unbutton my cloak and drape it over my arm. "We'll catch the Raikage again as the summit finishes and see if anything the other Kage have said will have changed his mind. Gaara's there, remember, as the Kazekage. He'll be thinking of us as he talks to the other Kage. Hopefully."

Naruto doesn't answer, doesn't move to acknowledge me. I cross the room, maneuvering around him to open the window and air out the room. I take a deep breath of the frosty air, prepping myself for the uncomfortable conversation that will undoubtedly ensue, before going to sit down beside him, folding my legs over each other. I take Naruto's shoulder and give him a comforting squeeze. "Not everyone is as forgiving as you, Naruto. But maybe Sasuke will redeem himself somehow and the Raikage will change his mind. He'll pardon Sasuke, or at least give him a reprieve. We'll find Sasuke and bring him home."

Naruto turns, breaking out of my hold. "You don't believe that." He buries his face in his arms, sending the message that I should leave him alone, and I'll admit, the words had sounded ridiculous coming out of my mouth. But what else can I say to make him feel better? The truth doesn't agree with him, but neither do my lies. So what can I feed him that he will swallow, and he'll be nourished and I'll have a clear conscience?

"Something will happen," I say. The statement is vague and quiet, but there is a truth to it, a hope that even I can accept. "Something will happen and all of this will have been worth it in the end."

Again, Naruto doesn't say a word to me, doesn't give me any indication that he takes my comfort. But then slowly he lifts his head and looks at me, his bright blue eyes shining in the dim light, and he crawls toward me before laying his head in my lap, a small child in the grand scheme of things.

"Yeah," he says, closing his eyes as I brush my fingers through his hair, smoothing it against his cheeks. "It'll be worth it."

We sit like this for a long moment. Naruto relaxes as I go through the motions of, essentially, petting him. He's probably never felt this kind of comfort before. Not the comfort of words or lies, but the true genuine comfort of love, of a mother petting him to sleep or a father lifting him against the sky, or a lullaby in his ear at night. And still he has grown up to be so optimistic, so caring, and selfless.

"I wonder," Naruto says as my heart swells with sadness, "if Sasuke feels any better. He's killed Itachi; he's gotten his revenge. But he still hasn't returned to Konoha. So does that mean it's only gotten worse? Has his hatred eaten him up? Has he really become nothing more than a common criminal like the Raikage said?"

His fingers curl into tight fists and he squeezes his eyes shut. "I don't understand him anymore," Naruto says, his brow knotted together. "Why won't he come home?"

I have a feeling that, somewhere in the depths of my memory, I know the answer to this. Before I can dig much deeper or even tell Naruto what I can guess about Sasuke, though, the vibration shifts outside the window. I look up, expecting to see birds or that the snow has start to fall again, but am met with the sight of a man in a black cloak spotted with clouds. I tense, biting down on the inside of my lip, wanting to scream but apparently forgetting how.

The man cocks his head at me, a bird who has just found its first worm of the morning. His face is hidden behind a swirling orange mask that only serves to further shake my nerves.

Naruto senses the change in me, lifts his head. Just as he's about to speak, though, the man says, "Shall we have a little chat, Uzumaki Naruto?"

Naruto whirls around at the voice, and then, upon recognizing the man, leaps to his feet, a shadow clone already at his side before I can react. A Rasengan charges in their hands and I throw my arms over my face as the wood splinters when the attack lands on the window sill. The entire wall of the building is blasted to smithereens, snow from the roof plopping onto the wooden floors as the debris clears and the man is unscathed on the exposed rooftop of the building.

"A Rasengan, huh? You know full well that won't work on me," he says, shifting his weight onto his heels. He lifts his hands as though in surrender, but then the exposed wooden beams from the roof of the building shoot out, swirling around him and encasing him while the floor panels crisscross in front of me and Naruto, creating a checkered cage that contains us within the house. Naruto grabs the wooden barricade, shakes it as he tries to break free, but is stopped by Kakashi's ever soothing voice.

He's somehow managed to slip around us, up onto the rooftop, and is positioned behind the man. Kakashi's Chidori rings through the air, casting an odd light on his face that makes him appear more menacing. Naruto shakes the bars of the wooden cage again, shouting at Kakashi to let him free.

"Stay still, Naruto," Kakashi says, keeping his eyes on the Akatsuki man. "Yamato and I will handle things from here."

"Nice move, Hatake Kakashi," the man says, flexing his fingers like he's anticipating a fight. But he doesn't struggle to free himself from the wooden bindings. "You're fast."

"I won't let you get your hands on Naruto that easily," Kakashi quips, "Uchiha Madara."

I shiver hearing his name, knowing he is so close, and recoil farther back in the cage, glad we're contained and safe at least in feeling. The only person to notice the effect Madara has on me is Naruto, who turns his attention away from Madara for a second to glance at me over his shoulder.

For a moment it seems like he's going to ask me if I'm all right, but then Madara speaks, says, "You must have heard me then, right? None of your attacks will work on me." and Naruto is at once absorbed with him again.

I'm glad, too. I'm not sure how I would explain my fear of Madara to him.

"So you don't deny it?" Kakashi says, his Chidori continuing to chirp as his agitation grows. "You're Uchiha Madara?"

Yamato, who remains kneeling beside us, purses his lips and makes a noise of displeasure. "I don't know whether you just disappear or turn into a ghost or what," he says, "but if you want to catch Naruto, you have to be solid. So that's what we aimed for. This is my territory now."

"I don't think it will be so easy," Madara says offhandedly, like there isn't a Chidori very close to his face and he isn't wrapped in thick arms of wood. "I have a plan, too, you know. I just want to talk for now. Mainly," Madara says in response to our inquiring stares. "I want to know how you made Nagato betray me, Naruto. I'm curious about you."

"That doesn't matter!" Naruto shouts. "What are you going to do to Sasuke! Tell me!"

"Sasuke, huh? All right, I'll tell you about him. About a man eaten up by the ninja world's hatred and bitterness. Or perhaps," he says, and by the slightest lilt of his head, I can tell he refocuses his gaze on me. "You would rather have your friend Kagiru Ren tell you."

I hate hearing my name come out of his mouth, but am given no time to overcome my fear because, at that moment, Kakashi, Yamato, and Naruto turn to me, their gazes charged with suspicion. "Wh—I don't know what you're expecting me to say! I don't know what you're talking about," I say, scrambling to save face.

"Of course not," Madara says, shaking his head. "You've forgotten everything, haven't you? You have me to thank for that. But now I'll allow you to wake up, dear eagle eyes."

The phrase triggers something in me and makes my head explode with dizzying pain. I crumple over, falling to my hands and knees as images of—everything comes flooding back into my memory. Going and being with Sasuke, his companions—Suigetsu, Karin, and Juugo: the boy of water, the healer, the cursed. The fights with Deidara, Itachi, how Sasuke had been so wasted after both and how I had healed him, held him in my arms as I put him back together just like I was meant to. How he had agreed to come home, and then how this man, how Madara, had come and stolen it all away.

He had come up to me, after calling himself a friend, and pressed his Sharingan to my eyes. He had told me this truth—the most awful truth—about Itachi, and how Itachi had been a double agent for the village, coerced by the village to destroy his entire clan for plotting a coup against the Leaf. My clan, the Kagiru, had been compliant in the plan, had been more than willing to sacrifice everything to support the Uchiha, and so had to be eliminated by association. How Itachi spared me because he believed I could ease Sasuke's suffering.

Madara told me how Itachi had orchestrated the whole thing, the chase, his fight with Sasuke, all planned down to the last minute, and how, once Sasuke found out about all this, he would never return to the village like I kept insisting he would.

And then Madara had told me, very plainly, that I was useless to the village, to him, to Sasuke even. He had told me he would convince Sasuke of it, make Sasuke realize how much he didn't need me, and thus cut Sasuke's last ties to the village. And once that was done, once he had Sasuke completely in his hands—

"You're going to use Sasuke to destroy everything."


	89. Lies, Damned Lies

**Bound  
Chapter 89: Lies, Damned Lies**

Naruto swings around to face me. "_What?_ Ren," he says urgently. He takes my shoulders and pulls me up. His fingers dig into my bones. His eyes are bright, shining with fear. "What did you just say? What are you talking about?"

"Looks like she remembers after all," Madara says, chuckling from where he remains trapped in Yamato's technique. "What she says is the truth. But do elaborate, Ren. It might be easier for your friends to hear if it comes from you."

I bite my lip, trying to regain my composure. Small blips of everything are still returning to me even minutes after Madara has unblocked my memory, putting me in a daze, and the fact that Naruto continues to shake me to get me to speak doesn't help. I break his hold on me, glaring. Naruto steps back, giving me room to breathe, but he, Kakashi, and Yamato keep their eyes planted on me, waiting for me to reveal what I know.

"Come on, Ren," Madara says, raising his nose in the air. "There's no point in trying to protect your integrity by feigning innocence. We all know by now you're a traitor first and foremost."

He's right. There's nothing I can say to redeem myself considering all I've done. But protecting my honor has nothing to do with the silence I want to keep. I press the heel of my hands to my forehead, wanting to push all my newly recovered memories from my mind because they are no better than being unable to remember anything.

"It's okay, Ren."

Kakashi's voice pierces the void, gentle and soothing. He gives me a plaintive look from where he stands holding Madara captive, and says, "You can tell us what you know. It's okay."

There is nothing I would rather not do than what they ask of me. But I take a deep breath, sit back on my knees, and start where the battle had ended, when it was me and Sasuke and the hope we would at last be returning home.

It's hard to collect the memories and present them in the right order, much less articulate them. There must have been a better, more efficient and less dizzying way for me to recover my memories, but Madara wants me to seem like a bigger fool than I already am.

He is succeeding.

"From what I can remember," I say, twisting my hands together and keeping my eyes down. "Madara said he wanted to take Sasuke so he could use him to—to destroy Konoha."

"But Sasuke would never do that!" Naruto says, swinging out an arm to dismiss the idea. "What reason would he have to?"

"That's the best part," Madara says. "Relax for a moment and let her finish telling the story."

I frown, displeased at how he is using me as a messenger. The messengers are always the ones to feel the heat from the words they have to deliver. While I may make it clear where my allegiances lie, in making me tell everyone the truth about Sasuke and Uchiha, Madara is making me out to be the enemy, the traitor who was seemingly in cahoots with him the entire time, even though that isn't the case.

"He's going to convince—or has convinced," I correct and Madara nods, "Sasuke to completely cut his ties with the village by telling Sasuke—"

"Telling Sasuke what?" demands Naruto when I don't speak fast enough.

I brush him off, biting the inside of my lip, unable to make sense of the next part of my memory that had come rushing back in a blur. I stand, careful to steady myself against the wall to make sure I don't fall as I say, "Itachi was a double-crosser. He was supposed to spy on the Konoha government for the Uchiha clan. But somehow, the village leaders got to him and made him turn on his own clan. 'For the safety of the village,' they said. 'To defend the honor of your village, you must kill your clan to protect your village.' Because the Uchiha were discontent with their role as the Konoha police force and believed the position of Hokage belonged to them. They planned a coup, and if Itachi didn't wipe them all out, then he would risk collapsing the social order of Konoha and throw everything into disarray. And Itachi loved the village too much to allow his family to do that. So he killed all of them—everyone, including family because they were in on the plan, but spared Sasuke. And me."

No one speaks after I finish, which fuels my anger. Because given the time to simmer in how Madara had told me this so coldheartedly, hearing the words come out of my own mouth and stabbing me in the heart, I can only think: My family died for this?

The Uchiha were not noble. The Uchiha were proud, bitter, glory-seeking bastards and they deserved none of my family's loyalty.

"I told you it was a good story," Madara says in the wake of everyone's stunned silence. "Poor Itachi—having to hide so much from his family, having to turn his back on the people he loved for the sake of a village he loved. Imagine having to choose between the two. Would you have been able to make a decision that wouldn't have ended in disaster? And then to leave only his baby brother and his brother's babysitter alive."

Madara laughs, basking in the nasty looks we shoot him. "Everything that Itachi had planned for Sasuke up until their final showdown was figured out to the smallest detail. While there were a few roadblocks in the way, I would say his plan was a success, wouldn't _you_, Ren?"

Naruto saves me the trouble of answering by slamming his fists against the wooden bars that keep us safe inside the hotel. "Liar!" he shouts, his voice echoing sharply in the cell. "That's not true!"

"I'm not lying," says Madara, more at ease than a captive man should be. "That's the truth about Itachi. All he ever wanted was for Konoha to be safe and for his brother to be alive and happy. He died for Sasuke and Konoha."

"But if that's true," Kakashi says, his Chidori dissipating, "and Sasuke knows it, why would he work with Akatsuki? He would follow Itachi's wishes and return to Konoha."

Madara laughs again, shaking his head. "You fools still don't get it, do you? As Sasuke's friend and teacher, you think you know him, but you don't understand him at all. He's the real deal when it comes to grudges. He is a true avenger. Especially once he understood that there was nothing for him in Konoha," Madara adds, his voice lowering to a breeze. "Once he understood there was no one in the village, not even his old friends, who would understand his pain."

"Did you do that to him?" Naruto demands, pressing against the wooden bars to reach for Madara.

"No, I didn't. If you want to find someone to blame, blame yourselves," Madara says, and I flinch, recoiling into the depths of the room. Madara catches the movement, laughs. "Especially Ren, here. You know, you were the last thing tying him to the village," he says, and I wrap my arms around myself. "Then he comes to find out you don't even want him back. And you wonder why he's abandoned you."

"He doesn't care about me," I argue, determined to lift this weight off my shoulders. "He doesn't care about anyone! Akatsuki, vengeance—he chose it himself. It's because he doesn't care about us that he was able to choose you over coming home."

"Hm. You're right. I took a gamble when I told him," Madara says, shrugging, "not knowing whether he would choose to follow Itachi's wishes or choose revenge against Konoha. But he chose revenge. That just means, in his heart, he was always one of us. Sasuke's goal is vengeance against Konoha for what they did to the Uchiha clan and to Itachi."

The wooden beams that make up our cell are at least ten centimeters thick, but Naruto clenches his hands around them so tightly that they crack. He presses his forehead against the beam, grumbling, "Why did this happen to him? Why did he turn to revenge?"

"It is the hate-filled destiny of the Uchiha clan," says Madara. "It's a curse that has followed us for generations. A curse much older and much more powerful than your bond with him, Ren," Madara says offhandedly when I look up. "That silly thing is nothing compared to this curse. A curse of hatred that began long ago, with the founder of the ninjas, the Rikudo Sage, the Sage of the Six Paths."

"The Rikudo Sage?" says Kakashi as I scowl at the way Madara has dismissed the bond. "He's nothing but a myth. The Rinnegan is just a mutation."

"Myth's are always based on a little bit of truth," says Madara. "You children may not know the story, so I'll tell it if you care to listen."

His condescension grows thicker with every word he says to us. He must be getting bored. He can't be very comfortable wrapped in thick wooden beams, and having to explain every little detail to us must be repetitive. He already had to go through this with Sasuke.

Sasuke. His name triggers a greater migraine in my head than before the memory block had been lifted. I wince, closing my eyes from the sun that starts to blind me, but even then all I can see is Sasuke.

At first, I think it's my mind playing tricks on me, but then I realize—it's him. Sasuke, fighting an oversized man with dark skin and white hair and electricity sparking all over his body. Sasuke, blood dripping from his eyes like tears, his body battered and bruised and in desperate need of my careful hands to heal him. I reach, but feel only the walls containing me, the immensity of the space between us.

I gasp, pulling myself out of the vision, just as Madara is finishing his story about the Sage of Six Paths and his predecessors and something about the hatred being passed down among their descendents, the Uchiha and the Senju, like an old curse.

"My battle with the first Hokage, Senju Hashirama was fated," he's saying as I straighten up, my breathing ragged. I push my hair out of my eyes, feeling the sweat that's started to bead on my forehead despite the snow outside. I pull myself up, hoping no one notices as Madara continues with his speech. There is only so much I want to share in one day.

"This is only the second time we've met," Madara says to Naruto, "but I can tell the fire of the Senju clan dwells within you. I can see the first Hokage in you, and in you he lives on. He was my rival, and I admired him and hated him more than anyone else. Senju and Uchiha. Fire and hatred. Naruto and Sasuke. You two have been chosen by fate. Revenge is the Uchiha clan's destiny. Sasuke has taken on the hatred of the entire clan, and he will inflict that curse's hatred on the world. Hatred is his greatest weapon, his friend, and his strength. Hatred is Sasuke's only dogma."

Naruto maintains eye contact with Madara throughout the conversation, never wavering in the slightest. But the way his body tenses and his fingers keep rolling into fists gives away his irritation with Madara and what he says. I come up beside Naruto, taking the sleeve of his shirt in my hand. He startles, turns to me, and for a moment when our gazes lock, he lowers his eyes.

"Naruto," Madara says, drawing our attention back to him, "someday you will have to fight Sasuke. Or, rather, I will _make_ you fight Sasuke. This fated battle has been a long time coming. I will use Sasuke to force people to acknowledge the Uchiha clan."

Naruto grits his teeth, presses into the wooden beams again as he shouts, "You're out of line. Sasuke isn't your _toy_. And you know what? You and Nagato are nothing alike. He may have been going about it differently, but in his heart he wished for peace. You don't want that at all."

Madara pauses, his head lilting to the side. Then he chuckles. "You're right."

"If all you want is for people to acknowledge the Uchiha," Kakashi says, "then why do you need the tailed-beasts? What are you really after?"

"Well, if you must know," says Madara, his shoulders lifting. "I want to be complete. There's no use in telling you what I mean. There are other, more effective places to have this conversation. It's been fun chatting. See you."

I feel the vibrations turn, twist, and then Madara is disappearing, swirling into the black hold over his left eye, the last of his words like an echo on the wind. Yamato sighs as he releases his jutsu. The wooden beams sink back into the floor and Kakashi and Yamato are before us.

"That was quite the encounter, wasn't it?" he says, pulling his headband over his Sharingan.

"What should we do?" says Yamato, propping a hand on his hip. "Considering what Madara told us about the Uchiha—"

"Let's keep what Madara said between us," Kakashi says quickly. "I don't want to cause trouble during the reconstruction of Konoha, and we can't trust what he said about the Konoha elders using Itachi to destroy the Uchiha clan. Without anything to back it up, we'd be doing more harm than good by mentioning it. You two understand, don't you?"

Naruto doesn't answer, but I nod for the both of us. Kakashi purses his lips, and says, "Well, I guess we should—"

He is cut off by a wailing screech that causes us all to brace ourselves for battle. It turns out to be the landlady of the hotel, her face drained of all color as she gazes up at the gaping hole in the side of the building. She begins to scream at us, and Yamato and Kakashi go down to do damage control.

Once they're gone, Naruto empties all the air in his lungs and sits. One of his arms dangles above his head as I continue to hold onto his sleeve and he doesn't tug out of my hold. I sit beside him, smoothing the fabric of his sleeve between my fingers.

"Naruto," I begin, but he shakes his head, stopping me.

"I'm going to ask him myself," he says. "I'm going to ask Sasuke if he thinks any of what Madara says is true. Fate, destiny—you know I have a hard time believing any of that. I have ever since the Chuunin exams. But . . . if what Madara says is true, then—"

"Then maybe he is a lost cause," I say quickly, loudly, so that he has to hear me. "He can't be convinced that there is anything more important than his family's honor and he won't be."

His fingers tighten, his knuckles turning white under his skin. He raises his head and says, "Can I be alone for a moment, Ren? Please."

"Naruto," I say, exasperated, but he detaches himself from me and leaps to the rooftop where he swings his feet over the center beam of the roof and sits, watching the sun. It's all very dramatic, but rather than feel guilty about what Naruto's had to hear about Sasuke, I'm irritated.

Naruto is too stubborn to give up on Sasuke. He must think to abandon Sasuke means to give up hope or something. But, really, his first hope doesn't have to be his only hope. In eliminating Sasuke as a threat to the village—and, at this point, to the entire world—we can have a new hope that we and the people we love can be safer, that the posterity of our village can remain intact.

Something wet falls on my face and I jump. When I realize it's only snow, I grow embarrassed, glad no one had seen me startle so terribly at something so small. I look at the sky, lifting my face to the flakes that stick to my skin rather than melt, piling up on my cheeks.

I wonder if I have grown as cold as the snow.

I close my eyes, inhaling the crisp air deeply and shaking the snow off of me. I lean down, gather my and Naruto's cloak as the wooden wall behind me stretches and the gaping hole Naruto had created is smoothed over. Yamato must be fixing the hotel for the landlady. I'm displeased when I realize I'm going to have to walk down to the floor level in order to give Naruto his cloak, but put on my brave face and leave.

Clomping through the snow, I wave down Kakashi, who has finally managed to quiet the beet red landlady. She fumes as she stomps back into the hotel, grumbling about shinobi and melting the snow in her anger. "Naruto's still on the roof," I say, holding out his cloak. "I think he's going to be sitting up there for a long time."

Kakashi crosses his arms and drums his fingers along his bicep, humming in thought, as Yamato approaches us, scowling. "That's understandable, considering," Yamato says, brushing the snow off his shoulders. "If there's at all any truth to what Madara says, though . . . "

"It would be troubling," says Kakashi. "Ren, is there anything else you haven't mentioned about what Madara told you? Did he say anything about how he planned to use Sasuke or what he means when he said he wants to be 'complete'?"

I shake my head, saying, "All Madara told me was the story about Itachi. He didn't even want me to join him and Sasuke, not like Orochimaru did when he targeted our boy wonder. He said I was—worthless to his cause, and to Sasuke's cause, and once he convinced Sasuke of it, then Sasuke would never return to Konoha."

Kakashi blinks at me, though I can't tell what he could be thinking. Finally, he says, "We should try to get Naruto down before he catches his death."

He and Yamato go to the rooftop as I pull my cloak more tightly around my shoulders. I wonder why Kakashi had paused like that, why he had changed the topic so abruptly after hearing what I had to say. I watch them as they try to goad Naruto off the rooftop, but then the sound of snow crunching under boots catches my attention and I turn.

Sakura, Kiba, Lee, and Sai approach me, their cloaks brushing against the snow and leaving small waves. Sai nods to me as they reach me while Sakura says, "There you are. We've been looking for you everywhere."

"Sakura," I say, though I stare at Sai sharply. "What are you doing here? You should be back at the village."

"I need to speak with Naruto," she says, eyes skirting the premises to find him. "Where is he?"

I continue staring at Sai, but he only shakes his head, lifting his shoulders into a defeated shrug, and I sigh, motioning upward. Kiba gapes as the others follow the point of my finger and he demands, "You don't mean to say—Naruto was killed by the Raikage?"

"He's not dead," I say, scoffing at Kiba's idiocy, just as Naruto, sensing their arrival pokes his head over the edge of the rooftop, greeting them. Kakashi and Yamato lean over the edge as well, raising their brow at Sakura's team.

"Why are all of you here?" Kakashi asks.

Sakura looks past Kakashi, straight at the blonde headed boy who's stares at them blankly. "Naruto," she says. "There's something we have to talk about."

Naruto clambers down, landing with a heavy thump beside me. Yamato and Kakashi are more graceful in their landings, barely shifting the snow under their feet as they take their places.

"What's happened?" Naruto says, at once up in arms. "Is everything okay back at the village? Has Tsunade-obaachan finally woken up?"

"No. But otherwise everything is fine," Sakura soothes, patting down her hair as though to reassure herself. "We're here on a more . . . personal matter. You see, the thing is—" Sakura clears her throat, her cheeks flushing bright red, and I wonder how giving someone the okay to kill another person is making her blush like this. But then she says, "I love you, Naruto," and my mouth falls open.

The silence that falls around us following Sakura's statement is only disrupted by the cold flakes of snow melting against my face. I stare at Sakura, startled by her claim, and look to Sai to see if I can figure out what she's doing. He taps his ear, and then averts his eyes to the hotel. But his lips move marginally and I think to pick up his words the Genshindou just in time to hear him say, "She doesn't want to tell him your friends have agreed to eliminate Sasuke. This is her way around it."

I roll my hands into a fist, wonder if this had been her plan all along as I narrow my eyes at Sakura. To mislead Naruto like this is just as useless as crying in front of him, begging for him to bring Sasuke back.

Naruto is the one to break the pause, inquiring, "What . . . did you say just now, Sakura-chan? I . . . don't know if I heard you wrong. Can you say it again?"

"Please, don't," I say, sliding through the snow that begins to freeze my toes. Through the snow, I can feel everyone's heartbeats. I can feel Naruto's heart pumping more quickly, can feel Sakura's doing the same, although I believe for two very different reasons.

Sakura notices the look of distrust on my face, the look of irritation and anger. Through the snow, her heartbeat comes under control again, like she's purposefully slowing it down. She manages to appear meek and embarrassed as she looks away and says, "What I said, Naruto, is that I love you! I'm saying that there's nothing between me and Sasuke anymore. I don't know what I was thinking, liking a person like him. I'm confessing my feelings here, so listen, won't you?"

Naruto continues to gape at Sakura, his cheeks pink with feeling or frost, I'm not sure. But I catch him glancing at me, and he catches onto my doubt in light of Sakura's confession, and his face begins to fall. He shrinks, growing paler in the snow that already washes him out.

"But . . . ," he starts. "How? _Why_? If you tell a joke like that in a situation like this, Sakura-chan, it's not funny. Just what . . . happened?"

"Nothing!" Sakura says, holding out a hand. "I realized there's no sense in continuing to like someone who's a fugitive and a criminal. I can't stay a kid forever. I want to face reality. So, Naruto, no need to keep that promise you made to me. Won't you stop chasing Sasuke?"

It's the last sentence that makes Naruto purse his lips and furrow his brow. It's random and out of place, an odd request for someone who has spent so much of her time dedicated the the boy she has asked him to stop pursuing. Even Yamato can see it, Yamato, who edges forward and demands, "What the hell are you—" only to be stopped by Kakashi.

He's right to stop Yamato. Kakashi and I both know that Naruto can figure this out for himself. He may not be textbook smart, but when it comes to reading people, perceiving them, he understands them all too well. Naruto says, seriously, "Did something happen, Sakura-chan? Why _me_ of all people, all of a sudden?"

"Nothing happened!" she insists. "If you want to know why I started liking you, I'll say it clearly."

Another mark of a liar: giving too many details. She should have stopped talking long ago. I wish she would have, and I'm inclined to stop her from making more of a fool of herself. So I step up, say, "Sakura," but she shoots me a sharp glare and Sai shakes his head at me over her shoulder.

But I can't stand this. She's blatantly lying to him and trying to cover for Sasuke, just as she always does. Even now, she's trying to protect Sasuke at the risk of Naruto's feelings.

And when she moves forward to embrace Naruto, wraps her arm around his shoulders, I want to strangle her.

"Sasuke-kun," she says, still using the kindly honorific for his name, and there's another strike against her, "keeps getting farther away from me. But Naruto, you've always stayed by my side. You've encouraged me. I finally realized who you really are, Naruto. The hero who protected the village and is now beloved by everyone in Konoha. And I'm one of them. That mischievous little idiot I used to know, little by little, is becoming this great and important man, and I've been watching from right next to him. But all Sasuke's done is commit crimes and break my heart. More and more, he's becoming a different person than he was. But Naruto, you're right here where I can touch you like this. You make me feel safe. Right now, from the bottom of my heart, I—"

"Stop it, Sakura," I say, taking her by the shoulder and yanking her off of Naruto. She blinks at me with wide eyes, stunned. I would slap her surprise off her face if it were acceptable. But I settle with yelling, "Enough! How is this more effective than just _telling_ him what you actually mean to say? How is toying with Naruto's feelings for you going to do anything?"

"I'm not—"

"You are!" I say, balling my hands into fists. "You are and you know it! Everyone knows it! Everyone can see what you're doing, that you're lying to him and us and worst of all yourself."

"I'm _not_," she says again, "_lying_. I do love Naruto, with all my—"

"Give me a break, Sakura-chan," Naruto snaps. "I told you that joke isn't funny."

Naruto's cheeks have grown rosy, and his ears have started to tint with the same shade. His patience with her is waning, his heart is twisting in his chest. I can feel it beginning to split through the vibrations as she continues to feed him lies.

Sakura looks stricken for a moment, but then she gives a feeble smile and says, "Have you flipped? I just switched from Sasuke to you—"

"That's not how it works," I say, turning so that I'm standing with Naruto instead of Sakura. "That isn't _love_, Sakura. You don't just _switch_."

"They say a woman's heart is as changeable as a drop of water on a lotus leaf, don't they?" she snaps at me.

"I resent that statement," I say, and Sakura frowns.

"How would _you_ know, anyway?" she demands. "You won't even _acknowledge_ the fact that you—"

"Stop it, both of you," Naruto says, and then takes Sakura by her shoulders. "Listen for a second to what Ren is saying, Sakura. You don't make any sense." He tightens his grip on Sakura's shoulders until she winces, tries to writhe out of his hold. "I hate people who lie to themselves."

Sakura regards him sharply, grumbles, "So you think I'm lying to myself too? Forget what Ren said! I'm the only one who knows what I'm thinking! If you don't like me back, then say so. Don't make up excuses—"

"It's just weird!" he says, releasing her. "You came all this way just to tell me something like that?"

"Something like that," Sakura repeats, affronted. "_Something like that_? You think it's easy for a girl to confess her feelings? I came all this way—of _course_ I'd come all this way! You've always been chasing after Sasuke, putting yourself in danger, and Akatsuki is after you because you're the Kyuubi's host! You should be worried for your own safety! I-I don't want you to go after Sasuke if it means putting yourself in danger like that, and I came here because I want you to come back to the village with me."

"_No_," I say, jabbing a finger at her. "You came here to tell Naruto to stop—to stop going after Sasuke, to stop trying to save Sasuke because he's a lost cause, to stop believing that Sasuke is anything but the selfish, lying, conniving bastard that he is! You didn't come here to _lie_, to try to manipulate Naruto's feelings for you! But even after all that has happened, you still can't say a single thing against Sasuke, can you? You still can't admit that he is anything less than this image you keep in your head, anything less than the nasty kid with a bad attitude that you fell in _love_ with—and I use the word _love_ generously—and so far as I'm concerned, that makes you the lowest, slimiest—"

Sakura slaps me so hard that my head rattles and my vision goes black and I stumble. Kakashi reprimands her, more out of shock than anything, and I straighten slowly to discourage the dizziness that sets in. No one touches me to make sure I'm all right. No one says a word after the crack of Sakura's hand against my cheek. Even Sakura seems startled that she's hit me, but is quick to gather her wits about her and stand straight, her eyes narrowed.

"Don't," she says, "you _dare_ ever talk to me like that again. I don't care about Sasuke anymore now that he's a criminal, so it shouldn't matter that Naruto keep his promise to me. You should forget about it," she says, addressing Naruto, who shakes his head.

"This isn't about that promise," he says. "I know why Sasuke is so obsessed with revenge. He loved his family and his clan, and I think it's because he loved them so much that he can't let it go."

"Then why did he join with Akatsuki after he defeated Itachi?" Kiba says, his nose wrinkling with confusion.

"That's not what happened," Naruto says. "The truth is—"

Kakashi stops him before he can continue, but Sakura still watches us expectantly. She knows we are purposefully keeping information from her, and her irritation multiplies exponentially.

"The fact of the matter is," Naruto says instead, "it doesn't have anything to do with my promise to you. I want to help Sasuke."

Kiba steps forward, whispers in Sakura's ear something that I make a point to listen in on. He says, "What do you want to do, Sakura? Should we tell him the truth?" and instead Sakura stomps on Kiba's foot, causing the boy to crumple over in pain.

"Fine!" she huffs, turning on her heel. "I'm going home. Let's go."

"Ren, are you okay?" says Kakashi, coming up beside me as Sakura and her team disappears along the horizon.

"Yes, fine, thank you." I wince as I touch the rawness of the injury, the way I can feel my blood pulsing through it in time with my heart in the shape of her hand. Each time I blink, I can see the hurt on her face, the betrayal. But I could never sympathize with her.

"How could you love someone like that?" I say softly, leaning my bruised cheek into my shoulder.

"What was that?" asks Kakashi, and I shake my head.

"Nothing."


	90. So Quiet

**Bound  
Chapter 90: So Quiet **

"What did you mean, Ren," says Naruto after I scoop up snow from the ground and press it to my cheek, "when you were arguing with Sakura?"

I massage the snow into my bruise, frowning. The vibrations twitch against my skin as a murky and sedated chakra comes lumbering up to us from behind. I say, "Why don't you have Sai explain it to you? I don't want to talk anymore or else risk another injury."

"But Sai is," Naruto starts, before his ears perk and he peers over my shoulder. Sai comes forward out of the snow, looking grim as he approaches us. By the feel of his chakra, the Sai that stands before us is only a bunshin, but I'm glad he's returned at all.

He greets us with a slight nod, pausing when he gets to me. "I'm sorry about that," he says, motioning to my cheek. "In my defense, I didn't know that was her plan, otherwise I would have tried to talk her out of it."

"Hmpf. If this is at all your fault, it's just as much mine. I should have stayed in the village," I say, touching my tender cheek again. "I should have explained our purpose to her myself and made it clear that her tricks are counterproductive to what we want. It would have saved me this bruise in the long run."

"What are the two of you talking about?" Naruto demands as the snow gathers in his hair.

Sai and I exchange glances, during which I implore him to speak. "Sakura didn't come here to confess her feelings for you," he says. "There was something else, something Ren and I talked about before the four of you left on this mission, and that Sakura and your other peers decided on. But I understand why she couldn't tell you."

"Tell me what?" says Naruto, growing impatient.

When I keep my silence, Sai purses his lips in displeasure, but continues, saying, "Your friends got together to discuss the developments with Sasuke and have all agreed: Konoha is going to eliminate Sasuke once and for all."

Naruto chokes, looking between me and Sai so quickly I'm surprised he doesn't get sick. "Bu—does—does Sakura-chan really understand what that means?" says Naruto, grabbing Sai by his shoulders. "She loves Sasuke! How could she possibly—"

"You said it yourself," I say. The snow in my hand has started to melt, water tracking down my chin. I lift it away, shaking it off my fingers. "It's because she loves him that she's agreed to this. Imagine seeing the person you care about most spiraling into this tunnel of darkness, losing themselves until even you don't recognize them anymore. Wouldn't you rather save them from that darkness, no matter what it takes, than know that they are no longer the person you fell in love with? Wouldn't you rather preserve that image of them in your head, when they were pristine and lovely and wholly yours than have them slip through your fingers like water?"

Naruto blinks at me, stunned, and Sai moves Naruto's hands off his shoulders. He says, "Sasuke has delved too deeply into that darkness, and now he's helping it to take over the world. If he's allowed to live, he will be the spark that starts an international war. Especially after Akatsuki attacked Konoha, our shinobi can no longer turn a blind eye to the fact that Sasuke has aligned himself with Akatsuki. He's a criminal to us now, through and through. And Sakura isn't stupid."

"That's what she came here to tell you," I say, rubbing my bruise, "although she did a shoddy job of it if you ask me."

Naruto's shoulder slump. His nose has turned cherry red in the cold. Remembering that I've brought his cloak down with me, I throw it over his shoulders, clipping it around his neck for him. He catches my hand as I'm about to move away, and gives me an look that makes me falter. "Why didn't she just say that?" he asks.

The smallness of his voice reminds me of when we had been in the room earlier, when he was defeated and tired, regressing into a child. I sigh, brush the snow out of his hair. "Out of love," I say gently. "She really does care for you, Naruto. Maybe not the way she had implied it, but you are her friend."

"She knew it would hurt you," Sai says. "But she also knew you carried this duty like a burden, and she wanted to ease the weight off your shoulders. By giving up on Sasuke and confessing her love for you, she thought she was doing that. But you still said you wanted to save Sasuke. I think that's why she couldn't tell you the truth. She was thinking of you, and in all honesty, she probably knew you'd react the way you did. That's why she asked me not to tell you. She wanted to do it herself. She said it was her duty."

"But if she knew how Naruto would react," Yamato says, "that means she never meant to tell him the truth in the first place, right? So what's she planning?"

Sai hesitates, shifting on his feet. "This is a guess," he says, "but I think she probably . . . "

"She means to kill Sasuke herself," Kakashi says grimly.

Sai drops his gaze, says, "Yes. I asked her not to bear the weight of this issue on her own, and she smiled when she said she'd work with everyone on this. But I could tell it was fake."

Naruto presses his face into his hands, shaking his head. "No way," he says. "She can't—she likes Sasuke so much—"

"That's why," says Sai. "Like Ren said: I don't think she can stand by and watch as he plunges headlong into evil. She wants to save him from the life he's leading because she loves him, and I think she's prepared to do whatever it takes, even if it means killing the one she loves. She knows that might make you hate her, but this is her way of making it up to you. She's always relied on you too much, so now she's going to do everything alone."

You know, it's kind of funny. Of all the people we would expect to have a vendetta against and actually set out to kill Sasuke, I would be the top contender. But instead, Sakura is the one to take the initiative, the one who is, so far as I can tell, closest to killing Sasuke, whereas I have only ever sought to bring him back, despite everything I have ever said about him being a lost cause.

In that way, I guess Sakura is more sensible than me by far.

"Sai," Naruto says, "why are you telling me this?"

Again, Sai avoids looking at Naruto as he speaks. "I may not have meant to," he starts, "but it's partly my fault she decided to tell you like this. But I can't let her go through with it. That's why I'm telling you. Besides, I'm part of Team 7, too."

"Team 7," Naruto mutters, his gaze becoming unfocused before his face twists in pain and he presses a hand to his forehead. I reach for him again, but he stops me.

My heart drops, but before I can say anything, I feel the vibrations stir. Turning, I find three shinobi landing before us, their weight causing the snow to crunch under their feet. They're not suitably dressed for the weather the Land of Iron brings, but that's understandable, considering where they come from.

"Gaara," I say, stepping aside so Naruto can see the Sand siblings as they move toward us. They're taller than I remember, more stoic and stiff. It hasn't been long since I've seen them, and yet they look different. Older. More ready and willing to brace the weight of the world. "What are you three doing here? I mean, _here_, in front of us, instead of at the meeting?"

"We have something to tell you about what happened at the Five Kage Summit," Temari says, propping her hand on her hip. "It's only fitting that we inform the new Hokage first."

At that Kakashi tenses, his eyes narrowing. "While I've never had a fondness for Danzo, I sincerely hope you don't mean to imply something has happened to him during the Summit," Kakashi says. "If that's the case, should we assume that one of the Five Nations is now our enemy?"

Kankuro shakes his head, elbowing his sister. "Maybe that wasn't the best way to drop the news," he says, crossing his arms. "The thing is, during the Summit, Sasuke made an appearance."

Naruto jumps at the name, says, "Sasuke? What was he doing there?"

"Apparently he meant to attack Danzo," says Temari. "But upon encroaching on the meeting, he threatened all the Kage and things turned into chaos. Since Danzo gave the okay for Sasuke to be eliminated, everyone immediately set out to apprehend Sasuke, but in the midst of all the havoc—Danzo escaped."

"Escaped?" I repeat. "Why would he escape instead of helping? I thought _Sasuke_ was the criminal here."

"Danzo had previously manipulated Mifune, the moderator of the Summit, in order to gain leadership of an alliance between the Five Nations," Gaara says. "But that matter pales in comparison to what happened next. There was a great battle between Sasuke and the Mizukage, and once it seemed that she had had the upper hand, a man by the name of Uchiha Madara made an appearance. Do you know him?" Gaara asks when he notices when we react to the mention of Madara.

"Vaguely," Kakashi answers, and Yamato scoffs. "What did he want?"

"He has declared war on all five shinobi nations," Gaara says. Kakashi sighs, sounding more annoyed by the news than afraid or worried. "He seeks to collect all the bijuu in order to form a Ten-Tailed beast and complete a plan he deemed 'Moon-Eye'. From his actions at the Summit, it's obvious that Danzo is unfit to be Hokage, which leaves Konoha, again, without a leader. With the prospect of war looming over us, though, Konoha cannot afford to be without leadership, and it was agreed by all the Kage that you assume the title, Kakashi."

Yamato shakes his head in disbelief when Gaara finishes. He says, "I see. Who knew the Summit would turn into such a battleground? And Danzo . . . "

"I wasn't really into the whole Hokage thing," Kakashi says. I'm amazed at how calm Yamato and Kakashi seem to be after everything Gaara has told us. They only look to each other, tired, and purse their lips in displeasure throughout the conversation. I suppose they have seen worse in their lifetimes. "Even if I have no choice now, I still have to return to Konoha and ask everyone what they think."

Temari frowns, says, "Madara declared war on the Five Nations. This is no time to take things slow."

"I think everyone will agree with the decision, anyway," Yamato says. "Let's continue as if you were Hokage, Kakashi-senpai. It's too dangerous to take our time and let Akatsuki and Madara get the upper hand."

Kakashi pauses, and then sighs again. "Well," he says. "I guess you're right."

"Now," Yamato says, his eyes flicking to Naruto. "About Sasuke. If he attacked the Summit—"

Yamato doesn't finish, but I know how his statement ends: The Kage will regard Sasuke's actions as an act of aggression, and there will be no convincing them otherwise. Sasuke has, officially, become an international criminal.

All eyes go to Naruto, who doesn't acknowledge any of us. He remains staring at the ground, stiff and inattentive to what's going on around him. It isn't until Gaara prompts him that he looks up, although his expression remains blank.

"This will be a war to protect the Hachibi and Kyuubi," Gaara says with a small lilt of his head. "In other words, it's a war to protect _you_. For the sake of the ninja world and as Kazekage, I will guard you with my life. And if, as a member of Akatsuki, Uchiha Sasuke stands in the way of the ninja coalition, I will show no mercy."

Naruto doesn't reply.

Sensing Naruto's grief, Gaara steps forward and puts a hand on Naruto's shoulder. "Sasuke doesn't see you," he says, and I hear the familiarity of the words, the way they resonate in my stomach as something I have always said and always believed. I hate hearing now that I see what it's doing to Naruto. But I don't stop Gaara because, maybe, Naruto needs to hear it one more time. Just one more time, and maybe he'll understand. "He longs only for his own darkness. You once told me you would become Hokage. Since then, I have become Kazekage, and I've learned something. If you are prepared to bear the title of Kage, then do what you must as Sasuke's friend."

The snow has stopped falling. Somehow, it serves to amplify the silence Naruto uncharacteristically keeps. Naruto's lips pull into a tight line. He reaches up—and knocks Gaara's kind gesture away, shocking the other boy.

Temari sighs, pulling on the scarf around her neck. "We've said what we came to say," she says with a nod in Kakashi's direction. "We're heading back to our village. Hatake Kakashi, Suna will act on the assumption that you are Hokage. I pray there won't be any miscommunication. Let's go, Gaara."

I salvage what I hope is comforting smile for Gaara as he turns to leave. Kankuro and Temari flank his sides, but then he pauses.

"I think of you as a friend," Gaara says, back to us. "I used to think 'friend' was another word, nothing more, nothing less. But when I met you, I realized what was important was the word's meaning. Think about its meaning and about what you're trying to do for Sasuke."

With that, he's gone, the meeting so quick and formal I feel like I've intruded on official business even though I was among friends. The conversation was too serious, the message too grim. Naruto remains stone-faced and frozen in front of us.

"So what should we do now?" Yamato says. "I think our first priority should be returning to Konoha and telling everyone about what happened at the Summit, but there's Sakura to consider, too."

I expect Naruto to pipe in, give his steadfast and sure opinion. There's nothing of the sort, and I wonder if I should try to reach him. Given the way he had brushed off Gaara, though, I doubt I will receive a better response.

"I'll be with Sakura," Sai reassures, continuing the conversation over Naruto's head since it's apparent he won't be contributing to the plans. "I won't let her get near Sasuke, so you can rest easy."

"But we still ought to go after her and convince her to turn back," Kakashi says, rubbing his chin. He considers the sky for a moment, before coming to a conclusion. He says, "All right. Yamato, I want you and Naruto to head back to Konoha. Ren and I will go after Sakura. There's no way she can beat Sasuke on her own. She's just going to her death."

For a minute, I forget about trying to cheer up Naruto. Instead, I blink at Kakashi in surprise and ask, "You want _me_ to go with you?"

He raises a brow. "Of course. Which is not to say that I think I can't handle Sakura on my own—I am a somewhat competent shinobi if I say so myself," he says, and I frown at his dryness. "More of a precaution. In case we run into others before we can get to her. Anyway, I'll send the dogs ahead with news of the Summit. We have to hurry. Sai, if you could please take us to Sakura."

Sai nods. I go to Kakashi's side, snow kicking into my sandals and chilling my toes.

Naruto remains unchanged by the plans. The old Naruto would have made a fuss about being led away from the action, being prevented from helping his friend. But maybe the other events of today have overwhelmed him too much for him to fight back.

The old Naruto still would have known what to do.

"Kakashi," I say, breaking my gaze on Naruto. "Do you think . . . that Sasuke would kill one of us?"

The question bubbles up my throat before I have the chance to stop it, though I know the answer to it. Kakashi throws me a cursory glance before returning his eyes to Sai's back. "From the moment you left him the last time," Kakashi says gently, carefully, because he knows he's treading through murky waters, "the moment Madara took him, Sasuke has become a different person. It isn't your fault, Ren. But when people dig that deeply into your skin, you can't help but be affected."

I pout, looking to Naruto once more. "Do you think that we've—Naruto?" I say, growing alarmed when I see his shoulders shaking, see the way he clenches at his chest. Yamato has a grip on Naruto, holding him steady as he crumples into the snow.

"He's hyperventilating," Yamato says as I kneel beside him, holding my fingers to his neck where I can feel his pulse.

"A panic attack," I say, turning him over. Despite the snow, his face is sweaty, flushed red like a fever has suddenly overtaken him. His face is twisted with fear as I draw my hand down his cheek, wiping away the sweat. I motion for Yamato brace Naruto as his breathing grows increasingly ragged, like he is running out of air. "Just calm down, Naruto," I say, pressing a hand to his chest. "Breathe. In through your nose. Out through your mouth. Come on."

As Naruto attempts to do as I ask, I concentrate a small amount of chakra into my fingertips. I sweep my hand up his sternum, then down to his stomach, repeating the motion until I can feel his energies circulating unwaveringly through his body. His breathing slows, deepens, and then he is asleep. I release a sigh of relief.

For most people, panic attacks are a result of a conflicted mind, a mixture of anxiety and fear. But in shinobi, the mental state is only half the cause. The energies swirling in our bodies also come in conflict with each other, our spiritual chakras and our physical chakras warring with each other. When we come to a stall, our minds know what we want—peace with ourselves, the world—but our bodies have a different idea. They want instant gratification, an immediate result. But very rarely are we able to achieve both.

Like Naruto, who is probably coming to realize that the world will be better without Sasuke in it, but who can barely kill his enemy let alone someone who was once his best friend.

"However unfortunate this is," Kakashi says as I help Yamato lift Naruto over his shoulders, "at least he won't be able to interfere."

I brush snow out of Naruto's hair, his eyelashes.

"We should go before he wakes up, Ren," Kakashi says.

I nod in agreement, and stand with Yamato. Then I take Naruto's limp hand, squeeze it tightly before letting go. "You'll figure something out, Naruto," I say quietly. "You always do. I'm sorry I can't help you any more than that, but I have to stop Sakura."

I pull at the collar of my cloak as I go to Kakashi. It's grown too hot for my comfort, and I want to ditch it in the snow with the rest of my guilt.

I follow Sai and Kakashi out of the Land of Iron.


	91. Tricks

**Bound  
Chapter 91: Tricks**

The forest is still as we run through it, our feet making soft swishes in the frosty snow that melts into lush grass. I'm reminded of the parks at home—how they used to be, anyway, before Pein destroyed everything.

Sai announces we're halfway to Sakura when his shadow clone disappears. He mutters something about Sakura getting to him before he dissipates into a puddle of black ink, and Kakashi tsks in irritation. "Looks like she's serious about this," he says.

"At least she thinks she is," I say, flicking my hair out of my face. "I doubt she is as prepared as she believes herself to be."

Kakashi doesn't answer. He knows I'm right. It's easy to say you're going to kill someone, but to actually go through with it is another thing entirely, especially when that person is someone you have loved for nearly your whole life. But I have to hand it to her for being so gutsy. To go so far as to incapacitate her own teammates in order to accomplish her goal—now that is dedication.

We stumble upon the three boys who have been left in Sakura's wake. I determined they've been drugged so severely that to wake them and wait until they're coherent would be a waste of time. If I had the right supplies, I think sourly, kicking Sai's leg out of the way as I heave Akamaru to shelter, I would prepare an antidote, but it would still be a waste. We're better off leaving them as they are.

It would have been a nice challenge, though, to see if how Chiyo's teachings compared to Tsunade's so far as potions go.

Once I have Sai, Lee, and Akamaru lined up behind some bushes, Kakashi brings Kiba over, saying, "I just barely managed to get him to talk and tell us where Sakura is." He lays Kiba beside Akamaru and then motions for me to follow him, running so fast I can hardly keep up with him.

"Other than stop Sakura," I say over the rush of the wind in our ears and hair and eyes, "what else do you have in mind for this trip, Kakashi?"

It takes so long for him to answer me that, for a minute, I think he hasn't heard me. But then, slowly, he says, "As the leader of Team 7—and now, I suppose, as Hokage—it's my duty to take care of Sasuke myself, should it come to it."

Even though I had expected this answer, it still makes my heart drop. I know Kakashi has killed before, but I can't imagine Kakashi—sweet-tempered, cool, calm Kakashi—killing anyone, much less Sasuke, his own pupil. On the other hand, it wouldn't seem right for anyone other than one of Team 7 to kill Sasuke. This is something we need to do.

The vibrations murmur against my skin. I signal to Kakashi and we slow, taking cover behind a scattering of trees that open out into a decimated area. There is the remainder of a bridge, whose middle part has been reduced to nothing but a crater. Trees growing impossibly out of place spot the bridge, their roots burrowing into the bricks and creating a rugged terrain. One tree has a trunk so large it nearly obscures my vision of the scene completely. But it is hard for me to miss her.

"There!" I say when a shock of pink hair peeks over the rubble. Sakura is on the other side of the crater in the middle of the bridge. Judging by her hand gestures, she is speaking frantically with someone—with Sasuke. He stands in front of her, irritated to have to listen to her. My breath catches in my throat as he turns and I think he sees us, but he only says something that causes Sakura to jump, and then look down at a body sprawled on the ground between them. I squint to see if I can make out who it is, but it's no use; I'm too far away and Sakura is kneeling down, farther obstructing the body from my view.

There is a glint of a kunai as Sakura pulls it out of her cloak. I wonder what she could possibly be doing when Sasuke jerks toward Sakura, his hand suddenly sparking with electricity. Sakura senses the attack and whirls around, but—too late.

Fear ignites in my stomach. Before I can think of moving, Kakashi is ahead of me, grabbing and redirecting Sasuke's hand and Sakura is safe. Seeing Kakashi take action breaks my fear and unfreezes me, and I'm at Sakura's side at once, standing over her as Kakashi throws Sasuke across the courtyard, Sasuke's Chidori ramming into a tree and splintering it. The chirping stops as I pull Sakura up, making sure she is unscathed. Her face is pale and her eyes are wide. Her knuckles shine white beneath her skin as she grips the kunai in her hand.

"Not one of your better plans," I say, easing the kunai from her and tossing it aside. "Were you really counting on killing him, Sakura?"

She lowers her eyes, ashamed, and Kakashi says, "You didn't have to do it alone, Sakura. As the leader of this team, it's my fault that this has happened. All those years ago, I told you things I shouldn't have, but maybe I was just trying to reassure myself as well. I'm sorry for not being a good sensei."

Sakura protests, tells him that isn't the truth in the least. But I don't think she's the only one Kakashi is apologizing to.

He keeps his eyes trained on Sasuke.

Sasuke, who is the definition of a mess. Every inch of him is smeared with dirt of every shade—black, red, light brown—and blood tracks down his face from his left eye, like tears. His clothes are torn, hanging off his arms in loose shreds, and his eyes are maniacal, more senseless than I have seen them. There is a vacancy to them that makes me shiver.

Since Madara lifted the block from my memory, I have been remembering and reminding myself of the time Sasuke and I spent together. I have been trying to keep in mind how kind he was to me, how he took care of me, and how I had taken care of him not because I was obligated to, but because I wanted to.

That feeling of mutual trust and adoration isn't returning, and I think this may be it for us.

Madara has washed Sasuke of all his redeemable qualities, although it is, in part, due to Sasuke's own pettiness that he has held onto and extended his grudge against every force he has believed to be the cause of his clan's demise. But in lifting this memory block, Madara has effectively made it harder for me to defeat Sasuke, which will only work out in Madara's favor in the end.

It's now I truly understand why shinobi strive to kill their emotions in order to perform their duties without hesitation.

I feel a tug at the end of my cloak. I look down, surprised, and am alarmed to see red hair pluming from my sandals and leading into a puddle of blood. The girl at my feet, who I had thought was already dead, blinks at me weakly, and mouths the words, "_Help me._"

Something about her is familiar enough to stall me from healing her immediately. It's her hair, I think, brilliantly red like Karui's, the girl from the Cloud. But, no, there's something else, too. And then a memory sprouts from where it was once oppressed by Madara's jutsu: she was one of the people Sasuke had recruited to help him get to Itachi, one of the people I had hated completely and absolutely, until this moment when she looks at me so sad and pathetic that I realize she's another victim in Sasuke's little power trip.

_Karin_. Her name is Karin, I remember, as I bend down to be level with her, turn her over until I can see the gaping wound in her chest. Blood oozes from the injury, staining her white shirt a deep scarlet, and I hover my hand over it to heal her, saying, "That no-good bastard. Even after all you did for him, he lets this happen to you."

Her eyes flicker weakly. She's surprised by my sentiment, her head lulling to the side as I heal the wound. Sasuke scoffs, breaking my concentration, and I glare over my shoulder at him.

"Let her die," Sasuke says, looking down his nose at me in disgust, and his words stop me short of healing Karin completely. "She was weak enough to let herself be caught and used as leverage. This is the consequence of that weakness."

"She wouldn't be in this situation in the first place if _you_ hadn't dragged her into this!" I shout, forgetting about Karin's injury and bolting to my feet in my anger. It's not a smart move for a medic, but I've healed her enough for her injury to be only slightly uncomfortable. She will survive.

"I gave her a choice," Sasuke says and cocks his head to the side. The smile that spreads across his face is twisted, reflecting the instability of his current state. "You act like I force people into doing things for me, but it's always of their own will whether they follow me or help me or run after me like children chasing a dream." He jerks his head at Sakura and smirks. "That is the power of the Uchiha name, Ren. You of all people should understand."

I don't dignify his statement with a response.

"Sasuke," Kakashi says, "I don't like saying the same thing over and over, but I'll tell you one more time: _don't become consumed by revenge_."

Sasuke throws his head back, laughing. The sound is bitter, disconcerting, full of a consuming rage that borders insanity and causes the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on ends. In my peripheral, Sakura winces, watches as the boy she had loved devolves into a monster.

"Bring me Itachi," Sasuke says when his laughing subsides. His voice is low, dark, and his eyes are wide with malice. "Bring me my father and mother. Bring me my clan! Then I'll stop!"

"You don't have to be that way," I say, trying to reason with him. Maybe there is a piece of him that will remember what it was like when I was with him, how we had each other to depend on, and the insanity in his eyes will lessen. I press a hand to my chest. "I lost my family too, Sasuke, but I don't—"

"You don't love them," he sneers, and I flinch, my hands furling into fists. "You didn't love them like I love my family. You've always hated your family, the burden your name carries. For your family to die was the best thing that could have happened to you, but to me, my family was everything. That's the difference between you and me, Ren," he says. "You never cared."

"That's not fair," I say, trying to keep my voice firm, unwavering. The pain wedging between my lungs makes it difficult.

"Don't talk to me about fairness," he spits. "There is nothing fair about what has led me here! Madara was right about you. You are just as weak as everyone else, just as arrogant in the how you pretend to know how it feels to lose everything. But your pain doesn't compare to mine—"

"Sasuke," I say, shaking my head, too tired to be angry and frustrated with him like I'm inclined to be. "Stop. What is the point of comparing your pain to the pain of others? It's not a contest. There's no greatness in carrying that weight and having the most of it. If you stop now—"

"Didn't you hear me?" he says. "I will never stop. I will never abandon my clan. And if that means I have to cut all of you down, so be it."

Kakashi's shoulders sag, disappointed, before he straightens, pulling his guard back up. "I don't want to kill you," he says, eliciting another laugh from Sasuke.

"You say it like you actually could!" Sasuke says. "Don't act like I'm still your student. I've been dying to kill _you_, Kakashi."

Kakashi pauses, then turns to look at Sakura and me over his shoulder. "One of you," he says, "heal this girl until she's able to talk. She knows a lot about the enemy. She could be useful. Then, take her somewhere safe."

Sakura glances down at the Karin, whose condition I'd stabilized earlier. There is a hint of disdain as Sakura sizes her up, and Karin's eyes close, sheepish. "What about you?" Sakura asks Kakashi.

At this, he grins at us, like there is nothing wrong and he is seeing us for the first time in a long while and is eager to catch up with us. "I will take the burden from you," he says gently. "It's my duty. Go on, both of you."

Sakura's lips press into a thin line, quavers. And then she nods in affirmation, leans down to lift Karin. She waits for me to follow suit and help her carry Karin somewhere safe, but when I don't move, she says, "Ren?"

"I'm not going," I say, and Kakashi shakes his head, like he had been expecting me to react this way. "He's my responsibility as much as he's yours, Kakashi. If I hadn't left him in the first place, then maybe he wouldn't be like this. I'm staying with you."

"Ren—"

"On my honor as a Kagiru," I say and all the humor drops from Sasuke's face. He glares at me, and I return it full force, knowing this could very well be the last time I ever see him again. "I will stay with you."

Kakashi sighs, hearing my resolve. He unclips the cloak better suited for the snowy climate of the Land of Iron, but a hindrance here where it is balmy and humid from the river. "No matter how far Orochimaru fell," he says, "Sandaime still loved him. Now I know how Sandaime felt."

"Then I guess your fate will be the same as his," Sasuke answers, cracking his knuckles.

Kakashi lifts his headband off his eye as Sakura flees with Karin. I'm surprised Sasuke lets them get away, but apparently the sight of Kakashi's Sharingan puts him in such a rage that he is blind to their escape.

"The Sharingan is the sign of the Uchiha clan," Sasuke says through gritted teeth. "And you aren't Uchiha. How _dare_ you use it around me, you scum!"

He rushes at us. It is Kakashi's instinct to throw himself in front of me, protect me, but I'm not a kid anymore. I duck under his arm and meet Sasuke head on, a move I hear Kakashi vehemently protest.

But I am adamant about this. Charging Sasuke like this is how it has to be.

Sasuke leaps over me, determined to attack Kakashi first. I turn on my heel as he flies over my head and kick up my foot, catching my toes right on the edge of his sandal and managing to throw off his balance enough to send him spiraling. He skids to a stop, teeth bared at me like a wild animal, but I'm already in the middle of my next barrage.

Hands coated with a layer of chakra that has been refined to be as sharp as blades, I slash at him; he bobs, winds, and knocks my hands aside but continues to backpedal until his back rams into the wall of the bridge and he is stuck. I swing a foot into his face, one he aptly dodges, but delays his reaction to the punch I am at his head.

He moves aside just in time to avoid it, escapes with nothing but a small cut on his cheek while the wall behind him explodes in a shower of pebbles that land in the water with a spattering of _plunks_. By the time I mourn the failure of my attack and turn, I see Kakashi has burrowed into the bricks of the bridge and grabbed Sasuke's ankles, holding him in place while a shadow clone comes from behind, wielding a Chidori and aiming for Sasuke's chest. Sasuke bends backward, hands pressed in a seal, and exhales a ball of fire that dissipates the shadow clone.

Sasuke is too fast for me to land any hits on him on my own, and Kakashi is currently too preoccupied with trying to defend himself for me to organize a plan with him. The only strategy I can think of as Sasuke kicks free of Kakashi's hold is _don't let him use his Sharingan_. Undoubtedly he's already activated it, so it'll be even easier for him to see through and dodge our attacks. There has to be a way to avoid it. Kakashi has his own Sharingan to combat it, but I'll have to work things out for myself.

Kakashi has Sasuke at the very edge of the bridge wall. They're going hand-to-hand with the occasional fireball Sasuke spews. Then, for some reason, Kakashi freezes, his body going slack. It doesn't take me long to figure out that he's been caught in a genjutsu. I have to get to Kakashi's side and help him before he gets hurt, especially when Sasuke's hand lights up with another Chidori, but if I get too close to Sasuke, then I'll be just as trapped as Kakashi is.

An idea occurs to me just as Sasuke is closing in on Kakashi. I flip through hand signs, close my eyes, and the vibrations press against me. I can feel each step Sasuke takes, the movement of his hand and the electricity that sparks around it.

All without seeing.

Although the vibrations do place a heavy pressure on me, cause my movements to lag, it's nothing I won't be able to overcome. I go to Kakashi's aid, manage to catch Sasuke off guard and knock his Chidori wayward. I sense him stumbling, the lightning fading. Before Sasuke can recover, I turn on my heels and release Kakashi from the genjutsu, whirling back toward Sasuke. He's collected himself, moves to strike me from the left. I duck, slip behind him, and grab him by the shoulders, throwing him down the length of the bridge wall to give Kakashi time to regain his composure.

Sasuke catches himself, tsks. "How long do you think you can go with your eyes shut?" he asks, his voice a dull humming in my ears.

"I could ask you the same," I say, and swing the vibrations at him.

He must see them with the Sharingan because he jumps out of the way, comes spinning through the air. I push my chakra into earth of the wall, pull it up with the vibrations to block him. He blasts right through it, the rubble slamming into my side and throwing me off balance. I slip over the edge of the wall, but stick myself to the side of the bridge with my chakra.

I sense Sasuke leaning over, prepared to knock me off. It's then that Kakashi intervenes, pulls Sasuke from the ledge, buying me time. I scramble back up and, as the vibrations begin to cut into my skin. I become unable to withstand the force it is placing on me and release the Genshindou.

Upon opening my eyes, Sasuke is in front of me, his eyes wide and wild. He has his arm reeled back for a punch, a move I'm able to avoid, but just barely. He manages to land the blow to my shoulder, causing me to falter and gasp in pain. Gripping my injury, I swing my foot around, aiming for his head, but he dips, dodging it, and grabs my ankle, twisting it until I'm forced to turn my back to him.

Trapped, I can only hope and wait for Kakashi to get involved. Without fail, he does, slipping between me and Sasuke and freeing me. As my foot meets the brick of the bridge, I pull up earth with the vibrations, encase Sasuke's legs, and in unison, Kakashi and I kick Sasuke's gut with so much force that he breaks out of the earth and is sent flying into the waters below.

He shoots down into the depths of the river until he disappears in the darkness. Bubbles rise and pop where he sinks, and in the moment we have before he resurfaces, I press my hand to my face, calming my ragged breathing.

"We're going too easy on him," I say.

Kakashi doesn't answer.

We leap down to the river as Sasuke explodes from below, droplets raining over us and sticking our hair to our faces. I heal my shoulder quickly, bracing myself for another assault as the water ripples beneath us, but freeze when I see a dark mass forming around Sasuke, looming over him with skeleton-like features. The figure quavers like a flame, black flurries on its shoulders flickering and rising like tongues of a fire.

"Kakashi, what—"

Kakashi grabs me, pushes me behind him, and this time I am inclined to let him protect me as the figure around Sasuke raises one of its massive arms that looks like it has been infused with a crossbow. In a matter of seconds—less even—the figure has an arrow drawn and aimed for us and, without pause, lets it fly.

The arrow moves inhumanly fast. I can hardly keep up with the missile as it spirals toward us, piercing, splitting the vibrations. And I guess this is the end.

Kakashi's chakra spikes, raising to a level that is vaguely familiar and fluctuating in a pattern that is disconcertingly similar to Sasuke's. There is a blast as water sprays up in a wave, coating us in a fine layer of mist. I blink the water off my eyelashes, glancing over Kakashi's shoulder, and find we are safe, that there is only the rolling water to indicate that anything had been heading toward us.

"What . . . ," I begin, and Kakashi says, "He's fast. He would have gotten us if I hadn't blown away the attack with the Mangekyo."

_Mangekyo_. I hope he doesn't mean that stupid Sharingan technique he had used back in the Wind Country that had disabled him for nearly two weeks. "Yes, very comforting that," I snap, gripping the back of Kakashi's shirt. "The real concern here is whether you should be using the Mangekyo in the first place! I can't take Sasuke alone, Kakashi. Especially not with—whatever the hell that thing is! And if you pass out, we're done for."

Kakashi remains annoyingly unconcerned as he straightens. "That technique—is that Susanoo?" he calls to Sasuke.

Sasuke frowns, narrows his eyes at Kakashi. He answers, without really addressing Kakashi's question, "I never thought that a non-Uchiha would be able to use the Mangekyo. Looks like that eye saved you. You should be grateful to the power of the Uchiha."

"Sasuke," Kakashi says, his shoulders sagging at the circular train of thought Sasuke continues to present to us. "I know there's more to you than just your clan. I know there's more than hatred. Take a look, deep inside your heart."

"Are you still spouting that nonsense?" Sasuke says, a pitying smile wrapping around his face.

Kakashi gives him a pointed look, steps aside as though to showcase me, and says, "I know you know."

I meet Sasuke's eyes across the water. I'm hesitant at first because they still gleam bright red. When I squint, I can see they have a curious pattern over them that I don't recognize. I can't make it out very well from this distance, but they fade anyway, returning to black. And in that there is a semblance of who he used to be, the perpetually irritated boy who would scowl at everything I said, who would never get along with me but would still take care of me when the situation called for it. There is a small remainder of that, but it disappears just as quickly as it comes.

The form behind him expands, takes on a more monstrous shape with sharp, jagged teeth that threatens to consume everything in front of it. "They're all laughing," Sasuke mutters, his fists tightening at his sides, which only seems to make the beast around him grow. "Itachi is dead so they can stand there, laughing! They're laughing because they know nothing. Your laughter sounds like scorn and disdain to me now. I want to change that laughter to screams and moans!"

Sasuke's chakra explodes, sending a plume of water into the air, soaking us to the bone. The temperature seems to drop as the malice Sasuke's chakra contains heightens, sends chills up my spine and wrenches my heart.

Suffering, so much suffering and sadness.

The figure over Sasuke lunges for us—only to halt mid-attack. In our surprise, Kakashi and I can only stare at it, watch as it diminishes and disappears while Sasuke digs his palms into his eyes and doubles over. My own eyes begin to tear up, become itchy. I remember this feeling, when I had thought it was the bond reawakening.

It seems my suspicions that it was connected to Sasuke were right.

He is vulnerable. I could attack him right now, possibly even manage a killing blow. But, instead, I ask, "What is the Mangekyo doing to your eyes, Sasuke?"

He grits his teeth, keeps rubbing his eyes. Reluctant to admit there is a flaw in his clan's legacy.

I snap out of my reverie when Kakashi stumbles forward, apparently suffering from a similar side effect of the Sharingan as Sasuke. I curse it, wondering how such power is worth losing wrecking your body. But then Kakashi looks frantically to me, and then up. I follow his gaze and I see her: a blur of pink and yellow against the dingy grey bridge. She runs over the bottom of the bridge and lopes down the side of it to skitter over the surface of the water and come up behind him, knife poised and ready and reeling—

But she stops. Inches away from stabbing him in the back, she freezes, unable to follow through, and Sasuke takes advantage of this despite his earlier incapacity. He swings around, freeing Sakura of the kunai with one hand and grabbing her by the throat with his other. He slams her against the side of the bridge, and without hesitation, he brings the knife down on her.

This time, I am quick about reacting. Where Kakashi fails to move, I jump forward, at Sasuke's side. I grab his wrist and pull it back, twisting the knife out of his grip just as someone comes flying down from the bridge, snatching Sakura out of place. The movement is so sudden that it causes his guard to drop, and I'm able to sweep my leg under his feet, tripping him. He catches himself on his hands, bounces back, and rushes toward me. I can feel the vibrations hiking up as he readies whatever attack, but Kakashi slides in front of me, fist reeled back, and lands a hit in Sasuke's gut, sending him across the water.

"Are you okay, Ren?" he asks.

"Perfect," I say, holding the knife out. I notice, from the tip of the kunai, water gathers and drips into the river below. It could be spray from all the movement. But I can tell by the way the liquid from the kunai reacts with the water from the river that there is more to it. Poison, I think, and turn to Sakura, who meets my gaze, sees the revelation in my eyes, and looks away quickly.

"Your timing is even better than mine, Naruto," Kakashi says to the boy who had caught Sakura and pulled her out of harm's way. "I wasn't expecting you, but you saved her."

Sakura stutters her thanks as Naruto stands, but he's more concerned with Sasuke to acknowledge her. There is a flash of anger in the pull of his lips, a soft sadness in the heightened blue of his eyes. A cut on his cheek bleeds over his skin.

"Sasuke," he says, pushing past me and Kakashi. "You and Sakura are both members of Team 7."

"Former member," Sasuke retorts, smirking like this is something to be proud of, "in my case, at least."

"The point is," I say, pointing the kunai at him. "People with history like that shouldn't be trying to kill each other."

Sasuke only tsks, rolls his eyes.

"Do you see?" Kakashi says to Naruto, his voice small and gentle. "He's not the Sasuke you knew."


	92. Resistence

**Bound  
Chapter 92: Resistance**

Naruto dismisses Kakashi, taking a careful step toward Sasuke. I watch him as he goes through the motions, as he raises his hands, trying to compromise with the other boy. I wonder how he can manage to be so calm and reasonable faced with ruthless killers, like Pein, like Sasuke. How does the rash, impulsive boy become this sedated, levelheaded man?

"Sasuke," he starts, "I heard the truth about Itachi." Sakura gives me a sidelong glance, and I mouth, _Later_, as Naruto goes on. "I don't know if it's true or not, but either way, I understand what you're doing."

Kakashi and Sakura gape at Naruto, worried he's going to condone everything Sasuke has done. Sasuke, on the other hand, takes offense and is immediately up in arms. He snaps, "I thought I told you: You have no parents, no siblings—what can you understand? It's none of your business, anyway, so stay out of it!"

And then, in a surprising turn of events, Sakura lashes out at Sasuke in Naruto's defense, demanding, "Do you know how much Naruto cares about you? No matter what horrible rumors we heard, he's always considered you a friend. Even now—"

Sasuke directs a glare at her, and then at me, expecting me to jump in against him as well. But he knows everything I have to say about him, to him, so I keep my mouth shut, stand unwaveringly at Naruto's side.

"I finally," he says, "finally got my first bit of revenge for Itachi. I killed one of the Konoha Elders here—Danzo, they called him."

This news startles all of us. Kakashi and I exchange looks; we hadn't seen a body above other than Karin's. But what Sasuke says must be the truth because he flashes a grin of satisfaction, opens his arms and says, "I've never felt anything like it. It's like the disgrace of the Uchiha clan is being cleansed, like I'm separating the Uchiha clan from the rotten ninja world. You might even say it's what Konoha always wanted. You've always repudiated the Uchiha clan, so now we will disappear from your memories. When I kill everyone in Konoha and sever the bond between the Uchiha and village, we will be purified! That will be the revival of the Uchiha clan."

The genocide of an entire people, an entire culture, just for the sake of one clan. Sasuke has truly lost his mind, and I hope this speech makes Sakura and Naruto realize that. As sad and as regrettable it is that this has happened to him, nothing can be done to appease him that won't result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

We have to stop him.

The vibrations hitch as Naruto summons two shadow clones, only to have Kakashi throw out an arm to stop him. "This is my job," Kakashi says without looking at us. "Naruto, Sakura, Ren—the three of you get out of here. If you stay, you'll see something you don't want to. I'm serious this time, Ren," he says when Sakura and I start to protest. "No amount of arguing will convince me. Besides, Sakura, Sasuke won't die from a poisoned kunai. He's probably built up a resistant to poisons thanks to Orochimaru. And you know how you feel, don't you?"

In the midst of her surprise that Kakashi had known her kunai had been poisoned, Sakura lowers her gaze, bites the inside of her lip. Her momentary lapse into silence allows Naruto to ask, "Kakashi-sensei, does that mean you're going to kill him?"

"If that's the case," I say when Kakashi doesn't answer, "you can't do this alone, Kakashi! You could barely handle him alone earlier, and if you plan on using the Mang—Naruto!"

One of Naruto's clones latches himself onto Kakashi's back, causing the man to stumble backward. It's enough of a diversion for one of the other Narutos to spin a Rasengan in his hand and rush toward Sasuke, who also finds the opportunity to attack, his hand alive with the Chidori.

Realizing the danger of those two moves colliding, I grab Naruto's shadow clone by the shoulders and throw him off of Kakashi. Kakashi immediately moves to stop Naruto, but it's too late—their chakras have met, elicit a brilliant flash of light and heat. We throw up our hands to shield ourselves as the water below them bursts, flying up in torrents and falling back down in waves that nearly cause me to cave under its weight.

Through the mist left in the wake of the explosion, we see Naruto and Sasuke repelling off each other from the force of the attack. They fly so fast toward the cliff walls that, if someone doesn't buffer their fall, they won't get away without injury. And while Kakashi goes to catch Naruto, Sasuke is left—

A figure darts from the shadows, bright white against the dinginess of the bridge and cliff side. They squeeze between Sasuke and the cliff just as Sasuke slams into the rock face.

More importantly.

"Naruto," Kakashi says sharply. "I told you to _get out of here_!"

"Yes, well, for Naruto," I say, pressing my palm to my forehead, "that translates to _charge brazenly in_."

Naruto frowns at me and shakes his head. His eyes flick over the still trembling water at Sasuke, who is being braced by a man who looks like he's a plant-human hybrid. "Now I know for sure," he says.

"Know what?" says Sakura. "What do you mean?"

Naruto offers no explanation. Even if he did, he would be interrupted by Madara, who swirls into view at that very moment, causing my hair to stand up on ends. He doesn't acknowledge us, only looks down on Sasuke, sighs.

"I told you to get some rest," Madara says with disdain. I tense as he glances at us, and though his mask covers his face, I feel the weight of his gaze on me. "Ah, Ren. How wonderful of you to join us. Since Karin is most likely dead or unlikely to care for Sasuke again after what he did to her, why don't you come with us and perform your duties for Sasuke one last time?"

"Like hell I will," I snap, offended that Madara would even humor the idea I would do Sasuke such a favor. "Anyway, I'm useless, aren't I? The two of you said so yourselves!"

"That was when we had Karin," Madara says, sounding tired. "Come now. Sasuke, talk some sense into her."

He sets his jaw, grits his teeth, but even when that simple gesture seems to cause him pain, he says, "Ren—"

"The bond is severed!" I interrupt, panic rising in my stomach. "You broke it—you keep breaking it because it means nothing to you. So don't—_don't_," I repeat when Sasuke narrows his eyes at me.

Madara is the one to laugh, his black cloak shaking on his shoulders. "Could it be," he says, "you're actually hurt that Sasuke keeps abandoning you in favor of his own ambitions? Isn't that what you did to him, continue to do every time you side with Konoha? This really is an ill-fated relationship. I don't know how Izuna ever stood it."

The mention of Izuna makes my anger multiply, makes my entire chest ache. "The fact that you even _dare_ speak his name after what you did to him—"

"He offered his eyes up by choice," Madara says, patience wearing thin. "Besides, that was in a past life. Don't get so worked up about it."

I let out a groan of frustration, running my hands through my hair. This irritation, this unrelenting malice I feel toward Madara for everything he has done is disconcerting, especially keeping in mind that he's right, my bitterness is the result of events that happened in a past life. But I can't help it because this bond—

"You know what," I blurt, throwing my hands up. "Forget what I said because it doesn't matter what you tell me to do or what you think of me because I found the contract! And I've broken this goddamn bond—"

Sasuke jerks upright at my declaration, eyes gleaming as his face contorts with anger and disbelief, cutting me off. "_How_?" demands Sasuke, his hands tightening into fists. "Where? Where is the contract?"

I freeze, realizing I've said too much and stretched the truth too far, and now Sasuke will get his hands on the contract before I can really break it and this is what I get for trying to bluff.

"It's—I don't have it. I left it at home," I say, holding my head high in hopes they'll believe me. But the cover up is lame and hollow and Sasuke sees right through it.

"Give it to me," he hisses, holding out a hand. "Give me the contract."

I feel a tug. The bond purrs to life, leans against my skull, nudging me forward. "No," I say. "You want it broken, anyway, don't you? That's why you keep—"

"_Give it to me_!" he snaps, and the full force of the bond sets it. My feet lift, treading across the water swiftly until I anchor myself on Kakashi's arm. On the water, it's harder to dig my heels into the ground and slow myself, and no way for me to stick myself to the surface with my chakra. My grip on Kakashi's arm falters and I give him a pleading look, begging for him to do anything to stop me from going over to Sasuke, but, really, what can he do? If he tries to stop me, I'll fight him until I can get to Sasuke. A fail-safe for the bond, like what Inoichi had found in my memory.

He sees the truth in my eyes, regards me with a heart-wrenching sadness I wish I didn't deserve.

My lungs are tight in my chest as I resist the pull, my throat thick, making it difficult to breathe. _If you just go to him,_ the bond says, _it'll be much easier. Everything will be much easier._

But I refuse to take the easy way out.

"Ren!" comes Sasuke's voice, and my hands slide off Kakashi's arm much to my increasing dismay. Without thinking, Kakashi makes a grab for my fingers, but I'm already out of his range, struggling against the weight of this bond. My face grows hot with frustration, anger. I can feel it gathering behind my eyes, burning, when a hand goes around my wrist.

I whirl around, my foot connecting with Naruto's face and sending him flying into the bridge. Luckily, it's one of Naruto's remaining shadow clone, and it disappears in a puff of smoke. Before I can apologize, Sakura shouts in alarm, but Kakashi shushes her, says without meaning for me to hear, "This is the burden she must carry. Naruto, Sakura—this is how it truly is for her to be bound to Sasuke."

I cover my face with my hands, embarrassed to have them see me this way, to have Kakashi speak about the bond with such sadness, like he is seeing the mistake in saying we should keep the bond in place.

I have always been strong. I have always resisted this so well. Why am I crumbling now when I'm so close to having the bond broken?

I lean all my weight against moving forward, but I'm in front of Sasuke before long and he is pulling himself up. He grips his side, half-bent as he glares at me. The prominence of blood and dirt on his face has mostly been diluted by the water that washed over him earlier. But to me, he is not intimidating in how beat up he is, in how much I can tell he is able to endure without dying. The way he appears slumped in a half-bow, as though he can hardly carry himself, makes his ferocity a bit easier to face.

"Give me the contract," he says. His eyes waver, like they're having a hard time focusing on my face. I could reach out, tilt his head, see the dimness that is starting to set in in them. "_Now_."

This close to him, there's no use refusing. But I've never been one to be smart about what I do, so I refuse anyway, biting my lip to fight the pain that sets in as I resist his command. The bond hisses, rubbing against my skull, and I'll admit that it's not a good feeling, but it's a pain I've felt before and so more endurable than I expect.

Which is odd. The pain that the bond has brought on has always been piercing, crippling. This time, though, it's substantially weaker, and while it may be because it hasn't been reinstated, there is something hollow to Sasuke's command.

It's a hollowness I recognize only one I notice it, a hollowness that has followed all of Sasuke's commands that have carried the weight of the bond. It's unlike when I go out of my way to do something for Shikamaru or move to do a favor for Sakura and Naruto when they ask it of me. It's a hollowness that makes Sasuke's words weak when I think about how I will do anything for my friends if only they ask.

The bond groans, pushes me to obey. But it falls flat, and I find the pressure on my lip easing, the stiffness of my joints diminishing.

And then without a bit of resistance, I stand before Sasuke, staring at him, the fine line of his jaw, the smoothness of his skin underneath all the grime. I wonder if he can sense the shift, too.

His eyes. There is a spark behind them that fills in where blindness has settled. I can't tell if the spark signals understanding, recognition, if it means he has felt this shift. But there are other people around us, and to avoid suspicion, I reach into my shirt and take a hold of—

Nothing. I falter and then look down, finding nothing balanced on the inside folds of my shirt. Frantically, I pat down my torso, my pockets, searching, as I say, "It's not—it's not here. I don't know—_where_—"

Could I have dropped it? When I was fighting with Sasuke earlier, could it have fallen out and landed somewhere? Or what if I had lost it on my way to this bridge? Or from Konoha to the Land of Iron? I've gone too far with it on me and I can't recall ever feeling it.

. . . I can't recall feeling it. The last time I had it was when I was speaking with Shikamaru and Rei in Konoha. I had stuffed it in my shirt before leaving and Rei—

"She took it," I say, pressing my face into my hands. "Rei, that girl from the Sound that tried to help me break the bond, she took it."

Sasuke grits his teeth, curses. "That meddling little—what could she possibly want with it?" he growls. "It wasn't hers to take. Once I find her—"

"She's going to break it," I say, knowing it's true the moment the sentence leaves my mouth. I lower my hands, staring at the palms that have calluses, scars I don't even remember getting. I lift my gaze to Sasuke's, see the faint reflection of me in his eyes. "She's going to break it without me."

For a moment, Sasuke's expression drops, and he searches my face. He looks panicked. Scared. Alone. But then anger mutilates his features again and I'm afraid he's going to reach out to strangle me when Madara takes me by the shoulder and spins me around so that I have a full view of Sakura, Kakashi, and Naruto.

"Looks like we've hit a little bump in the road here," Madara says. "But we have what we need, regardless. We'll be taking Ren from here."

Kakashi and Naruto tense, jerking forward as though compelled to snatch me back until the plant-human hybrid lifts an arm. From the water half a dozen copies of him rise like the dead, white and bulgy, chewed bubblegum shapes with heads. "I'll take care of these guys instead," he says. "We have to grab the Kyuubi at some point."

"Zetsu, there's no way you can capture Naruto," Madara says, his fingers drumming against my collarbone. "The Kyuubi is too much for a non-warrior type like you to handle. We'll let Sasuke have the Kyuubi, and I'll provide some entertainment myself. Besides," he adds offhandedly as the plant-human hybrids sink back into the water, bobbing just below the surface, "I'm worried about Kisame. Go check on him. And meet up with your black half, too."

I don't understand what they're talking about, but I'm sure if I asked they wouldn't answer me. I'm disposable to them—_perform your duties one last time_, he'd said; once I heal Sasuke, he'll probably finish me off himself. Though why Sasuke wanted the contract in the first place is beyond me.

Maybe Madara hasn't managed to wholly convince Sasuke that I'm worthless. And if that's the case—

At that moment, Sasuke cringes and doubles over. Without thinking, I reach over to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, surprising us both.

While I don't believe the shift earlier had signified the bond has broken, it hasn't reawakened either. The command from Sasuke was enough to startle it into consciousness, but so far as it is concerned, it's still decommissioned. So I shouldn't be kind to him, given the things I've said, the way I've acted, the way _he's_ acted, but caring has turned into such an automatic response. All those Konoha teachings and spending so much time with Naruto are finally getting to me.

Sasuke's skin is burning, the heat of a bruise rising on his arm. I lift him out of his half-bow, say, "Maybe you shouldn't be standing."

He attempts to shrug me off, but doesn't have enough strength to effectively throw me off. Madara chuckles, his hand falling off my shoulder. "Looks like the damaged boy persona pays off again," Madara says, and I scowl at him. "Nice to have you with us, Ren."

I'm about to make a remark about how I would rather be dead, but a voice comes across the water, saying, "There's something I want to say."

It's Naruto, heading the group on the other side of the river. The water ripples beneath him as he comes forward, droplets flying from his sleeves with the swing of his arms. His face remains placid, blue eyes heightened by the water around us.

"Let's go, Sasuke," says Madara, ignoring him, but Sasuke waves Madara down and says, "Wait. I want to hear this."

Naruto's lips pull into a smile. "Sasuke, do you remember what you said to me at the Valley of the End? About being a first-class ninja?" he says. "'A first-class ninja can read his opponent's heart just by trading blows with him once.' I understand now after all this fighting, not just with you, but everyone I've ever been up against. We've both become first-class ninja, Sasuke. So," he says, pressing his fist to his heart like a salute, "did you read what was in my heart, too? You saw it, didn't you? That, the next time you and I fight, we will _both_ die."

My grip tightens around Sasuke and he lets out a gasp of pain. While I loosen my grip, I don't apologize. I just try to make sense of what Naruto is saying. Horrible as it may sound, I have come to terms with Sasuke dying. Naruto, on the other hand, who is the epitome of liveliness and hope—what will it mean for us if he has to die, too?

"If you attack Konoha," Naruto continues, "I'll have to fight you. So save up your hatred and take it all out on me. I'm the only one who can take it, and it's the only thing I can think to do to help you. I'll shoulder your hatred and die with you!"

Sasuke scoffs, demands, "Why? What the hell do you want from me? Why do you care so much?"

"Because we're friends," he says, and I feel Sasuke's body go slack like he can't believe what he's hearing. "We may not understand each other by ordinary means, but I knew that from the first time we met. We only understand each other with our fists. There's nothing wrong with that. Like I said, it just means we've become first-class ninja! I haven't given up yet. Well," he says, mussing his hair, "not on you. But I've given up on trying to talk to you. I've never been good at it, so what would I be doing lecturing you? Even if we do both end up dying, at least we'll no longer be the Uchiha and the Kyuubi. Not burdened with any of that, we'll be able to understand each other in the next world."

Sasuke harrumphs, and I lean down to him. "Kindness," I say as he gives me a sidelong glance. "And love. Everything we lost, Sasuke. It's right here."

He turns away from me, says loud enough for everyone to hear, "I won't change. I don't want to understand you. And I don't plan on being the one to die, either."

Naruto visibly deflates and Kakashi steps up, says, "That's enough, Naruto. I'll take care of Sasuke. You have your dream of becoming Hokage. There's no need for you to go down fighting him."

Naruto frowns, clenching his fist. "How can I become Hokage," he says, "if I can't even save one friend? _I_ will fight Sasuke."

Beside me, Sasuke smirks, and I grip his shoulder, making him wince again. It isn't enough to diminish his smirk or his haughtiness. "All right," he says. "I'll just have to kill you first."

Naruto's eyes flash. He says, quietly, "You haven't truly accepted me as an equal yet."

Sasuke scoffs, reminding me, for a minute, of how innocent this rivalry used to be. Kakashi pulls me out of my memory as he sighs, says, "Fine. I'll leave Sasuke to you, Naruto. But I'm trusting you to take care of my body, Sakura."

He closes his normal eye, his Sharingan going wide as he focuses on us, but his movements are interrupted by Madara, whose head lilts to the side, tired. "Don't," Madara says, holding up a hand, "bother, Kakashi. That won't work on me. Let's go, Sasuke."

_Not with me you don't,_ I think, and whirl around, kicking away Madara's hand as he reaches for me. My action is abrupt enough to catch him off guard, send him stumbling, and while Zetsu makes a grab for me, I blast him with the vibrations.

The pressure of the release causes a track of water to shoot up in my wake as I'm propelled backward, away from them. I slam into Naruto, which is infinitely better than the cliff side, but he's unprepared to brace me and we go plunging into the water.

Before we fall in, I catch one last glimpse of Sasuke, one last image of betrayal, of something lost, before he swirls away with Madara and water fills my eyes.

.

The water is much colder than I expect. Bubbles burst and flurry around me, and trails of my hair follow, rising to the surface while I continue to fall. The light seems to sink away, though in the corner of my eye I can see Naruto floating to the side just below me.

I wonder if the water is just as cold for him.

Doubtful, given his affinity for making everything a hundred times better, more comfortable and warm and endurable. But the water must slow time for him too. The water must lag his movements, still his breathing, sting his eyes. The water must drown him a little, just as it drowns me.

Hands. They plunge into the water and grab Naruto, pull him up first. He breaks the surface as great shadows reach for me. I swing my arms to avoid them, creating more bubbles that displace the shadows. I right myself and kick toward the light.

I rise.

.

I come up coughing, treading the water as Kakashi pulls Naruto from the river and braces the blonde boy in his lap. It turns out Naruto's inability to catch me was more because the poison from Sakura's kunai, which had cut his cheek when he zoomed in to save her, is finally setting in and destroying his nervous system. It's not as bad as it sounds, but nonetheless Sakura gets to creating and administering an antidote right away, since she hadn't counted on saving anyone and so doesn't have the antidote on hand.

In the meantime, I swim to the shore, unwilling to remain over the water for any longer, and drag myself out of the river, shaking what water I can from my clothes and hair. I'm still coughing up water when Kakashi calls to me.

"Go up on the bridge," he directs, pointing. "Sakura says she left that girl up there. We'll bring her home with us and see what information she can give us on Sasuke and Madara's plans."

I scowl, annoyed to be given orders after I've almost-but-not-really drowned. Still, I give him a small two fingered salute and follow his command, leaping to the top of the bridge. There, I find a groggy Karin who still has a hand pressed over the giant bloodstain on her shirt, despite the fact that she's stopped bleeding. She's sitting against the side of the bridge; everything about her posture is limp. She doesn't glare at me like she used to, and instead turns her head away when I approach her, ashamed.

I huff, bending down to pull her over my shoulders. "I should have warned you," I say, wrapping an arm around her waist. "No good ever comes from associating yourself with Sasuke. Sorry you had to learn the hard way."

"Why did you follow him, then?" she says as I lift her. She grunts in pain and I do my best to brace her weight, careful to have her step around the uneven ground of the broken bridge. "Before. Why did you help him?"

I laugh, shaking my head. "You never give up completely on your friends," I say quietly. "I thought, if I could get him what he wanted, he would come home and everything would be over. Obviously I was wrong. Sasuke is nothing like the boy I used to know."

I hear her swallow, gather her words, but then Sakura, Kakashi, and Naruto come to the top of the bridge, Naruto wavering as he lands beside us. He braces himself on Kakashi and makes gagging noises as he takes hold of his stomach.

"Not near me," I say, shoving him away as Kakashi crouches and allows Karin to climb onto his back.

Naruto and Sakura protest at my roughness, and I only turn my nose up at them, determined not to get anymore dirt on me after my dip in the river. Naruto stumbles again, his pallid face bumping into my shoulder, and I sigh, taking his arm to hold him upright.

Karin's stare doesn't go without my notice. She watches us interact the whole time, blinking like she can't remember the last time she saw genuine, loving banter instead of the kind she used to have with Suigetsu. Speaking of, I wonder where Suigetsu and Juugo are, if they're hiding out somewhere nearby or if Sasuke had killed them before he arrived here. I suppose I'll have to ask Karin when we get back to the village.

Sakura and Naruto take the lead, Naruto still wobbly from the poison and Sakura glancing at him out of the corner of her eyes to make sure he doesn't keel over. I walk beside Kakashi, making sure he's steady after using his Sharingan so much, even though he assures me that he is.

"What's going to happen to Karin once we get back to the village?" I ask as we follow Sakura and Naruto through the forest.

"We're going to have to give her to the interrogation squad," says Kakashi and Karin tenses. "And you're going to have to fill me in on what you remember after Madara removed that block from you."

I clasp my hands behind my head, say, "Yeah, I suppose. It's not much now that we have Karin, but if you think it'll help."

"Every little bit helps," Kakashi says.

We lapse into silence then, and I watch Naruto's back as he walks. Occasionally, he'll shudder and exhale sharply as the effects of the poison wear off. I'm surprised he made it so long without the antidote in the first place. I suppose that has to do with the Kyuubi's magical powers, though, and dismiss it.

Sakura reaches over to touch his shoulder, making sure he's okay. He waves her off with an easy grin, only to turn around and shudder again as though she can't see him. I smile at the picture of the two of them, only to have it drop right off my face.

"Kakashi," I start, "what Naruto said about when he and Sasuke finally face each other. Do you think . . . do you think it'll be that bad? Do you think it'll come to that result?"

Kakashi doesn't immediately answer. When he does, I'm hardly comforted. "All I can say is—I trust Naruto. I trust that he knows what he's doing."

I blow my hair out of my face and sag my shoulders. Karin gives a dainty little cough and I frown at her.

"If it makes you feel any better," she says, pushes her glasses up her nose, and I wonder if everyone who wears glasses is inclined to doing this when they're about to make a point. "After what I've seen, Sasuke is an idiot for giving this up. Whatever mercy you may have for him, forget it. He doesn't deserve it."

I'm surprised by Karin's reassurance, and laugh. "I'm starting to like you better already," I say. "Thank you."

Although it wasn't Sasuke I was worried about. Not for his wellbeing, at least. I'm more worried about Naruto, the pain it will cause him.

He keeps saying, _I will be the one to fight him._ Not _I will be the one to kill him._

So I wonder what his plan is and fall in line with Kakashi: I trust Naruto, and I will trust he knows what he's doing.


	93. If It Ain't Broke

**Bound  
Chapter 93: If It Ain't Broke**

"Ren," Sakura says minutes into our walk. Kakashi has sent one of his messenger dogs to fetch Yamato from the Land of Iron while we head back to the village, retracing our steps to where Sakura disposed of Lee, Sai, Kiba, and Akamaru. We had only remembered they were a concern when Naruto asked after them, and Sakura gave a yelp of panic. The poor guys.

I walk beside Sakura now, while Kakashi and Naruto lag behind, tired from the fight and the poison, respectively. I had offered to carry Karin for Kakashi, but then Karin pretended to be asleep and Kakashi said, "Well, we don't want to disturb her. We're shinobi of Konoha," he added when I remarked that her wellbeing didn't really matter. I swear I saw her brow twitch in irritation. "We won't stoop so low as to treat our prisoners like trash, especially when they didn't do any harm to us directly."

I was about to argue with that when Sakura pulled me to the front of the group. "Ren," she says and in the corner of my eye, I think I see Karin stick her tongue out at me. "I've been meaning to tell you: I'm . . . sorry we pressured you into keeping the bond around. It was selfish of us to ask that of you, especially now that I see how powerless it makes you. I mean it!" she says when I wave off her apology.

"I know," I say, "and thank you. But you don't have to guilt yourself over it. I think I was using your request to avoid breaking the bond too, so it's not all your fault. I guess," I say, my voice growing quiet, "I still thought, if Sasuke had this one thing to tie him to the village, he'd be less inclined to turn his back on it. I guess I thought he would remember that our bond isn't some _thing_ he can toss aside and forget because it's in our blood and soul and—ick. This is starting to sound like a sad romance novel."

Sakura laughs, pushing her hair out of her face. She lowers her eyes and says, "I guess you weren't as immune to Sasuke as you thought, huh?"

"What? Wait a second," I say before Sakura's head perks up and she points, says, "Here they are. It doesn't look like they've been bothered."

We stop beside the line of bushes that hide the boys from sight. They sleep peacefully in the shade, their mouths gaping with snores. It's endearing to see, until we remember that Sakura had drugged them to make her escape.

Naruto doesn't know this, though, and props his hands on his waist, saying, "You were in trouble, Sakura, and they were just here sleeping the whole time?"

Sakura gives a shaky laugh as Naruto grips his stomach and looks sick again.

"Sakura," Kakashi says as Naruto steps over the bushes, and into the shade beside Lee, who is sprawled out close to a tree, "they were trying to help. Wake them up and apologize."

Naruto crouches down by Lee, and Sakura says, "Naruto, it's my fault they're like this, so be gentle."

Instead of waking him, though, Naruto falls down beside Lee, resting his head on a tree root that juts out from the ground. "Ugh," he groans, curling into his stomach while Sakura fumes and demands to know what he's doing. "I still don't feel so good."

"It's your fault—Sakura, was it?—that Naruto is in this condition in the first place," Karin points out, and Kakashi chuckles. Sakura's face falls, and she grumbles under her breath in dismay. "What happened to being gentle?"

"Anyway," I say, stepping over the bushes. I stretch my arms over my head and lean against the tree Naruto sleeps under, closing my eyes. "Naruto has the right idea. I'm tired, too! We hardly got any rest in the Land of Iron thanks to your little appearance, Sakura."

"No time to rest, Ren," Kakashi says. "We have to get back to the village and tell everyone what we've found out."

I open one eye, displeased, and push away from the tree, sighing. "I thought it was no rest for the _wicked_," I grumble as I shake each of the boys awake. They groan, turning over on their sides to avoid the sun, but sit up groggily one by one when I start to kick them. Rubbing their eyes, they blink at us in confusion, brushing fallen leaves off their bodies.

"Kakashi-sensei," Kiba yawns as Akamaru stretches beside him. I help him to his feet, lead him, Lee, and Sai out of the bushes while Sakura pulls Naruto upright. Kakashi motions for us to continue walking, reiterating how important it is that we return to the village as soon as possible. "What happened? Why does my head feel so thick?"

"Sakura drugged you," I say, crossing my arms. Sakura attempts to shush me too late, and Kiba is at once wide awake, shouting, "That—I remember now! Don't tell me you guys already met up with Sasuke? I'll take that as a yes," he grumbles when I mumble vaguely. "So? Is he dead?"

"Kiba," warns Lee, and Kiba pouts, his gait once again becoming sluggish. Akamaru whines at his partner's displeasure and nudges Kiba to try to lift his spirits.

"We met up with him, yes," Kakashi says, "after Sai came and told us of Sakura's plan. It was reckless of you three to go along with her without telling any of us."

"But Sasuke," Kiba says, looking at me. "Did you guys manage to finish him off?"

We don't answer.

"He got away then," Kiba says and groans in aggravation. He points an accusatory finger at Sakura and says, "How could you leave us behind, Sakura? _I'm_ the one who found Sasuke for you! I'm just saying," Kiba says, when Kakashi tells him to calm down, "why d'you get to have all the fun? And since _Sai_ told Naruto everything, Sasuke ended up getting away again!"

"Kiba!" Naruto snaps and I shake my head as the conversation begins to devolve. "Be a man and quit your bitching!"

Kiba's mouth drops in incredulity and he retorts, "_You're_ the one who's always bitching, Naruto!"

"Both of you, shut up!" I say, smacking them upside the head. "Or I'll punch you both unconscious and drag you back to the village!"

"Kiba's right, though," Sai says with a small laugh. "As simple and dumb as Naruto is, he really over thinks things."

Naruto whirls on Sai and scowls, saying, "You sure are laughing a lot more lately!"

"Thank you."

"_That wasn't a compliment_!"

"So what happened with Sasuke?" Kiba interrupts, rubbing the injury I've given him. Naruto goes still, setting his gaze on the ground. "Come on, you can't leave us hanging after all this!"

Naruto turns up his nose, unwilling. "I'll explain everything later," he says, and walks ahead before Kiba can protest anymore. Kiba huffs, grumbles something about how "this better be good," and follows Naruto with Akamaru at his side.

The boys are slow-moving from their rude awakening, but otherwise we make good pace. The whole of our walk, though, I can't help but wonder how Naruto plans on breaking this news to our friends. Undoubtedly, we'll return and they'll want to know where we went, whether we were successful in our endeavors. And telling them that, once again, Sasuke has gotten away from us isn't going to bode well with them.

I can only see this situation becoming increasingly troublesome, especially once Naruto reveals that he plans on dealing with Sasuke on his own.

We're about half a kilometer from the village when I feel the vibrations stirring with upset chakra. I announce it to the group, who are immediately on guard, but Sai is quick to ease the tension. "I recognize them," he says as three figures drop into view, their porcelain masks the only thing visible beneath their heavy coats. Their appearance brings us to a halt, though I can see the entrance to the village just over their shoulders.

"These are members of ANBU's Root division," Sai explains when Naruto asks. "They worked under Danzo-sama with me."

"Sai," the one in the center says, the symmetrical red lines on the cheeks of his mask bright in the sun. "You'd better tell us what's going on."

Sai nods, lifts one shoulder into a shrug. "I'm sure you must have realized by now," he says, "that a weight has lifted off our tongues; Danzo-sama's curse that bound us is no longer in effect."

The shinobi hesitate in answer, aware that there are others around who aren't supposed to know about the seal on their tongues, much less the Root division. But, seeming to realize that none of it matters if what he asks is true, the one in the center says, "Is he dead?"

" . . . yes," Sai answers, a note of solemnity in his voice. "So I think we should discuss what will happen to Root now, with the new Hokage, Hatake Kakashi-san."

The shinobi startle, and I'll admit I had forgotten the minor detail of Kakashi being nominated for Hokage in the Land of Iron. It's odd that a man who can be so lazy and goofy at times is on his way to becoming Hokage, but it's probably my own personal bias that is making me think this.

Regardless of their surprise, the shinobi bow, and agree, saying, "We'll return to the village first and alert everyone of the news."

With that, they're gone and our group delves into silence before Kiba blurts, "Kakashi-sensei, _you're_ going to be the new Hokage?"

"It's still up in the air," Kakashi says, pushing forward to avoid having to talk about it more. That kind of reaction makes me think Kakashi is as reluctant to accept the idea as I am, and for some reason it comforts me.

As soon as we step foot inside the village, we're barraged by a pack of shinobi who had heard of our arrival from the Root members. One of the shinobi offers to lead Kakashi to the makeshift interrogation quarters they had built while we were away, and another offers to get us food.

"Sorry," Sai says when Naruto jumps at the mention that they've already rebuilt Ichiraku's Ramen Shop. "There's something we need to take care of first."

Naruto deflates as the shinobi nod in understanding and depart. He grips his stomach and complains that being poisoned has really given him an appetite, but Sai remains adamant. "You promised to tell everyone what happened as soon as we were back," he says, twisting Naruto's words.

Naruto begins to protest, but I agree, saying, "If you don't tell the others now, Naruto, when will you? You can't keep finding reasons to avoid this conversation."

Naruto sulks as I ask Kiba to find and gather everyone. Kiba snarks, "You aren't going to drug me right afterward, are you?" and leaves to do as I ask after I punch him.

"I have to go figure things out with the Root division," Sai says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. "You'll make sure Naruto clears the air with the others?"

"As much as I possibly can," I say, blowing my hair out of my eyes. "Good luck with the whole Root thing."

He nods in thanks and wishes me the same before leaving. "You'll probably need it more than I do," he says over his shoulder, and I sigh, knowing he's right.

The remainder of us collect in a corner of the village where extra lumber has been stacked, creating a cozy open square big enough for all of us to fit. I lean against the fence that closes off the back of the square, taking a deep breath as I'm finally allowed a moment to rest. Lee hops to the top of the pile to my right and sits lookout for the others, calling them over once they're in view.

Naruto stands center stage, brow furrowed in thought as Sakura shifts on her feet. I wonder if I should try to ease their fears, but then I remember I have my own things to worry about. Rei, I'm sure of it, has the contract and I need to get it back. God knows what she's done with it since stealing it from me. Not to mention, I need to figure out what happened when I had faced Sasuke. Whether that sudden slip of freedom had been the result of me finally gaining some control over the bond or the bond actually—

"Hey, Ren. Are you all right?"

Shikamaru is coming toward me. He has on a simple, loose-fitting shirt that opens to reveal his mesh-lining, complemented by his signature scowl. I can't tell if he's worried about me or annoyed to be worried about me, so I settle with scowling back at him. Because the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that he must be in cahoots with Rei somehow, a conclusion that is only reinforced when she comes bounding up behind him with Nao and Hiro in tow, saying, "I've missed you, Ren!"

"What are you doing here?" I demand, sidestepping her as she tries to hug me. "This is a closed meeting for friends _only_."

"Who said that?" she says, rubbing her forehead where she'd slammed into the wooden fence behind us. "Anyway, I thought we _were_ friends."

"Operative word being _were_," I say, stabbing a finger into her chest. "Look, I know you—"

Nao elbows my ribs, cutting me off. I whirl around to snap at him when I notice everyone is staring at us. Rei waggles her fingers, a grand smile on her face, while Hiro and Nao frown, their bodies tense.

The eleven Konoha shinobi before us aren't threatening in the way they stand—although some, like Neji and Kiba, would do well to lift their glares of suspicion—but all their eyes on us is enough to make anyone defensive. Neji and Tenten hover below where Lee sits on the lumber pile, curiosity tugging their lips into frowns, and Shino stands just behind Naruto, impassive as ever. Kiba and Akamaru have taken refuge atop the lumber pile to my left, and below him are Hinata, who looks at Naruto with apprehension, and Ino, exchanging a glance with Sakura. Chouji stands on the other side of Shikamaru, while Hiro, Rei, and Nao flank my right, the subject of everyone's attention.

"Uh," I say, my initial anger faltering. "I can explain."

My friends raise their brows expectantly.

I clear my throat, inhale sharply through my teeth, then glance at Shikamaru like he will be able to help me. But he only gestures with his chin for me to go on. Except the more I think about it, the harder it is for me to explain why Rei and her team are here because, well . . . other than Naruto, Sakura, Sai, and Shikamaru, no one knows about the bond. And without knowing about the bond, then Rei's presence can't be explained away.

"Ren?" says Ino as I shut my mouth and stare wide eyed back at everyone. "What's the matter?"

"Uh," I say, twisting my hands. "Uh. Actually. Now is probably not the time to—"

"My name is Kannagi Rei," Rei says, and then gestures to her friends. "These are my teammates, Hiro and Nao. We're old family friends of Ren's and are here to assist in the restoration of the village. We're qualified shinobi of the Sound, but!" she says when everyone's eyes narrows. "We cut our ties with the Sound a long time ago, so you don't need to worry about that."

"Kannagi Rei," Ino echoes. "I recognize that name. You were the girl who was supposed to fight Shikamaru in the Chuunin exam finals."

"Right-o," Rei says, snapping her fingers at Ino. She scowls.

"These guys helped me when I went away to find Sasuke," I say, thinking that is vital information to share as well, though I don't know why, especially when everyone's faces harden again. "The point is, we can trust them, so don't mind that they're here."

"But it's your call," Hiro says with a small bow of his head. "If any of you don't feel comfortable with us here, we understand."

Everyone turns back to Naruto. He is the one who will be running this meeting. For a long while, Naruto watches me, his blue eyes shining. Then he concedes to let them stay, though the air around us remains uncomfortable. Rei winks at me as Naruto begins to tell our friends about the Raikage's refusal to spare Sasuke, about the meeting with Madara and the encounter with Gaara. He tells them about the announcement of the alliance, the war, and finally the reunion with Sasuke and how he had gotten away. It's obvious Naruto's plan to deal with Sasuke on his own isn't resonating well with our friends, though, as their faces progressively fall deeper and deeper into frowns until Tenten slams the side of her fist into the pile of lumber beside her.

"You want to fight Sasuke on your _own_?" she demands, indignant. "Do you really think we'll go along with that?"

"Tenten's right, Naruto," Neji says, pursing his lips and leaning against the wall of lumber. "We can't go along with your selfishness. This is the whole village's problem."

"You said you'd explain when we got back, but this is all you have to say?" Kiba says, adding to the list of complaints. "We were prepared to kill Sasuke, you know. You can't just expect us to back off."

"I'm not being selfish," says Naruto. "This is what has to happen."

"Hey, Naruto," Shikamaru says, a severe look about his face. "You're not just saying you'll fight Sasuke to protect him, are you?"

There is a pause wherein Naruto's fists clench and unclench. He waits a moment too long before he says, "No. I have no plans to protect him."

Neji sighs, adjusting his arms crossed over his chest as his patience wanes. "If Sasuke was that weak after the Five Kage Summit and his fight with Danzo," he says, unconvinced, "why didn't you just finish him off, then?"

Jumping to Naruto's defense is Sakura, who hasn't had time to remove her cloak from the journey. It flurries behind her as she says, emphatically, "Madara was there, too! It wasn't that easy."

"You still shouldn't have let him get away," Kiba says with a wave to dismiss Sakura's comment. "Naruto, you're strong. You're the hero who defeated Pein! Sasuke should be no problem."

"That's not true," Naruto says. He bows his head, his voice low as he speaks. "I wouldn't have been able to defeat him. I knew that much."

"What do you mean?" Chouji says, eyes wide, reflecting everyone's surprise.

Naruto shakes his head, dropping the subject and saying, "The point is, no one else can fight Sasuke now. I'm the only one who can and should fight him. That's all."

No one shifts, no one attempts to lighten the mood. Neji squints at him, irritated, and demands, "What the hell happened? Tell us."

"I'll tell you when the time comes," Naruto says, and turns on his heels. All seriousness has dropped from his voice as he clasps his hands behind his head and says, "Anyway, I'm hungry, so I'm gonna head over to Ichiraku's!"

We watch him leave in silence, and as soon as his back has receded in the distance, everyone's gazes swirl back in and focus on Sakura, who startles when she finds everyone watching her. She stammers for something to say, for an excuse for Naruto's vagueness.

"Ren?" Shikamaru says when Sakura is unable to clarify and effectively draws the group's attention to me. "What's your take on this? You've been quiet this whole time."

My friends blink at me, expectant, but I can only shrug. "I trust Naruto," I say, echoing what Kakashi had told me because I can't think of anything else to say. "And I trust that he knows what he's doing. He hasn't been wrong so far, right?"

Neji scoffs, but otherwise doesn't disagree. In fact, no one does and from there we go our separate ways. I slump against the village gate, relieved no one argues with me or stays behind to ask about Rei more, only to have my irritation flare when I notice Rei and company still hanging around.

"Hey, what's the matter?" Rei says, crouching to be at my eyelevel. Nao rubs his forehead like he realizes how condescending Rei's body language is, and I calm a little, taking comfort in the fact that he and Hiro are around to be sensible. My even-temper is quickly dissipated, though, when Rei says, "Why the sour face?"

"You _know_ why! Where is it?" I demand, holding out my hand. "Where is the contract and what have you done to it?"

She blinks at my empty hand, uncomprehending, then flashes a wily grin. "I don't know what you're talking about," she says.

"_Rei_," I say, wanting to pull my hair out. "Stop playing games. _The_ contract, the contract that binds me and Sasuke. _Give it back_. You had no right to take it from me!"

"What makes you think _I_ have it?" she asks, pressing her hands to her chest, head bent. She is the epitome of innocence, but like hell if I'll believe a single word that comes out of her mouth.

"You haven't given me a reason to think you _don't_ have it," I say, massaging my temples. "Look, Rei, this conversation is going nowhere, and if you don't give me the contract now, I swear, I will—"

"We figured out how to break it. Does that count for something?"

It's Shikamaru who speaks. I hadn't realized he had stayed behind and stare at him dumbly until he reaches into his pockets and digs out a folded piece of parchment. He presents me the contract, brow pulled together in apology, but eyes shining with no regret. Rei stands beside him, grinning ear to ear, a hand propped on her hip as she watches our exchange like she expects me to jump up and throw my arms around the both of them, tell them they have made all my dreams come true, and then cry tears of joy into their shoulders.

But I say, "No," and take the contract gingerly out of his hands, cradle it in my own, watching the way the wax seal flakes against the parchment and flutters to the ground. Someone has broken the seal, opened the contract and read what feels like every dark secret I have ever harbored. I run my fingers over where patches of red wax has melted into the parchment, staining the golden yellow with the crusted, cursed blood.

"What do you mean _no_?" Rei says, affronted, and Hiro puts a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to have her keep her voice low. "I thought you wanted this broken!"

"I _do_," I say, scowling at her. "Trust me, Rei, I do. But there are more important things to be worried about right now. In the Land of Iron, Madara declared war on the Five Nations. We don't know what he has planned for us and I think our efforts—_yours_, especially, could be better focused on figuring out what we can about Madara and what he's capable of. Besides," I add when Rei doesn't look convinced by my argument. "I think, as it is, the bond is already weak enough where we don't have to worry about it anymore."

They quirk their brows at me in unison, an action that almost prompts me to laugh. "What do you mean it's weak enough?" Rei says, and I tell them about my encounter with Sasuke, how I had somehow broken out of his command, how the bond had wavered and fallen. Shikamaru's frown deepens throughout the story.

Rei hums, rubbing her chin. "That is curious," she says, "but to be sure—"

"What Rei means to say is," Hiro says, taking her by the shoulders and moving her aside, "whatever you decide, we'll support you. You're right about the war being our priority right now. This is something that's going to affect the whole of the shinobi world, after all, which includes us even though we have no village."

"I _would_ prefer to live in a world that exists and isn't full of evil," Nao adds as Rei begins to protest, saying something about how I should at least know how to break the bond in case I change my mind. "We'll see what we can do to help. We haven't been making very good progress on the rebuilding aspect of the village anyway."

"Thank you," I say, offering them a bow. "Really, Rei," I say when she huffs and turns on her heels, annoyed. "You've done so much for me and I'm sorry, but—my village is what comes first right now."

She turns her nose up at me—then says softly, "No. That's fine. Anyway!" she says, bouncing back to her usual peppiness. "Shikamaru-kun knows how to break it, so he'll just have the answers for you whenever you're ready! Let's go, boys."

With that, she grabs Hiro and Nao by their collars and drags them away. I see them wave to me out of the corner of my eye as I turn to Shikamaru, who rubs the back of his neck, saying, "That girl wears me out almost as much as Naruto does. I have to hand it her teammates for being able to deal with her so well. What?" he asks when he notices my staring.

"You," I say, my fingers drumming against the contract, "know how to break the bond?"

He grows uncomfortable, shifting on his feet, then becomes steadily grim. "Yeah," he says. "Rei approached me after you left with Sai and showed me that she'd stolen the contract. She didn't know what it was but figured it was something important since you didn't tell her about it—so I did. The whole time you were in the Land of Iron, we—did some research and eventually, Rei put the pieces together and figured it out."

"Fi—just like that?" I say, incredulous, and Shikamaru nods. "How was she able to figure it out so easily after all these years?"

"She was just as surprised as you," he replies, and I stop him there when it seems like he's going to go on.

"I don't need to know anymore," I say, pushing my hair from my eyes. It's grown out considerably since I lopped it off months ago, to the point where it's neither stylish or manageable. I need to trim it again soon.

"Ren," he says, "is there any other reason why you aren't breaking this bond now? At this point, it would be better if all our ties with Sasuke were cut. We don't know what information he's capable of getting through the bond, and even if—hear me out," he grumbles as I shake my head.

"Hear _me_ out. Sasuke won't," I say. "Under Madara's wing, he's reached the pinnacle of arrogance. He won't admit he's wrong or that he needs help or anything. If he's going to destroy the village and kill everyone who opposes him, he's going to do it on his own, whether it's sensible or not. Trust me, Shika," I say, raising a hand to brush my fingers on his cheek.

His eyebrows lift in surprise, and I'll admit that I'm caught off guard by the turn of events as well. Don't get me wrong: I've touched Shikamaru's face plenty of times in the past to tease him, to reassure him. But my hand lingers for a moment too long, and pricks of electricity shoot through my fingers, like the pinch of vibrations. I recoil quickly as I realize what I'm doing and cough, the unmistakable heat of a blush rushing over my face.

"_Anyway_," I say loudly as though that will cover up what I've done. Shikamaru's confusion only seems to multiply tenfold by my reaction. "Anyway, I'm glad that you know how to break it in case I can't reach Rei. And since you're not, like, super angry or reluctant to tell me how it's done, I'm going to guess that it's not going to kill me either, so. What's there to do in the meantime? How much of the village has been rebuilt? I hear Ichiraku's is open again."

As I consider whether I should have a bowl of ramen or try to find a healthier alternative, I feel the weight of Shikamaru's gaze on me. "What?" I ask when it doesn't lift.

"I trust you," he says carefully. "I trust you know what you're doing with this bond, and I trust you're making the right decision with this."

The sincerity with which he says this makes my pulse quicken and my heart well up. I flash him my widest smile, unable to contain my happiness. "Thank you, Shikamaru," I say, unsure how to return his kindness until it occurs to me. I take his hand, turn it over, and press the contract into his grasp. "I want you to hold onto this for me. It's not really your burden to bear, but—I trust you with it, Shika. And if at any point you think the bond needs to be broken and it's possible for you to do it without me, by all means: do it. I trust you," I say, squeezing his hand when he asks if I'm sure. "My faith in you is absolute, Nara Shikamaru, and I can think of no one better to call my best friend."


	94. Comfort

**Bound  
Chapter 94: Comfort**

He pockets the contract, which is a relief. The alternative—in my mind—was that he would throw it back in my face and talk about how he didn't want that kind of burden on his shoulders and who was I to put that kind of pressure on him? Not that I had been _expecting_ the alternative—Shikamaru is too kind—but it's a relief all the same.

Right, so, Shikamaru pockets the contract and then we go and find lunch. The village continues to become more of a village and less flattened space. Buildings are erected every minute thanks to the diligence and skill of our allies. People are filling the roads with laughter. Things only seem to be going up as a shinobi bustles into the shop we're in and exclaims, "My friends! Tsunade-sama has woken up! Godaime Hokage lives!" before shuffling out to share the news with the rest of the village. Everyone in the shop cheers. Lunch is on the house.

"What do you think will happen now?" I ask as we carry our lunches with us out of the shop. The announcement of free lunch has drawn a crowd into the shop, and there's no longer room inside to sit and eat comfortably.

"Who knows?" Shikamaru pops a dumpling in his mouth, chews and swallows before speaking again. "My guess is Godaime will be briefed on what happened with Danzo at the Kage Summit, and then we'll start planning for war. Madara did say he planned to attack the Five Nations. He may not have given us an exact timeframe for his attack, but we can expect it to be soon. Ren? Hey, where—"

I've fallen out of step beside him, coming to a halt in the middle of the road. Someone bumps into me from behind, but shrugs it off with a smile, saying, "No harm done. Today's a good day, kid. Konoha's still alive and kicking. Have a nice one!"

Yeah. Nice one. I rub my shoulder where the woman ran into me, displeased by the collision even though, like she said, no harm's done. Shikamaru's head leans to the side, and he asks, "Something the matter?"

I hum vaguely, embarrassed by what I'm about to say. "To tell you the truth, I, uh. I—_forgot_ about the . . . _war_ part of the issue. I guess I don't really take things into perspective?"

Shikamaru doesn't answer because regardless of what he says, the fact that I've forgotten that war is looming is incomprehensible. It isn't like forgetting your house keys or watering your plant. It's war and it's life and death and it's at our doorstep.

I don't know if I've purposely pushed the idea of war out of my head or if I am too overwhelmed by everything that's happened with Sasuke and the bond—a combination of both, probably. Either way, this is no time to be forgetting our duty.

"War," I grumble, pushing my hair out of my eyes. I've suddenly lost my appetite and shove my takeout box into the hands of the next stranger who passes. They're so dumbfounded by my gift that they stumble along with it, staring at me over their shoulder long after I've stopped caring. "I can't believe I forgot that we're going to fight a war."

"At least it isn't a war between the Five Nations," Shikamaru says. "This time we have an alliance with all the shinobi forces. Leaves you to wonder where Madara is going to get his troops for the fight, doesn't it?"

I shake my head. That is the least of my concerns. Because war means death, and while this is a fear that will probably diminish in the heat of battle, I can't help myself from being scared of what we might lose even if we win this fight.

And it's then I become acutely aware of how afraid I have been lately of seemingly everything: Afraid we won't be able to recover from Pein's attack, afraid Naruto will be trapped in the vicious cycle of vengeance, afraid Sasuke will kill one of my friends. The worst part is, Naruto and Sakura and Shikamaru or _any_ of my friends for that matter don't seem as afraid as I am. If they are, they are doing a fantastic job of hiding it and, consequently though unintentionally, making me feel like a fool.

There isn't reason for me to be afraid. With my friends and my village and this newfound hope that we shinobi can forget our past trespasses and unite as one and fight against a common evil, I should have more faith and courage than ever.

But—

A shadow blocks the sun from my eyes and I look up to find Shikamaru standing beside me, brow furrowed with worry. There's about a foot of space between us, but I still grow embarrassed. He's grown so much taller than me in the past few months alone. I feel like an ant.

"You okay?" he asks.

I almost tell him I'm fine, splat a wide smile over my face, and urge him to stop worrying. That would be the normal thing for me to do. Instead, in a rush, I tell him I'm scared: scared of this war regardless of the implications of the shinobi alliance, scared for my friends even though I know they can handle themselves, scared for myself because what if everyone doesn't make it? What if we lose someone and we can't cope and what if we lose or—

Shikamaru holds up a hand to stop me, lips twisted in displeasure. He lays his takeout box on the ground and brushes his hands off on his pants. "I know this may not sound helpful in the moment," he says, crossing his arms, "but we'll be all right, Ren. This is all part of growing up—being scared, being unsure, being sad. I know when Asuma—"

He inhales sharply, shakes his head. When he resumes, his voice is soft, quiet. "When Asuma died, I didn't know what I was supposed to do. All I felt was this gnawing pain. But that pain reminded me I have something to live for, something I need to protect. That need should be reason enough for us to overlook our fear and fight for those who are dear to us." He sighs, lays a hand on my head and pets me like Kakashi does. I close my eyes at the familiarity of the gesture, and when I open them, he's pulling away, gaze drawn to the ground.

"Death and pain," he says, "they're just things, Ren. And it may seem like there's no way to get past them, but we always have more than what we lose."

My mouth presses into a weak smile. A small part of me thinks, _If only Sasuke could think this way._

"You are a poet, Shika," I say, shifting the sand with my feet. "Thank you."

A man lands beside us at that moment, startling us. He wears a small pair of goggles over his eyes and bandages wrapped around his head. His headband hangs limply around his neck.

"Nara Shikamaru?" the shinobi says, and continues when Shikamaru nods. "Your presence has been requested at the war meeting with the High Council. The meeting is set to begin in approximately twenty minutes. Please be at the village center at that time."

Without waiting for confirmation, the shinobi moves on. Shikamaru and I blink at the empty space left behind, and then I sigh, press my hands to my forehead. Just when I had been warming up to this whole war thing.

"War meeting," I repeat, incredulous. _War_. The word rings in my head, echoing so loudly in my ears I can hardly hear anything else. "_You_, of all people, are being called to a _war meeting_. Next thing you know, they'll be asking me to perform a surgery on the daimyo. Good grief."

"It's probably because of my dad," he says tiredly, rubbing the back of his neck. "Anyway, we're growing up. This is the natural progression of things." He stuffs his hands in his pockets and wears a frown on his face as he looks to the sky, eyes trained on a cloud that passes overhead. It's so typical of him that my heart sinks.

I lower my hands and watch him. It's been a long time since I've seen him observe the sky, since either of us have sat down to watch the clouds together. My stomach churns as I consider the next time we'll be able to do that again. I say, "Yeah. It's just—weird, I guess. Before it seemed like . . . like all those things like traitors and war and death that all our superiors talked about were so out of our realm. But one by one they're becoming real and—" I flick my hair out of my face, letting my shoulders droop. "For lack of a better phrase, it sucks."

Shikamaru turns away from the clouds, purses his lips. "We'll be okay," he says, and I smile.

"Yeah." I give his shoulder a light punch of encouragement. "Work hard, Shika. Put your all into this."

We exchange goodbyes and he leaves, slugging off like he has all the time in the world. I notice too late he's left his lunch on the ground and pick it up. My stomach growls as the smell of it wafts toward me. He's gone anyway, I think, opening the box. I may as well finish it.

"Wonder what he got," I grumble, peeking inside. It's the same order as I had: white rice and dumplings with a side of vegetables and a boiled egg, even though he hates boiled eggs. I blink at the dish in wonder, and then I laugh. It's like he had known I was going to want to eat more and got it just in case.

That boy.

"Are you going to finish that?" someone asks, startling me so badly I jump, nearly dropping the box out of my hands. Nao swoops in and catches it while Rei laughs over my shoulder, the sound of her voice echoing down the street and drawing stares.

"Sorry about that," Hiro says as I clench my chest in an attempt to calm my breathing. "We didn't mean to sneak up on you."

"Who knew you were so jumpy? Anyway," she says when I glare at her. She wipes tears from her eyes and I snatch my lunch back from Nao before he can start eating it. "We were looking for where the headquarters would be, but then we realized we have _no_ idea. We came back to see if you would have a clue. This is your village, after all."

"I've only just returned myself," I say. "I don't know what shops have opened again much less where anything is located. Can't you feel it out with your spirits?"

"The spirits are a tracking system," Rei says, affronted, "_not_ a navigation system. Besides, what are _you_ doing that's so important that you can't give us a tour of the place?"

"Rei, _I don't know where anything is_," I huff, propping a hand on my waist. "In case you hadn't noticed, our entire village was flattened! We had to rebuild from nothing. I am as lost as you are."

"Well, what were you doing before?" Rei says, her foot tapping with impatience.

"Talking with Shikamaru. But he was just called off to a war meeting, so I don't have anything to do. Ah," I say as an idea occurs to me. "Maybe I should find the interrogation building. I could probably help them question Karin, make sure she's telling them everything she knows."

"Okay, so let's go to the interrogation building. Where is that exactly?"

I glower at her, annoyed to have to humor her while she's here. I point in a random direction and she calls me out on the lack of thought I'd put into the decision. We bicker until Hiro thinks to stop a shinobi passing by and ask them. They point us in the right direction and before long we find a building with a crude sign reading "INTERROGATION" tacked up on a wooden beam. When I knock on the door, a man comes out wearing a grim face and telling us we shouldn't shouldn't be loitering around this area. I explain to him who we are and what we intend to do, and he nods and reenters the building to make sure it's all right for us to go in.

"How was your little talk with Shikun?" Rei says, leaning against the building. I wince at the way she's shortened Shikamaru's name to blend with the honorific. It was a long time ago I used to call him by the same, and it feels like an intrusion for Rei to say it.

"Don't call him that," I say. Rei's brow lifts in amusement. "The talk went fine. How _you_ managed to get so close to him, however, is another thing entirely. Why did you teach him how to break the bond?"

"I didn't _teach_ him," Rei clarifies with a wave. "There's nothing to be _taught_. I simply said how to break it out loud and everyone learned. Even Hiro-kun and Nao could tell you how it's done."

"It's true," Nao says, clenching his stomach as he eyes my lunchbox with envy. "The whole process is pretty straightforward. Which is something you would know if you had broken the bond already."

Rei's face falls and she pushes off of the building to take my shoulder. "Are you really not breaking it?" she asks, uncharacteristically sober. When I confirm, she sighs and says, "I just want to make sure you understand the consequences of your actions."

"I do understand," I say, shrugging her off. "I understand I have a duty to my village and that there is a war—"

"Is that really all there is to it?" Rei interjects, and I tense, pursing my lips as I struggle for an answer.

The door to the interrogation building slides open at that moment, saving me the awkward silence. "Kagiru Ren?" the shinobi from before says. "And . . . company. If you'll follow me."

The interrogation building is small, with a narrow hallway and poor air circulation. The building grows stuffy not long after the four of us cram into it, and I find I should have directed Rei and her team to a different building to help out instead of bringing them with me.

"Ibiki-san is in here," the shinobi leading us in says. He knocks on the door, too quietly for anyone to hear, I think, but it slides open partially. Another man on the inside see us and nods to us in acknowledgement before sliding the door open all the way, allowing us entrance.

Karin sits at a small wooden table, sobbing into her arms. I see a shinobi standing by her side wiping away his own tears, while Ibiki remains stone-faced at the other end. He sighs, says, "I didn't ask for your personal history. I want to know about Akatsuki, Sasuke, and Kabuto."

When she realizes her tears aren't winning her any pity points, she straightens immediately and leans her cheek into her hand, tsking. "In that case, I have some conditions. First off, I'm starving. If you're going to interrogate me, at least get me some katsudon!"

I frown at her disobedience and plop my lunch on the table, sliding it across to her and drawing everyone's attention. "How about you take what you can get. Ibiki," I say, greeting him with a small bow while Karin scowls at the box. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think I could be of use during this interrogation."

"Kakashi told me about what happened when he dropped this one off," Ibiki says, jerking a thumb toward Karin who pushes the lunchbox away, her nose in the air. "Do you think you'd be able to confirm anything she knows?"

"Possibly," I say as Nao picks up the lunch Karin has discarded and opens it with greedy fingers. "At the very least, I can help you identify the lies. These are some friends of mine—Rei, Hiro, and Nao," I say as Ibiki regards them with suspicion. "They're former shinobi of the Sound."

"We happen to also be very skilled at detecting lies," Rei says while, behind her, Hiro berates Nao and gives Karin back the lunch. "We humbly offer you our services."

"Well . . . thank you," Ibiki says, giving me a look that asks me why I thought to bring them with me. "For now, you three can sit over there while Ren and I take care of this."

"What's she said to you so far?" I ask, and Ibiki shakes his head, indicating that Karin has revealed nothing—at least, nothing important enough for him to reiterate to me. To be honest, I don't know much about interrogation techniques, besides having a stony stare and never smiling, both of which Ibiki has mastered. I settle with crossing my arms and frowning as deeply as possible as I say, "What do you know of Akatsuki's plans for the village?"

Karin looks up at me, displeased. She mirrors my frown and says, "They're going to destroy it. I thought that was common knowledge."

Ibiki raises a hand to stop my irritation from lashing out. He says, "Maybe I should ask the questions," and I relent with a grumble, remembering that I _am_ mostly here to affirm if any of what Karin says sounds remotely like the truth not actually run the interview myself.

"We know Akatsuki is headed by Uchiha Madara," he says, and Karin tenses, her fingers curling into tight fists on the table. "What can you tell us of his techniques?"

"All I know," she says, refusing to make eye contact, "is that Madara's techniques are out of this world. He can teleport from one place to another without a problem and can even create and transport people into other realms. He did it to me and Sasuke after Sasuke was fatally injured in his battle with the Kage. If I were you," she says, stabbing at a dumpling, "I would be very afraid for your village. There's nothing that can stop him."

"You underestimate us," I say, digging my nails into the palms of my hands. "Madara's only tactics are to divide up his enemy and make them weak. But this time the Five Nations have come together, formed an alliance, and we _will_ defeat him. We won't be like Sasuke, who's so easily manipulated by Madara's promises of power he doesn't even realize he's being used."

"Sasuke _isn't_ being used," Karin snaps, the wooden chopsticks in her hands splintering. She tsks and chucks them aside, saying, "At least, he doesn't _believe_ he is. He believes that, once this war is over and Konohagakure has been successfully crushed, he can break away from Madara and go do whatever the hell he plans on doing."

"But he won't," I say. "_Can't_. What does Madara want from him?"

Karin sighs, slumps in her chair. "The only thing Madara wants from Sasuke is for him to destroy Konoha. That will give him one less obstacle in the way of his great plan."

Ibiki straights, leans forward, and asks, "Speaking of Madara's great plan. We know he plans on capturing the remaining jinchuuriki to create a ten-tailed beast."

"I'm going to stop you right there," Karin says, turning her nose up at us. "All Madara told us was that he wanted to collect the jinchuuriki to extract the tailed beasts. He offered them to us in exchange for our loyalty, but I don't think Sasuke ever wanted them in the first place. And Madara never told us anything about what he planned to do with them or even that he had a _war_ in mind to collect them. You guys must know by now that we were unsuccessful in capturing the Hachibi, although we were almost killed in the process. Be grateful you weren't there for that part," she says, giving me a pointed look.

"What about Juugo and Suigetsu?" I say, ignoring her, as Ibiki scowls at her for interrupting him. "Where are they in this mess? Why aren't they with you?"

Karin scoffs, frowning. "Sasuke left them behind in the Land of Iron," she says more quietly than I have ever heard her speak. "As soon as I was able to locate Danzo, he abandoned them and left to find his target. For all I know, they could be dead. Listen," she says, before either of us can ask another question. "I can assure you that I know nothing about Madara's plans that could be useful to you, and if I did I wouldn't hesitate in telling you. I think you're forgetting that Sasuke almost killed _me_ too, and I was loyal to him through and through! I'm not going to try to defend his ass after he pulled a move like that, okay? Can I _please_ go now and get some real food? I hate gyouza."

Ibiki and I exchange glances, coming to the mutual understanding that this is about as much as we're going to get out of Karin. He sighs, displeased, and gets up, calling shinobi to help organize a place for Karin to stay. She frowns when she hears the word "cell" being thrown around, but only buries her face in her hands.

"It won't be so bad," I say, though I don't know why I'm trying to comfort her. "You've been compliant. We'll treat you well during your stay."

"Compliance doesn't change the fact that I'm still the enemy," she says, glaring at me. "I worked with Orochimaru long enough to know that." She presses her fingers to her forehead, her gaze flitting around the room. I try to follow suit, wondering what she's trying to see in this place, whether she's looking for an opening to escape, but really the room is too small for her to make a sudden movement without someone being able to grab her immediately.

She gives up her search, leaning her head into her hands. She keeps her head ducked as she speaks. "Everyone here," she says when Ibiki turns his back and orders one of his men to share what we've learned—or, rather, what we _haven't_ learned—to the war council, "has such warm chakras. It's a total turnaround from what I'm used to. Even your chakra has changed drastically from when you were with us. What is it about this place?" she asks, fidgeting with her glasses.

"Well, there's nothing special about the interrogation house specifically," I say, and she scowls at me.

"You know what I mean," she says, closing the lunch box with finality and pushing it away. "This place has something I've never seen before. It's like it has a weird charm over everyone."

This place. I look around at the shinobi in the room with me. Although some maintain serious faces as they take notes and discuss methods they believe can help rebuild Konoha faster, stronger, there are others who smile, nudge their partners to get them to lighten up. Rei, Hiro, and Nao are playing rock-paper-scissors quietly in their corner, and a few shinobi have caught on that Rei is unnaturally good and are placing bets on what she will call next. They cheer and tease each other when one makes a bad call, but they all end up laughing in the end.

"I can't place it either," I say, crossing my arms. "I think it's just, when you're around the right people, you can always be like this. You can always have this warmth."

Karin purses her lips as one of Rei manages to get a few of the guards to join in on the game before Ibiki stomps over and demands that everyone get back to work. Karin says, "I think I'd like it here. You know, if I weren't a prisoner of war."

"I think you can like it here," I say, "even if you are a prisoner of war. By the way, I really am sorry about the way Sasuke treated you. For all you did for him, you didn't deserve that."

Karin blinks at me, lowers her head, and fiddles her thumbs. "Maybe I did," she says, "for believing so foolishly that Sasuke could still be like the boy I met in the Forest of Death. He saved me during the Chuunin exams," she says when I furrow my brow. "And when I ran into him again, I thought: Maybe I could see him smile one more time and everything will be fine. But I should have known; his chakra had already grown so much darker, even with Orochimaru's curse mark broken."

As I mull over how Sasuke could have possibly managed to break Orochimaru's seal, Karin looks up suddenly, her hair flurrying around her with the briskness of the movement. Her red eyes shine in the musty yellow light of the interrogation room as she says, "Granted, his chakra was a little lighter when you were with still with us, but—at this point, I don't think even _you_ can save him."

Her comment causes the hair on the back of my neck to bristle. "I don't plan on trying," I say tersely.

She squints at me, scrutinizing, then shakes her head. "Right. Well, listen. I don't know exactly what this bond of yours entails, but, if you haven't already, I recommend you find a way to break it as soon as possible. You said it yourself: being with a guy like Sasuke isn't worth it. All he does is bring pain and sadness because all he cares about is himself."

Her outburst leaves me speechless, albeit annoyed. Her spiel is the same one I've been giving everyone around here for as long as I can remember, and no one has taken me seriously until now. Not to mention, to have an outsider lecture me ticks my nerves, but I know she's only trying to help me out, one girl to another, and prevent me from getting my heart broken.

Except I have never viewed Sasuke the same way as she has or the same way Sakura and Ino and all our old classmates. I mean, yes, Sasuke is handsome and occasionally succeeded in making me flustered, and I may have had my moments, like when I was a kid, where I was convinced we were meant to be together, but only because that's what the bond called for. That's how we were meant to be as bondmates.

But I have never wanted to be with him. Not like that.

I smile at Karin and say, "Yeah. Thanks."


	95. Family

**A/N:** I'm actually really nervous about posting this chapter. A lot of it is speculation about the restructuring/restoration of the village and highly derivative of the Naruto story line, but Naruto is off training to control the Kyuubi's power anyway. There's no place for Ren in that kind of thing. Plus, I liked writing this chapter too much; when I'm too proud of something I've written, it's always a sign that I've done something wrong.

I hope you enjoy it, regardless. Don't forget to check my profile for extras and previews of the next chapter! Thank you for reading, and thank you to those who favorite/review this story and continue return for each update. I would be nowhere without you.

-deardeer

* * *

**Bound  
Chapter 95: Family**

We've exhausted our usefulness at this point and leave before Ibiki's interrogation quarters sink into further disarray. I can tell through his stoic face that he's glad to see us go, though he does tell me I'm welcome back anytime within good reason—so long as Rei is not in tow.

"So what do we do now?" says Nao as he eats the food Karin had declined, much to Rei's teasing.

The village is rebuilding at an alarming rate, with clusters of buildings once again forming neighborhoods and little shops opening to provide food for the time being until more supplies can be imported. There are shinobi helping to organize the lines so people can get supplies for the night, but they're all much older than I am so I'm disinclined to ask them if I can lend a hand. My friends are probably with their families, helping their respective clans get settled into the village. I don't have that concern.

"It'd be good for us to find a place to stay for the night," I say, rubbing my chin as I try to think of where we could go to look for shelter. I'd rather not have to sleep outside for the night, but if it comes down to that, I think even then we're out of luck because of how badly the village has been damaged. My usual parks have been decimated. "The village officials should have shelters set up for people by now. Some of the more prominent clans in Konoha may already have dibs on the better homes, but I don't think they'd be insensitive enough to turn anyone away should they ask to stay with them. If worse comes to pass, we can see if we can stay with one of those families."

"Okay, so where are these homes?" Rei asks, stealing a dumpling from Nao's lunch and sticking her tongue out at him when he protests. Hiro sighs, shakes his head.

I blow stray strands of hair out of my face, and shrug, suggesting that we ask for directions again. As Hiro interrupts one of the shinobi dealing out provisions for families to ask him about shelter homes, I do a cursory take of the village. Nearby, there are small food stands providing provisions for dinner, or making meals on request. Everywhere, there is family.

I think about my friends. During a time when the stability of the village is being tested, the very least all my friends have is their families to fall back on. Mothers and fathers to comfort them, uncles and aunts to congratulate them, cousins and siblings to distract them. I have nothing but myself and this bond—and possibly Sasuke, but he is so far gone, he may as well not count at all. It makes me sad to think maybe I am alone, even though that's what I've been striving for by breaking this bond.

Hiro taps my shoulder, snapping me out of my reverie, points me in the general direction of what used to be considered the residential district before the village was destroyed. He explains, "That guy said they're hoping to rebuild everything just like it was before the attack. That way there's less confusion for everyone. Everything should be where you think it is."

I nod and lead them away from the shops. Eventually, the ratio of construction to completed buildings begins to fall as we see more homes flickering with firelight inside as the sun begins to set. Rei bounces along at my side while Nao and Hiro linger behind, talking about something I can't make out. They're so calm and—_normal_ compared to Rei, who hums a song under her breath and whose eyes won't stop flickering around the village.

"How did you ever end up with friends like Hiro and Nao?" I ask.

"Hmm? I _found_ them," she says, reaching up and brushing the feather pinned in her hair. "The spirits told me I needed companions. Hiro-kun and Nao had the kind of aura that wanted adventure, and I could provide them with adventure. So I found them and took them with me."

"She didn't kidnap us, if that's what you're thinking," Hiro speaks up, coming up beside Rei who takes his arm affectionately and grins. He smiles, ruffling his hair out of his eyes. "We were more than willing. We grew up in the same part of the the Land of Rice Paddies and we knew each other vaguely, so when she asked us to join her, we weren't all that skeptical about her abilities."

"Haven't I already told you this, Ren?" Nao says as he falls into step beside me. He's finished and discarded his lunch, freeing his hands to clasp behind his head.

"Yeah, but I wanted to make sure the stories matched up," I say, elbowing him and causing him to jerk out of his state of relaxation. "I thought Rei would have embellished the story and made it more interesting. Was it so bad in the Land of Rice Paddies that you wanted to leave?"

Rei chuckles and says, "Not if you love working in the rice fields every day," and Hiro nods while Nao sighs and seems to be displeased at the mere thought of the work. "Our main export is rice, obviously, so we always labored over how to get the highest yield, season after season. Even though I didn't like Orochimaru, the one good thing he did was gather all the talent that was wasting away in those swamps and establish a shinobi village. Before he came around, all our shinobi were shoved onto this makeshift militia, but with no formal training we weren't able to use ninjutsu very well."

"Were you three part of that?" The presence of families becomes more prominent the farther we go into this part of the village. I have to dodge racing children as we continue.

"Nah," Rei says, her nose wrinkling with distaste, and avoids a child blazing past us. "I'm first and foremost a shaman, tonakai. My main service to my people is performing shaman duties: spiritual and physical healing, providing spiritual guidance, performing marriage rituals. I only joined the shinobi forces once the Sound Village was established because the spirits had been bugging me about finding you, and I thought the best way to do that would be to become a shinobi. It was around that time I recruited Nao and Hiro-kun to be with me."

"And your family were okay with that? Just letting you join up with Orochimaru's ranks to find me?"

Rei gives me an imploring look, says, "Ren, might I remind you what your family name means to my family? Once I told them I was on a path to vengeance, they were all for me joining up with Orochimaru. Besides, they knew I wasn't going to get caught up in his little schemes."

"And once we told our families we were joining Rei on her endeavors," Hiro says, "they were reassured. The Kannagi are a prominent clan in the Land of Rice Paddies, full of powerful spiritual leaders. Our families figured with someone like that with us, we would survive whatever Orochimaru had in store for us."

"Of course, I had other things in mind," Rei says, her shoulders lifting into a shrug. "The spirits didn't want me to avenge anyone. They wanted me to set things right again, so I did. My family may be a group of shaman, but they don't have the same connection to the spirits as I do. I'm a direct descendent of the first Kannagi shaman, so I'm more powerful than the other shaman in my family. In fact, because of my lineage, I'm actually the head of the Kannagi clan."

She is smug as she says this, but when I point out the fact that she had been banished by her clan, she slumps and scowls, saying, "Yes, well, there _is_ a Kannagi Council of Elders and the votes were kind of skewed in that ruling. Unfortunately, traitors don't have veto power. Anyway," she says, straightening, "you're technically the head of your clan, too, aren't you? Being that you're the only one left and everything?"

I wince and Hiro elbows Rei to tell her she's been too brusque with her words. What Rei says may be the truth, but being reminded that I'm the last of my kind bothers me much more than it used to for some reason. I mutter, "Hm, yeah, if you want to look at it that way. But my father was the head of the Kagiru, so I would have inherited the title after him regardless of my clan's . . . near extinction."

"Well, look at us," Rei says, throwing an arm around my shoulders. "A power team! Once I regain control of the Kannagi and you've started churning out more Kagiru, we'll become the most influential clans in the Fire Country!"

"I don't know about that," I say, pushing her off of me. "Even if I were to continue the Kagiru line, our alliance would be insignificant compared to the other ones already present in the Fire Country. Plus, Shikamaru's father is head of the Nara at the moment and the way it's going, it looks like Shikamaru is going to inherit that title. So once that's settled, my clan and his will probably work closely, especially since they provide us with the deer antlers for our potions. Not to mention Chouji and Ino's fathers are both heads of their clans and—"

"Yeah, yeah," Rei grumbles, frowning at me. "You're just full of connections, aren't you?"

I laugh as someone calls my name through the throngs of people that have started to swarm around us. Over the heads of the people, I can see a middle-aged woman pushing through to me, her brown hair tied into a swinging ponytail on her head. It's Yoshino, Shikamaru's mother, looking flustered and relieved as she reaches for me.

"Ren! Thank goodness you're all right," she says, pulling me into an embrace that crushes my lungs. "I was so worried about you. Shikamaru told me you were okay, but words can't compare to actually seeing you."

"It's good to see you too, Yoshino-san," I say as she pulls away. She holds me at arm's length and inspects me as I introduce her to Rei, Hiro, and Nao. "They're here to help restore the village, but since it's getting late, we need a place to stay. You wouldn't happen to know of any free rooms we could have, would you?"

"Of course!" she says, swinging me around. "Our family have quite the setup because of our prominence in the village. You four can stay with us."

"Yoshino-san," I protest, but she cuts me off with the shake of her head.

"You're as much part of the family as any of us," she says, squeezing my shoulders tightly. "And I wouldn't have it any other way. After everything that's happened, I want to keep you children as close as possible while I have the chance."

_While I have the chance._ She must have heard about the threat of war already. Shikaku _is_ the Jounin Commander of Konoha and one of the chief military strategists. He would have told her at some point during the initial recuperation of the village, which explains why she appears so frantic at the moment, fussing with her hair and speaking sharply to a few men who cross our paths.

I place a comforting hand on her wrist as she scowls at the men who scurry away, and she jerks, surprised. "Thank you, Yoshino-san," I say, deciding it's best not to argue with her when she's stressed about what the upcoming war will mean for her. She's just as upset as I had been—with much more to lose. Her husband and son are some of the best and most trusted ninja in the village, and thus the most vulnerable in the war. And with them in the line of fire, I'm sure she will be at her wit's end. "If it's not too much of an imposition, we would love to stay with you."

Yoshino sighs, smiles with relief, and leads us to the pseudo-Nara compound where we're met with, expectantly, more Nara, whose sharp facial features and trademark ponytails seem to be a reflection of Shikamaru. I laugh inwardly at the sight of them all, so similar to my best friend. For a moment I wonder if, if my family were alive presently, I would be able to look at them and see pieces of me in each of their faces. I wonder if I would see my thick chestnut brown hair transposed onto the heads of my cousins and uncles and aunts, and how my plain, milky brown eyes would look on younger faces, older faces.

A piece of me crumbles when I realize I can't really remember what my family had looked like on their own.

The Nara compound is lively. As soon as we enter the main rooms, kids run past us, pretending to be the deer they had grown up around, while the adults lounge throughout the open area fret about the actual deer in the Nara family park. Yoshino provides the family with a general introduction of Rei, Hiro, Nao, and me, and they graciously welcome us.

"I remember you," one of the older men says. "You used to come around our estate all the time with Shikamaru. You were always rough with him, and he was always complaining about you. Knocked some sense into him if you ask me."

Rei laughs, elbows me, and repeats, "Rough on him, were you? No wonder he's so—"

"Shikamaru's taken me to the park before," I say to the man who had been speaking about the deer. Rei only grins at the fact that I've interrupted her and listens raptly to the conversation. "Is everything all right there?"

"It was far enough from the village to not be damaged in the fight," he says, "but the deer are a little shaken from the magnitude of the attack. Animals are more affected by our chakra than most of us realize, and it took a lot of chakra to do this much damage to the village."

"We're going to check on them in the morning," another Nara woman says. "You're more than welcome to come along, Ren-chan. Yoshino says you're a medic; if you want to learn more about the medicinal properties of antler, we could teach you a thing or two then."

"I like this family," Rei says to me as I thank them and let them go organize the provisions that arrive at that moment. "Their auras are so warm. They're so at one with nature! I can see where Shikamaru-kun gets his passiveness."

"Speaking of Shikamaru," I say, catching Yoshino before she goes to the kitchens to help prepare dinner. "Do you know when he and Shikaku-san will be returning from their meeting? They've been there for hours now, haven't they?"

Yoshino casts a nervous glance at the clock, biting her lip. "They should be home soon," she says, hands fluttering to smooth down her shirt. "Nothing to worry about, Ren. It's just a meeting after all."

It sounds more like she's trying to reassure herself than me, but I nod and let her go to the kitchen. While Yoshino always maintained a softer demeanor when she spoke with me compared to when she spoke with her son or husband, she's never been so on edge before, and it starts to unnerve me as well. I think about what could happen if, suddenly, the village were to be ambushed again and in our fragile state we were unable to protect ourselves and I lost one of my friends. A pain digs into my heart, and a fear begins to override my thoughts.

But then I remember what Shikamaru had said about pain, how it only reminds us that there are things we need to protect.

I swear I will protect this.

"Ahh, Shikaku-jiisama is home!" a child cries, breaking my reverie. I spin toward the foyer doors as Shikaku enters, rubbing the back of his neck, with Shikamaru in tow. While Shikaku lifts the children into the air and teases them, Shikamaru shoos them away with a scowl.

"Aw, Shikamaru-niisan, you never play with us anymore," one boy grumbles, crossing his arms and tapping his little foot. "Is it because you're a big boy now?"

"No," he says, mirroring his cousin's pout as Yoshino rushes back into the room at the sound of her son's voice. "It's because I've realized how troublesome you kids are."

Yoshino greets the both of them gleefully, urging them to sit and rest and telling them dinner will be ready in a few minutes. Shikaku allows himself to be led away by the children while Shikamaru remains sighing at the ones who continue to poke at him and are apparently hell-bent on convincing him to play with them.

When I laugh, he looks up, noticing me for the first time, and steps around his cousins to meet with me. "Your mom offered to let me stay with your family," I say as his cousins continue to jump around us, begging, "Shikamaru-nii, _please_! Please, please, please, please—"

"Sorry about this," he says about the children at his ankles. "Ever since Godaime singled me out, they haven't stopped bothering me. It's become a drag every time our family gets together."

"Hey!" The same boy who had earlier accused Shikamaru of being too much of 'a big boy' to play with them stomps his foot and points an accusatory finger at me. "I bet you play ninja with Ren-chan all the time, and she's a _girl_!"

Rei slides up beside me at that precise moment, nudging me and saying, "Play ninja, huh? Is that what you're calling it these days? Anyway," she says to the boy after a scatter of chuckles from the adults who had heard her joke. "What's wrong with being a girl? I bet I could beat you fair and square at any game!"

The boy gapes at her in disbelief before shouting, "You're on!" and chases her out of the room, much to Hiro and Nao's despair. They follow the gaggle of children who make their escape after Rei, apologizing to the adults they trip over in the process.

"Sorry about _that_," I say, propping my hand on my hip. "At least she got the kids away, right? How was the war meeting?"

He tires at the mention of the meeting and motions for us to sit down. We settle against the wall in the far back of the room before he starts to tell me about the progress they made during the meeting. The Five Nations have formally agreed to the Shinobi Alliance proposed at the Summit and plans are being made to organize the shinobi forces into a comprehensive unit. He says something about five divisions, how the battle may be coming in from the north so the villages will be safe, but all I notice while he talks is how serious he is.

He frowns and furrows his brow, and the lines around his eyes crease to make him look as old as he acts. He rubs his forehead as he talks about the Allied Shinobi Forces and splitting shinobi into divisions based on general abilities of shinobi, and there are a lot of emphatic hand gestures that go along with his words. But mostly he talks and I listen, and I'm glad that, though strategy is not my forte and I have nothing to contribute to the conversation, I'm able to help Shikamaru relieve his stress.

"The Kage are supposed to convene in three days and finalize our strategy. It's not as bad as it sounds," he says. "And if the other villages have as able a shinobi force as they're reporting, then we should be able to take Madara's forces without much of a problem. The only issue now is we don't know where Madara's getting his forces for the war. We have a team sent out to find information, but we've heard nothing from them."

"Well, it can't be long before we receive some kind of intel," I say as Rei runs through the room from the kitchen, holding a bowl of rice in her hands and laughing maniacally.

"Dinner's ready!" she trills, twirling as Shikamaru's young cousins race after her only to be scooped up by their respective parents and taken to the dinner table. I help Shikamaru up and he falls into step beside his family. Suddenly I'm caught in a wave of people of similar height and hairstyles with similar sluggish gaits and voices. I have to hold onto Shikamaru's sleeve to make sure I don't lose him, but I think that precaution is more out of fear anything. Because here I am amongst a crowd of people who love and care for each other and have one another every day of their lives, whereas I am, ultimately, alone.

I know my family wasn't the best, and the environment I grew up in was stifling and, admittedly, emotionally abusive at times, but we had our moments, like this one, where we would all walk alongside each other and tease each other and laugh. We would congratulate each other on our successes and achievements, like one of Shikamaru's uncles does, leaning over me to tell Shikamaru, "Hey, heard your dad got you in on the war council meeting. We're very proud of you! Soon you'll be ready to take over as head of the family, huh?"

Shikamaru accepts the comment with a sheepish smile, which drops off his face and is replaced by a tired pout when his uncle turns away. He massages the back of his neck with his free hand as my grip tightens on his sleeve.

The Kagiru had been like this too, a familiar tide that swept people away when we came together.

Now I'm all that's left, a little tadpole alone in an ocean.

"Hey, Ren," Shikamaru says, snapping me out of my reverie. "Everything all right?"

I muster a shaky grin that he takes with a grain of salt and say, "Yes, fine. Just hungry."

There isn't much variety at dinner because of the shortage after the destruction of our village, but the food is exceptional and there's enough to go around. Throughout the dinner, Rei continues to charm the whole of the Nara family, especially the children who, since their game of ninja with her, are enraptured by Rei's skill and humor. I think about what Shikamaru had said about how she reminded him of Naruto, and I realize how right he is. She's tiring and troublesome, but she has a certain charisma about her that makes it hard for her to be ignored. She can belong anywhere and everywhere.

I envy that about her.

As I eat, I watch the Nara, how most of the men and children are pushed by their wives and mothers to eat heartily. I listen to them talk about caring for the deer, how much antler they will have to harvest in preparation for the war. And I feel, for the first time in a long time, that I might have this again one day, this feeling of home and family and unadulterated love throughout.

[+]

After dinner, Shikamaru and I go outside to get away from his family. We sit against the side of the house, the barren dirt uncomfortable as we settle into it. We wish for the grass that had covered the village before the attack.

"Did you manage to get anything done after I left you earlier today?" Shikamaru asks.

"Yes, surprisingly, turns out I am capable of functioning without you, Shikamaru," I say.

He scowls.

"I went to the interrogation building," I say, pulling my knees up to my chest as Shikamaru crosses his arms. "To see if I could help Ibiki get any information out of Karin, the girl we brought back from the Land of Iron who was one of Sasuke's companions. I turned out to be no help at all, but Karin said something to me that I've been thinking about all day."

"What's that?" Shikamaru inquires, eyes tracing the stars. I wonder if he remembers the constellations I tried to teach him once.

"Nothing new, really," I say, resting my chin on my knees and watching my wriggling toes as I speak. "She told me to break the bond as soon as I could because, and I quote, 'being with a guy like Sasuke isn't worth it'. And, like, I've always known that, but—it made me realize why I haven't broken the bond yet, even though I have the means to do it."

"Yeah? And what's that?"

Shikamaru has his hands in his pockets, eyes closed. He's slumped against the house, his breathing so even I'm sure that, if I'm quiet for another second, he will fall asleep. He is so serene though we are on the brink of war. I wish I could have that.

"Find the bond," I say, resting my cheek against my knees and watching him, "was one thing. Actually breaking it, on the other hand, seemed so out of my realm that I—I just pushed it until everything around me broke and tried to compensate that way. And despite how much I have wanted this, despite how much I have done to accomplish this, I think, deep down, I never imagined it would be possible, and now that it is, I—I feel like I've . . . lost my sense of purpose."

Shikamaru opens an eye, says, "What do you mean?"

"I have put so much effort into this," I say. "I have put . . . _all_ my effort into this. I haven't looked forward to anything else, Shikamaru! I haven't made any other goals, I haven't—haven't thought about wanting anything else or what I would do after breaking the bond, and—I don't know. What will I have after this?"

Both of Shikamaru's eyes are open now, narrowed and skeptical, brow furrowed. He sits a bit straighter, and says, "I think you're overreacting, Ren. You have and will have plenty after this."

"How do you know?" I say, throwing up my arms. "How could you possibly know that?"

Shikamaru sighs. "I know," he says.

I push my hair from mye yes, glaring, and say, "Comforting. Don't do me any favors."

Shikamaru rolls his eyes and says, "Really, Ren. You'll find something else. That's what happens after you accomplish a goal. And knowing you, you'll find something."

I scoff, shaking my head. "Right. Thanks."

Shikamaru sighs, says, "Is that all that's bothering you?"

"Don't minimize my pain, Shika."

"I'm not," he says, defensive. "It just seems as though you wouldn't worry so much about that kind of thing. You've always had a sense of purpose, Ren. You've always had something to do. Besides, I can tell from your face that there's more to you than that."

I blink at him, surprised and then endeared. "Observant as always, aren't you? Yeah, okay, you got me."

I take a deep breath, pressing my forehead into my knees. When I speak, my voice comes out muffled to my own ears, and I don't know if Shikamaru can hear me, much less understand me, but I keep talking anyway.

"Sasuke is my last tie to my family, Shikamaru," I say, closing my eyes. "I may not be burdened by their deaths as much as Sasuke is, but I miss them, and I wonder if they would be proud of me, considering everything I've done. To break the bond would be the final, ultimate betrayal of my family and I don't—I don't want to lose them even more than I already have. I know that sounds stupid, but I understand, you know, where Sasuke is coming from. In a way, I'm just like him. He will stop at nothing to get his vengeance; I stopped at nothing to break this bond. I risked losing everything—you, Sakura, the village—just so I could get what I wanted. I didn't care about anything else. I just wanted what was rightfully mine—to be mine and nothing else mattered. That's why Sasuke is the way he is. He is closer than he has ever been to avenging his clan. He can taste it, and he'll stop at nothing to get it. Even if it means losing us in the long run. And I'm in the same position."

"You are not in the same position," he says, and I wave him off.

"Honestly, Shikamaru," I say. "You're only saying that because you don't get it. I'm so close to breaking this bond, I literally had it in the palm of my hand yesterday. And I'm thinking of all the things I could gain by breaking it, like friendship unburdened by the weight of this secret or being able to love someone else without the bond guilting me into thinking about how betrayed Sasuke would feel if he knew. But seeing Sasuke has made me think of what I could lose by breaking this bond, too. I mean, my family may be dead, Shika, but—like I said. I still love them. I still want to keep them close to me. Especially after seeing you with your family tonight. Especially after feeling that kind of warmth. You only have one family. Regardless of what happens, what you do, where you go, they remain your family. You want them to have faith in you and be proud of you, even if it's just in your memory. And if I break this bond—I think that's it for the Kagiru. We'll be nothing and it'll be all my fault."

There is a pregnant pause, during which I think Shikamaru is either too uncomfortable to answer me or hasn't heard a word I said, both of which I'm fine with because I realize too late how whiny and ramble-y I sound. But then Shikamaru sits up and clear his throat. Looking up from my knees, I see him draw his feet up and cross them. I see him return my gaze, brow pulled together and eyes set with kindness.

"The family you have by blood," he says, "doesn't have to be your only family, Ren. Naruto, Sakura, and Kakashi are your family. So are Ino, Chouji, and Rei and her friends. _I'm_ your family. And I think I can speak for everyone when I say that we're here for you and we are proud of you and everything you have done," he says, "regardless of the mistakes you've made."

I blink at him as he says this, notice the way his gaze stays trained on me, sincere and firm, unabashed. It reminds me of when he had comforted me all the time ago before I had left the country to train on my own. His kindness fills me up the same way it had then, and I am to the bursting with how much I love this boy.

He's right. My friends have been my family for as long as I can remember. Kakashi like a father. Naruto and Sakura like my overbearing siblings. And Shikamaru—where do I even begin with Shikamaru?

He is everything to me.

I lay my hand on top of his, squeezing his fingers. "Thank you, Shikamaru," I say with a small smile. He nods, and then we sit like that for a long time, my thumb smoothing over the back of his hand, our shoulders pressed together.

I fall asleep against him.

* * *

**Thank you for reading! Please review!**


	96. Last

**Bound  
Chapter 96: Last**

Rei looks up at me in astonishment when I toss the contract into her lap. Hiro and Nao stop weaving baskets or whatever Rei has them doing and stares at me as well, confused.

"We're breaking it," I say, sitting down in front of her. "Now, before the war starts."

Rei lifts the contract, motions for Hiro and Nao to scoot closer to us outside the Nara compound. Inside, the adults are waking up the children and making breakfast. I hear the soft conversations about going to the deer park later to calm the animals and collect antler.

The air isn't as heavy as it was yesterday. There is a soft breeze that lilts through the village, the ruffle of trees sorely muted because the only trees that have survived the blast are the ones on the outskirts of the village. The sky remains clear, bright blue and beaming with sun. I am looking up.

"I thought the war took priority," Rei says once the boys settle beside us. "Why the sudden change of heart?"

I don't know if it's a change of heart so much as a clarity of the mind. I say, "I've missed having a family. I've missed having a mother who makes me lunch and an overbearing father and cousins who chase me down and tell me to play ninja with them. This bond kept me tied to that life. But last night Shikamaru made me realize I have a new family—as cheesy as that all sounds," I say, cringing at the sentimentality of it. "But really. You, Hiro, and Nao, and Shikamaru and Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi—you guys are all I could ever—"

Rei nearly tackles me to the ground then as she lunges forward to hug me. I'm grabbed and braced by Nao, and I'm about to thank him when he leans in to join the hug, before Hiro does the same. I'm too stunned to react for a moment, but then I relax and hug them back as best I can, their bodies warm and welcoming. And we stay there, a tangle of people in the morning light, reveling in each other's presence before we break away and Rei smiles, pressing her hands over her heart.

"Ren," she says, "that is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard you say. Ever since I was banished from my clan, Nao and Hiro-kun are all the family I've had. I am so happy we're considered your family, too."

I laugh, knotting my hands together. "I'm happy too," I say quietly. "And that's exactly why I've resolved to break the bond now instead of waiting any longer. My family—my blood family—are still important to me, despite everything I've said and done against them. But they're gone and I need to move on. I won't forget them, won't discard the things they taught me, but I can't hang on to their legacy as a subservient clan anymore. If I'm going to rebuild the Kagiru line, then I'm going to do it my way, and we will be a storm, not the ripples left in the wake of a storm."

"That's what I like to hear!" Rei says, pumping a fist into the air. "Good on ya, tonakai." She picks the contract up where it had fallen to the ground in the midst of our hug and says, "Let's go ahead and break this thing then."

Shivers run up my spine causing my hair to stand on ends. Rei, Hiro, and Nao get to their feet, unperturbed by the statement, by what's about to happen. I had woken up resolute and now, faced with the prospect of breaking the bond, I am shaking all over.

"Hey, you okay?" says Rei, noticing how I remain in place.

I jump, quick to follow them. "Yes," I say, clipping my hair behind my ear, "fine. Sorry. Let's do this."

She quirks her brow, skeptical, says, "Do you want to get Shikamaru and have him here for moral support?"

"Uh, no, I'd rather do this alone," I say, failing to mention that I had had to steal the contract from Shikamaru before he woke up in order to get it here in the first place. "For old time's sake!" I say when she scowls at me. "This will be the last thing I do alone before I spend the rest of my life happy with everyone else."

She rolls her eyes at me, but doesn't argue, leading us to a more secluded part of the village. We slip into a corner of the village built up with piles of timber, much like where Naruto had held the group meeting upon returning from the Land of Iron. Once we're inside, Rei orders us to stand half a meter apart, Nao and Hiro opposite each other, and me a ways back behind them so that we form an uneven triangle.

Rei pauses, makes sure we're aligned, then, tucking the contract under her arm, turns on her heels, flips through hand signs, and slams her palms into the ground. Her action brings up a wall of earth, completely blocking us in.

"It's to make sure we're not interrupted," Rei says when she sees my alarm. "Who knows how this thing is going to go? I've never done it before, and I haven't been able to come across any stories that had bond breaking end happily, so. Nothing to worry about though, Ren," she says when I gape at her. She winks at me, dropping the contract on the ground, right between Nao and Hiro. "I'll take care of you. In the meantime, every precaution, right? Speaking of precaution, do you still have that necklace I gave you?"

"Uh," I say, reaching for my neck where there is, obviously, no charm hanging from a leather band. Rei sees the nakedness, frowns, as I remember how I had broken it off. "No. Sorry. I gave it to one of Sasuke's teammates before our fight with Itachi."

Rei sighs, fidgets with the feather in her hair. "You gave it to that bulky guy with the blonde hair, right? Kind of crazy looking? Had that weird flesh that turned purple and transformed into weird shapes?" I nod. "Yeah, makes sense. He had a weird aura about him. I hope that charm helps. Anyway, that's fine. We can do this without it. It just would have been a nice artifact to have on hand. Now, distract yourself for a moment while I do this."

"And what," I say as she kneels and draws a circle around the contract, "exactly are you doing?"

"Setting up for the bond breaking ceremony," she says. "When your ancestors did this, it was relatively simple: the slicing of their hands, the wine mixed with their blood, probably a few dimly lit candles for ambiance. But it created this pact that has lasted centuries, longer even. We're going to do something similar, except with a few more symbols and less ado."

She lifts the contract and begins to draw three swirls, connected in the center to look like sprouts blooming from the same seed, and a circle to contain it. "What I'm drawing represents aspects of the bond," Rei explains without my prompting. "The circle represents the nature of the bond, how it's supposed to be this eternal thing. This triskelion—the swirly symbol inside the circle—represents the power of life and rebirth, how the bond is passed down through your family. And these—" She draws four lines radiating from the circle, one pointing at each of us. "—will help us connect the metaphysical existence of the bond to earth and allow us to break it."

Rei places the contract over the swirls, brushing off the dirt spotting the parchment. She coils her hair into a bun and stabs her feather through it to keep it in place, standing. As she goes to take her place at the end of the last line, she says, "I have you three standing where you are because of the elements you posses. Nao, you're in the east to correspond with air, which cools and breathes life into everything. I'm in the south for fire, which sparks life and destruction. Hiro-kun is in the west for water, which cleanses us and gives us a chance for rebirth, and you, dear tonakai, are in the northern position for earth, which feeds us and becomes our mother and home, in life and in death. With that, we welcome the spirits of these elements to our ceremony, to breathe life into our words, to fuel our energies and destroy that which binds us, to bathe us with clarity and give us new life, and to root us in our convictions and grant us a new home."

Rei's voice quiets as she speaks, her body relaxing as she breathes deeply. I look to Nao and Hiro to see if they have any idea what's supposed to happen only to find them with their eyes closed, head bowed. Quickly, I do the same, peeking out of one eye to watch Rei as she proceeds.

She opens her arms, holding out her hands palms up. She says, "We are filled with the guiding grace of the spirits, with their love and their strength. And through the power of the elements we have brought with us today, we ask that what was done, be it now undone. Cleanse the Kagiru soul of stain. Let the bond that links the Kagiru and the Uchiha reverse and lift from each this vicious curse. Return their spirits to their former graces without harm, and grant them peace."

We lapse into silence and I close my eyes completely, waiting. I expect a stirring in my gut or exploding in my head as the bond unravels. My nails dig into my palm in anticipation for the pain. But there is nothing, and after a few more moments, I open an eye and say, "Uh. Is that it?"

Rei raises her head to return my gaze. "That's it," she says, a piece of her hair unfurling from her bun and swirling into her face, "for the ceremony, at least. And with thee spirits I do part; Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, I thank thee and send thee in peace. Ren, if you would step forward."

I scowl, disappointed by how anticlimactic the process had been. Rei approaches the circle with me and we kneel down with our knees pressed to the very edge of the drawing. She leans forward to touch the contract, slip her fingers under the broken seal.

"I opened it while you were gone," she says, giving me a sidelong glance. "I hope that's okay. It was the only way I could figure out how to break it."

"It's fine," I say, even though my stomach drops at the idea of anyone but me reading the contents of the contract. Rei is unconvinced by my statement but unfolds the contract, spreading it across the whole of the circle. The ink on the yellowed parchment is crusty, flaking away as Rei smoothes the contract across the dirt. I wince at the state of the contract, am briefly miffed to see it smothered into the ground, but push my feelings aside.

I remind myself: this is what I have been waiting for. Besides, the contract spent nearly a decade under a floorboard, being trampled over and crushed under a mountain of books at one point. It can stand to be laid in the dirt.

Some of the ink is too faded for me to make out the whole of the contract; I see faintly the words 'loyal' and 'everlasting' but bypass all the technicalities to the bottom of the contract where there are two signatures and smudges of deep red. Without a word, Rei takes my hand and lifts it. Before I can ask what she's doing, she stabs the tip of a kunai into the flesh of my middle finger. In my surprise, I jerk away from her, but her grip is tight and the movement only causes the kunai to dig deeper into my finger.

"What are you _doing_?" I demand, raising my fingers to my mouth as soon as she lets go.

As I'm about to lick the blood away, Rei says, "Don't. You're going to need a lot of blood for this part. We're going to officially nullify the bond."

"What? Then what was the point of what we did just then?"

"That was a ceremony I improvised so we would be in the spirits' good graces for this part," Rei says, stuffing her kunai back into her holster. "It's going to make sure we do this right and, you know, make sure your soul stays intact while we do it. Remember, this bond isn't just in your blood; because of the nature of the contract, it binds your soul to the Uchiha, too. That's how it keeps getting recycled in each life."

I groan, slumping, and complain, "I thought you said this was going to require _less ado_."

"I lied. Besides, you want to stay a part of the mortal realm after you break this contract, right? So do as I say and smear your blood across both signatures, as well as the blood seals."

"What, am I remaking the contract with myself?" I say.

"Essentially," she says. "When I read this contract over, it was the only thing I could think to do. You repeat the same steps your ancestor did and remake the contract on your own. That's why we needed to do that protection slash cleansing ceremony first. I've consulted with the spirits enough to know no danger will come to you. It was more like a prayer circle than anything, anyway. All right, now, as you wipe your blood, repeat this: 'I pledge myself to uphold the high purposes of this contract to which I have lov—'"

"Wait, wait, wait," I say. "I can't remember all that. Tell me as I do it."

She laughs and says, "Okay, okay. Go. I'll repeat it to you."

Rei gestures to the contract and for a moment I purse my lips, thinking about how I don't know where this goddamn parchment has been, what kind of bacteria is on it. Still, I buff up and press my thumb over where I see the Uchiha name and smear my blood until it stretches under the Kagiru name, a bright red rainbow against gold, while reciting after Rei.

_I pledge myself to uphold the high purposes of this contract to which I have lovingly dedicated myself and my soul. I will be true to the vows laid out in this contract and to you, from this day forward. To thee I will be loyal. To thee I will give my love. This is my solemn vow._

And with that it's done. I heal my finger, wiping off the excess blood, and Rei mumbles something under her breath. She closes her eyes, her hands pressed one over the other at the bottom of the circle.

Again, I wait for a clue that the bond has broken and I am free at last, but nothing happens. I'm about to stand when Rei places a hand on my knee and shakes her head, cuing for me to remain seated.

I sigh, bow my head, and close my eyes. I thought this would be something I would be happy about, but so far I've only been disappointed—disappointed that the bond has gone out with a whimper rather than a bang. Disappointed that centuries of loyalty has come to this: extended moments of silence and a stabbing pain in my index finger.

Years and years of pouring over this bond, of fretting and crying and losing friends over it, are finally catching up to me and I am all at once overwhelmed with exhaustion from all the effort it had taken me to get here only to sit quietly in the dirt.

I drop my face in my hands, wanting nothing more than to sleep. But when I lean down, I don't have the strength to stop myself and end up doubling over, face-planting into the dirt.

And I'm gone.

[+]

I feel him.

He is everywhere around me, within me, swimming through my blood, using my bones as paddles. I feel his skin against mine, his forehead against mine, his hands around mine. I am drowning in the scent of him.

He slips through me like a dream, the darkness of his eyes warping, lighting the emptiness around us in red. It dismantles me, pulls the pieces of me into him until we are nearly one.

Nearly.

A sliver of myself is still free, writhing, pulling until it unravels us, spinning us away from each other. He grabs my wrist, holds onto it so tightly, desperately, that I am tempted to stay beside him. My resolve weakens even more when the red light begins to fade, and then it is just us in the darkness, a girl and a boy bound to each other by more than blood, by a bond greater than the sum of our parts.

I am inclined to love him, inclined to stay with him, inclined to comfort him and tell him I could never leave him. But the darkness grows deeper and his hands are cold against me and I can't. Otherwise, he'll freeze me too.

A fire ignites in my fingertips, spreads through my palms, blooming in my chest and stomach and throat. From the inside out, I am burning. Slowly, my skin starts to glow, cutting through the darkness, bringing us into the light.

And there he is before me. _Sasuke._ He is brimming, the defined lines of his face brought into sharp relief. I am shocked by his features, how much he has matured over the past years without my knowing. Despite spending all that time with him, I'm not used to seeing this man over the boy I used to know.

He is still holding onto me, my wrists tiny in his grasp. He is still cold as frost.

I open my mouth to say his name, but instead of sliding off my tongue, it echoes in my head, drumming. _Sasuke. Sasuke. Sasuke._

_Can you feel me now, Sasuke?_

His eyes widen in an expression I don't recognize on his face. Then it registers: pain. Like when I had seen him over the river in the Land of Iron, his heart swollen and aching and suffering. His grip falters and all at once he becomes small to me. We are not master and servant, only a boy and girl who lost each other at some point, two people who had the potential to be more than a bond.

This time, when I say his name, my voice works. But my words fall flat, and I realize there's no point talking. We are both too far gone down our own paths. Even if we turn around now, we will never catch up with one another.

So I take his face in my hands, his skin smooth, cool. Just as he always was when I knew him. I run my thumb over his cheekbones, scour every inch of his face, memorizing it, searching for pieces of me within him. The last parts of him that I knew. I smile.

Leaning up, I kiss his forehead, his eyes, his cheeks. The gesture is simple, but love long overdue. I press my cheek against his, wrapping my arms around his shoulders.

I tried. I really tried to be there for him. But something's gotta give eventually, right?

He cannot be here. He is somewhere else, someone else. The person who stands before me is only a hallucination. This is all in my head and so, unashamed, I can say, "I loved you once, you know. And maybe Sakura is right and I love you still. You _were_ my first friend, Sasuke. In that way, I could never stop loving you."

No answer. But his arms move, hands rest against my back, the balls of his fingers heavy on my spine.

"But this is it," I say, smoothing down his hair. "The bond is broken. This is the last of us."

My shirt goes taut as his hands tighten around me, his nose dipping into my collarbone. And that's how I know this cannot be the real Sasuke. He could never be like this.

I open my eyes, wanting to see him one last time, but find that I am grasping air. The coldness of his touch is gone, the pressure is gone, and I am alone with red sparks gracing my fingertips.

I close my eyes again, trying to catch the lingering scent of him.

There is a brush of apples, and then nothing.

[+]

When I wake up, a woman is at my side, her slender legs folded beneath her. She is dressed like a shinobi, complete with a Konoha forehead protector tied traditionally around her forehead and an evergreen flak jacket. The woman is young, with short brown hair that curls into ringlets around her ears and bobs as she turns to me.

Although I don't recognize her, her presence is the least of my concerns. Behind her—no, surrounding both of us is this darkness, an endless darkness that makes the sky indistinguishable from the ground so it's like we're floating in a fathom of nothingness. The woman doesn't seem to be alarmed by the abysmal darkness as I sit up and search frantically for a light, any light. Instead, she smiles at me and says, "I am glad you are awake. How are you feeling? I usually find these kinds of transmissions dizzying."

"Transm—what are you talking about?" I say, scrambling to my feet while she remains seated, her hands folded neatly in her lap. "Where am I?"

The woman's smile sticks to her face, unwavering, but there is a hint of amusement to it now. "You are in Konoha," she says, "with three of your friends—Rei, Hiro, and Nao—hiding in a corner of the village. There is nothing to worry about, Kagiru Ren. Sit," she says, patting the darkness beside her. "I am happy to meet you. There is much to say, but I am afraid my time is short."

"Much to say is right," I grumble, eyeing the woman suspiciously. "Who are you? How do you know my name? And _where_ are we really?"

"Sit," she says, adamant, "and I will tell all."

With nowhere else to go, I sit and the woman pats my knee like I am a child. I scowl. My displeasure only amuses her further.

"I suppose introductions are in order," she says, and presses a hand to her chest. "I am a Kagiru, like you, but more importantly, I am your predecessor, the one who held the bond before you. I know your name because we who are bound all know each other."

I blink at her in disbelief as the woman smoothes down the wrinkles of her skirt. When she meets my gaze, there is no trace of humor in her face, no trace of deceit. But this must be a hallucination. She can't possibly expect me to be—

Her eyes flash, and with sudden clarity, I can see my face in hers—the soft point of my chin, the long, slim nose, the thick hair that poofs just above the fabric of her headband. Her lips lilt into a smile as she sees the recognition in my eyes, and she reaches up to swirl one of her dark brown curls around her finger.

"I know it must be a shock," she says, "but it's the truth. And while we are technically still in Konoha, this place we currently occupy is a recess of your mind, the portion of it most in touch with the spirit world. We are souls connecting, which means your body is not technically present. Your friends in the physical world can try as they might, but until I am released, you will not wake."

"You make it sound like I'm dead!" I choke, my hands tightening around my knees. That would explain why it's so dark, why I'm talking with, from what I understand, _a spirit_.

The woman's curls bounce around her head as she shakes with laughter. "You are by no means dead," she says, wiping a tear from one of her big, sweetly brown eyes. "In a coma, maybe, but not dead. Your shaman friend will be able to sense what is happening to you and take care of you accordingly."

"But if I'm not dead," I say, "or at the very least _dying_, then how am I speaking with you? If you're a—a past life of mine?"

She purses her lips in thought, rubbing her chin. She snaps her fingers together and says, "Ah, yes. Let me explain it this way. You know of the tailed beasts and the jinchuuriki inside whom those beasts are sealed. Your friend Naruto is one of them, if I recall correctly. Well, my existence within you is essentially the same. I am a separate consciousness, the one who urges you to follow your basic instinct and protect Sasuke and the Uchiha, the one who gives you the power to protect them when you have none."

I groan, running my hands over my face. "A separate consciousness," I mumble, giving a shrug of defeat. "I'm crazy. That explains everything: I'm crazy and there's no coming back from this. Even if I've managed to break the bond—"

The woman sits straighter at the mention of the bond, or maybe at the mention of breaking it, and her brow pulls together. "Speaking of the bond," she says, "that is why you are here: to better understand it."

"You're a dozen years too late, sempai," I say, pulling my knees to my chest and folding my arms on top of them. "The bond is broken. Er," I say when she raises a brow at me, "well, I guess if you're here, it could _not_ be broken. I thought it had broken. I hope it's broken. Especially after all the effort I went through, not to mention that stupid ceremony Rei had us—"

"So it would seem," the woman says. Her words are followed by a sigh that deflates her entire posture. She says, solemn, "To be honest with you, Ren, the bond has been broken for a long time now. It's been broken since the moment you decided there were other people you cared about more than Sasuke and living up to the expectations of your family. The ceremony you performed only confirmed it."

I'm not sure how to comprehend what she says. I end up biting my lip so hard that, when the pain starts to register and I relax my mouth, I taste blood.

The bond has been broken for a long time now.

"How?" I manage, my words crackling. I'm glad that, despite the mystical surroundings and frankly phantasmal presence before me, our voices don't echo against the darkness, otherwise I would have had to listen to my voice breaking over again, adding to my embarrassment. "How is that possible? The bond doesn't . . . _work_ that way, does it? And if it's been broken for—a while, then why was it still able to control me and connect me to Sasuke?"

"Because you cared for each other. The bond's power is based on how much you care for your partner," the woman says, ever calm. "In some lives, the bond has been stronger than others, like my own and, of course, in its first incarnation. In your life, however, it suffered multiple injuries, the most notable being when Sasuke left the village to join with Orochimaru. Not to mention it had been dormant for three generations to recover from when _I_ severed it with my disobedience."

"Disobedience," I repeat, my incredulity growing with every passing second. "That's what caused the bond to go into remission?"

"Yes, essentially," the woman says. "It sounds too simple to be true, but when you stop trusting the Uchiha, when you start doubting their hold over you, just how much they can force you to do, the basic foundations upon which the bond was made is put into question and the bond loses its standing. It's much like when you are a child and you realize your parents and family are not the whole world, that there are people outside of your compound who have their own lives and troubles and continue to do things even when you are not around them. For a moment your world is shaken. For a moment you lose sight."

I pout at the same time the woman frowns. We sit in silence, simmering over the analogy. "Is that how it was for you?" I ask finally. This time my voice doesn't crack, only comes out eerily quiet. "You realized the world was bigger than the Uchiha?"

The woman sighs. Even her curls seem to lose some of their bounce. "No. I wasn't like you, Ren. The Uchiha were my world, the only thing that mattered to me, through and through. But I became bitter toward the Uchiha. I hated them for what they did to Izuna, the man to whom I was bound. They took his eyes, and in the end, none of it was worth it. None of it mattered. After Izuna-sama passed away, I still had a duty to the Uchiha to preserve his memory and keep the legacy of the bond alive. But I was unable to do that because of the way the Uchiha handled Izuna-sama's death, like it was heroic and admirable. It was a death sentence for him to give away his eyes to his brother, Madara, for Izuna to give up his Sharingan, the one thing the Uchiha relied on most. Even _they_ knew to give away one's sight was foolish, and they allowed him to do it anyway—but with me at his side, he was able to last longer than anyone thought he would. Regardless, there is only so much you can do without seeing and eventually, Izuna-sama fell in the midst of battle."

The woman presses a hand to her forehead and breathes deeply, as though to prevent herself from crying. In the moment I give her to collect herself, I see myself in her more than before: how much she can't help but love Izuna, even after all this time, and how she resents the Uchiha, what they have done to her.

"I turned my back on the Uchiha the day we buried Izuna-sama," she says without looking at me. Her gaze rests in her lap, on her twiddling fingers. "I called them out on their selfish ways, but they denied it, insisting my grief was making me lose my mind. And in a way, I think it was. The bond is a heavy burden we carry, Ren."

She looks up, reaches out to squeeze my forearm. Her hand has no warmth, no frost. It is as though nothing has touched me at all where her fingers rest, and the sensation—or lack thereof, really—sends shivers up my spine. "Our family and friends believe it to be a magical force, like something that grants wishes and calls upon a fairy godmother to protect the Uchiha when they need her. Ideally, the bond should create the perfect shinobi team, but in reality, it is much more dangerous than that. At least for us, the Kagiru who carry the bond. Slowly, we lose our sanity to it, regardless of whether we are able to fulfill the duties it asks of us. That is the result of a force that manipulates our feelings, our state of mind, in order to serve someone."

She sits back, her gaze focusing on a point past my shoulder. She closes her eyes as she speaks, smiles slightly. "When I found strength in myself, I made the bond weak. When I decided I did not need the Uchiha, that the business of this bond was rather silly to begin with, the voice that consoled me to return to the Uchiha began to diminish before it disappeared completely."

When her eyes open, they flash with pride, and her voice grows ever firmer. She rolls her shoulders back and says, "It was then I realized that without me, the bond was nothing. I was the one with the real control—not the Uchiha, not this pestering voice inside my head. Because without me, the both of them would not have been able to accomplish half the things they asked. That was the first fault in the bond, the first injury that continued to worsen each day I was alive, and only scabbed over when I was executed. It was a scar that opened again when Sasuke rejected you when you first ran away nearly ten years ago and has only continued to fester with every attempt you've made to break it and replace him."

I blow my hair from my face, attempting to clip a strand of hair behind my ear that only flops back into place. "Then all of this," I say, referring to the ceremony, the years of chasing after a way to break the bond, "was for nothing? I could have sat back and let the bond unravel on its own?"

The woman shakes her head, reaches out and tucks my hair behind my ear. This time, it sticks. "Not for nothing, Ren," she says. "Your struggle has weakened the bond immensely and brought it to its knees. Not to mention, your journey to break the bond has taught you much about relationships and what's important to you. Contrary to what you believe, it has brought you closer to your family, the old and the new. And you have regained a sense of self-worth that has not been in our family for a very long time. You have given strength to the Kagiru name again, Ren. You have preserved our legacy through your actions."

"Then why do I feel like I'm destroying our family?" I ask, my chest tightening. "Why do I feel like I'm letting go of the one thing we have been known for?"

The woman grows serious, her mouth pursing into a tight line. "Because you are," she says. "You have ruined the Kagiru name so far as the bond goes—but is that so awful?" she asks when I flinch and avert my gaze. "Would you rather be known as a skilled medic and kunoichi or as a shinobi whose only purpose is to abase herself to another clan? Ren," the woman says, her fingers brushing my jaw and lifting my face so my eyes are level with hers. Her touch is so gentle, so motherly, that I find myself leaning into it. "You are recreating the Kagiru name in your own right. This issue with the Uchiha may tarnish your reputation for a while, but what does it matter in the long run if you are able to gain true friendships from it? True bonds that are yours, wholly yours, and can be dictated by no one other than you?"

At a loss for what to say, I laugh instead, drawing the woman's hand away. She squeezes my fingers before she lets go completely, and another silence surrounds us.

I don't know how to take this all in. I don't know if I should readily accept the fact that I'm not crazy and this woman really is me in a past life. Maybe the bond is driving me crazy and this is one intricate hallucination I'll wake up from and won't remember. But I know in my gut everything she says is the truth. And what she says falls in line so absolutely with what my mentality regarding the bond that I don't think she could be anyone else other than me. But that leaves only one question.

"You said you're the voice of the bond," I say and she nods. "If that's the case, why are you justifying this? Why are you telling me I'm right to break the bond when you should be trying at all costs to force me to keep it intact?"

The woman considers my question before she shifts so we're sitting side-by-side, our shoulders pressing together. This close to me, I can see the faint scars on her cheeks and arms, souvenirs of battle, of the war she must have fought in a decades ago alongside men of myths. It makes her appear even more ethereal.

"Do not get me wrong: during my tenure with the bond, I genuinely loved the Uchiha. They were not my masters, but my friends, my allies. They were my everything until the incident with Izuna-sama. But the bond was not meant to last as long as it did," she says, patting my knee. "It's antiquated, and that old magic has no place in our times. I think it knows its time has come, too. It sees the pleasure and happiness new bonds bring you, and it has found another way to live on in them. After all, if it continues to push your connection with Sasuke, it knows it won't last. Why risk dying forever when there is a way to survive, even if it is in a more diluted state?"

I scoff, shaking my head. "So even the bond wants to be broken," I say. "What a revelation."

The woman laughs, the bobbles of her hair bouncing around her face. "So it would seem," she says. "I have to hand it to you, though, Ren. You must love someone very much for the bond to have so much hope that it can still survive even after your connection with Sasuke is severed."

Her statement reminds me of what the Third Hokage had told me once, when I'd first returned to the village after years abroad. "This forming bonds thing," I'd said, "I'm not interested. Why would I want to start forming bonds when I've spent nearly a third of my life trying to break one?"

"I only thought," he'd answered, "you would want to replace a bond you hated with many you would love." And when I shook my head and denied any such desire, he said, "There must be one bond out there you cherish above all else."

"Yes," I agree now, just as I had then, but this time it's not just _someone_. I love the whole of Konoha, from the dirt paths to the parks, to the belief system and the people. It is my home, my family.

I cannot even begin to pinpoint the moment when I started to change.

"Ah," the woman says, holding her hands out before her and I realize a second later what she has. Slowly, she is fading, her olive skin turning pale against the darkness. "It seems my time is coming to an end. I leave you with this, then, Kagiru Ren."

She takes my face in her transparent hands; like before, I can't feel them on my face, and the absence of her touch is eerie. "You are strong, possibly the strongest Kagiru of us all," she says. "I admire you, that you were able to overcome this obstacle at such a young age, along with losing your parents and, at times, your friends. But you have always come back, and you have rebounded better than ever this time around. Though it may not mean much for me to say this: I am so proud of you and everything you have accomplished. I am so proud to have you as my successor."

The smile she offers me is brilliant, and though she is fading fast, the beam of her smile seems to delay her dissolution. I reach up, laying my hands over hers, determined to keep her with me longer so I can hear more of what she has to say, but my fingers end up falling right through her.

"Wait," I say, but I'm unable to grasp her as I try to take her wrists, her shoulders to keep her here. She continues to smile at me like there is nothing wrong, like I'm not trying frantically to keep her in place. "Wait, please—"

She sits forward, leaning up to plant a soft kiss on my brow. "We were named for the lilies of the pond," she says, her face losing color, losing substance . "Keep that in mind, next time you face adversity. We see both the sun above and the murky waters below. And we thrive from exposure to both. Even if you are the last of your kind, you will thrive, Ren. You must."

And then she is gone.


	97. Unbound

**Bound  
Chapter 97: Unbound**

I wake up to another darkness, though this time I can make out the faint outlines of items: a chest of drawers, a door, the bed on which I lay. I push myself up, my arms wobbling under the weight of my body, and comb my hair out of my face. I am alive, which is good.

How did I get here? Wherever _here_ is. I'm in a bedroom and it's nighttime, but last I remember I was in the village and it was day, and Rei and Hiro and Nao were with me and we were breaking the—

The bond.

I pat myself down, searching for the contract, and when I can't find it I leap to my feet only to stumble and fall to the ground, bumping my head hard against the wall. As I try to right myself, the door slides open and the lights click on.

Shikamaru stands in the entranceway, scowling as per usual. I'm flustered as he enters the room, crossing the floor while I bumble about to right myself. "What are you doing?" he asks.

"I—uh." The Nara house. Right. After I passed out, Rei must have brought me back here. But then there's the matter of the bond and what am I doing and as Shikamaru helps me up, I say, "I, uh, panicked? I didn't know where I was, so—"

"So your first thought was to leap out of bed even though you've been asleep for the past two days?"

My knees buckle again and I nearly collapse before Shikamaru grabs my arm to hold me steady. "_Two days_?" I echo in disbelief. "How have I been asleep for _two days_?"

"That's the result of tearing apart your soul."

Shikamaru and I turn to find Rei leaning against the doorframe, a hand on her hip. As she curls her hair around her finger she says, "That bond was attached to your soul, Ren, and when you broke the bond, you extracted a part of yourself. You don't recover from that with a little nap. Not to mention bond breaking destroys a lot of your natural energies. So the obvious thing for your body to do was sleep. Although meditation would have served just as well."

"Of course," I deadpan. "Meditation. How silly of me to pass out."

"Don't sweat it," she says, pushing off the doorframe and entering the room. She slides the door closed with a snap and folds her arms over her chest. She says, "I guess the real question, though, is whether our efforts were worth it."

She crosses the room and lifts something from the nightstand beside my bed. I realize as she waves it in front of my face that it's the contract, looking worse for wear. Where it had been frayed around the edges, there are deep cuts and jagged tears. The red wax seal has melted completely, soaking blood red into the parchment and leaving a greasy residue around the perimeter of the stain.

"What happened?" I ask, sliding the parchment from her fingers and holding it at arm's length in front of me. The black ink that I had been able to read earlier seems to have faded completely; only grey skeletons remain on the pages, ghosts of what once was.

"Dunno," she says. "After everything was said and done, that's what the contract looked like. And you didn't look any better. Unfortunately, around the time you passed out was the same time this guy"—She jerks her thumb at Shikamaru.—"came calling for you."

"My aunts were going to the deer park," he explains with a roll of his eyes, "and were looking for you. They sent me out when they couldn't find you anywhere."

"So we didn't have time to cover you and figure things out. How are you feeling? Well-rested?"

I lower the contract to see Rei. She is unusually subdued in speech and manner, and I wonder if there is something more than she is letting on. She gives no sign that she is hiding anything, only looks at me with an attentiveness I have grown used to receiving from her. I say, "More hungry than well-rested."

"I'll get you something to eat and leave you two to talk then," she says, turning on her heels. "Everyone will be relieved to know you're awake finally."

When she's gone, I ask, "Is everything all right? Rei seems . . . unlike herself."

Shikamaru sighs, scratches the back of his head. "Since you've been asleep," he says, "Rei's become more involved with planning for the war than any of us anticipated. I think it may be starting to get to her. Not to mention, she's been at your bedside for a good portion of the day, making sure you heal properly. She must be just as tired as you by now."

The war. I had nearly forgotten about it—again—in the midst of all the commotion. If I've been asleep for two days, then one day remains before the Kage finalize their plans and then—well. I sigh, wiping my hand down my face as though that small gesture will help prepare me for this war.

"How did Rei get mixed up with planning?" I say to distract myself from the the parchment in my hand and the panic I feel rising in my chest.

"She overheard my dad and me talking about it and decided to include herself," Shikamaru says. "I didn't know whether to take her seriously at first, but she and her spirits have proven to be invaluable assets to our strategy. She's helped us organize the hundreds of shinobi into the perfect divisions for dealing with what Madara might be capable of. News also came in that Madara is working with Kabuto, the traitor from the Chuunin exams three years ago. Apparently he's somehow absorbed Orochimaru's energies and jutsu to become another entity altogether. Rei is helping us to figure out how to take him out as soon as possible and what he might have in mind by joining with Madara."

I shiver at the mention of Orochimaru and bite the inside of my lip, knowing anything involving that snake can't add up well. I rub my brow, wondering how, during the time I was unconscious, things have gotten so convoluted. I guess this is what preludes war, but I feel guilty. I am a capable shinobi, young and durable. I could be helping to rebuild the village, but I've done nothing but think of myself, the bond, done nothing but sleep.

I look at Shikamaru. He's staring at the ground, chewing on this bottom lip. His brow furrows in thought. His hands are tucked in the pockets of his pants, and it must be early enough in the evening that he hasn't changed out of his work clothes yet but late enough for him to not have time to wash up before dinner. He wears the typical black shinobi outfit, minus the flak jacket, and remains ever professional in appearances, disregarding the slump of his shoulders.

He catches me watching him and gives a wan smile I fail to return. He is so tired and defeated. I feel another pang of guilt for being unable to comfort or assist him these past two days. His smile falls when my face remains unchanged, and my hand cinches around the contract that starts to slip from my grip.

"So," he says as I break my gaze. "Is the bond really broken?"

I smooth the parchment between my thumb and forefinger. It has become greasy from the wax that has melted over it. When I look closely, I see the already faded smear of my blood across the bottom of the page and sigh.

"Yes," I say, folding the contract in half. "It's broken. But, you know, I think it's been broken for a long time, Shika."

"And what makes you say that?"

"Just," I say, and holding the contract by one side, "a feeling that I have."

Then, without thinking, I tear the contract in half. Then into fourths. The sound of the parchment ripping is smooth and languid, swelling my heart, and I tear it into eighths, and when I'm about to tear it again, Shikamaru clasps both my hands in one of his and eases the shreds of the contract from my grasps with his other. He leans down to pick up the pieces that had fallen to the ground and stacks them all together, placing them on the bedside table, out of my reach. I don't know why he does this, but when he straightens, he sighs and rubs the back of his neck, tired all over again.

"Shikamaru," I start, but he stops me.

"It's okay, Ren," he says. "The bond is broken. It's okay."

I take a deep breath, holding it in my lungs. _The bond is broken._ Even though I had said it earlier, hearing it from someone else's mouth, from Shikamaru no less, knocks the wind out of me and, for some reason, makes my heart drop.

I swallow thickly and reach for Shikamaru, taking handfuls of his shirt and pulling him towards me as I press my head into his shoulder. The bridge of my nose rests right on his collarbone, the collar of his shirt brushing the tip of my nose. I inhale the unadulterated scent of him, the scent of grass ingrained into his skin, the heat of his body like the heat that radiates off the village's dirt paths.

It's broken. It's broken, and I'm free, the burden of Sasuke no longer looming over my head, no longer my responsibility because I could never control him anyway, and now no one can say I have the power to.

And I think I'm too tired to show my excitement or my elation at this broken bond because all I end up doing next is take shuddering breaths. Not quite sobs, not quite laughter. Deep breaths to calm me and remind me that I have more: more than Sasuke, more than my family's legacy, more than this bond.

But what more?

"You know," I say with a small laugh. From my point of view, I can only see our bare feet against the floorboards, the way my toes clench while his remain flat, sturdy. "You know, I expected to feel different after the bond broke. But—there's nothing. I'm still afraid of this war. I'm still nervous about what people will think when I tell them what I've done. I still get this weird stirring in my stomach whenever I think about you too much. But mostly, Shikamaru, I've realized that—I've been stuck on breaking this bond for so long that I think I've lost sight of everything else I want to do. I think I've forgotten that I was _supposed_ to have other things to want to do. Everything about me revolved around this bond and now that it's gone—what do I have?"

"You have us."

I don't move away from Shikamaru at the new voice, only tilt my head so that I can see Rei and Hiro and Nao entering, each carrying a tray of an assortment of food. Rei grins as the boys set the trays of food on the ground.

She says, "You said so yourself, Ren. We are your family. And with our help, you will rebuild the Kagiru name until your clan is a storm that nourishes and destroys, but does more good than harm. Until it is something you can be proud of. Right, boys?"

Nao grins and winks at me, while Hiro smiles and gives me a two-finger salute. I laugh—a genuine laugh, full of happiness—and wipe my nose, raising my head. "Thank you," I say. "Really, thank you. What's all this?"

"I told Yoshino-baachan how tired you were and convinced her to let us have dinner in your room," Rei says, gesturing to the food. "I did promise that I would make sure you washed afterward, so there's that condition."

I agree to it quickly before I realize I'm still holding onto Shikamaru. When I turn back to him, he's watching me, his sharp eyes bright with a muted concern. I flash him a smile, the same smile I had given to Rei and Hiro and Nao, one that is full of thanks and love that I hope he understands.

"You gonna be okay?" he asks.

I nod, letting him go. "Thank you for listening," I say, patting his cheek. He winces with each pat, and with that, things seem to return to a normality I have not felt since I found the bond. He stays to eat dinner with us and there is laughing and anecdotes and I'm able to forget the war for another moment.

But traces of it linger over us. Rei makes offhanded remarks about it occasionally, asking Shikamaru to remind her to bring something up with his father, and Nao and Hiro talk about training more in the morning. Shikamaru gives me wary looks every time the war comes up. I take it in stride and change the subject when I can, which seems to miff Rei.

After we finish eating, Rei ushers Shikamaru out of the room while Hiro and Nao clean up. She closes the door before I have a chance to say goodbye and says, frowning, "You're going to have to face it eventually. The war, I mean," she explains, crossing the room to help Nao and Hiro. "Try as hard as you might to avoid talking about it, it's coming and you're going to be a part of it, whether you like it or not."

"I know," I say indignantly, opening the door and checking the hall to see if Shikamaru is already gone. I blow my hair out of my face, annoyed to find the corridor empty. I duck back inside the room. "It's not like I slept these past two days so I could hide from it."

"Not that it wasn't convenient for you," Rei says, pushing dirty dishes into Hiro's hands so she can take me by the shoulders. "Ren," she says, her eyes flickering from my forehead to my eyes, nose, and chin, inspecting me. "I know this war scares you because you don't want to lose anyone else on top of losing your family and Sasuke. But trust me when I say there is always more to the world than the things you lose."

I remember Shikamaru saying the same thing and wonder how much they talked while I was away or if they're more alike than I thought. I say, "It's just one thing after another. First the bond, which I haven't had enough time to really recover from, and then the war. It's overwhelming."

Rei sighs, raking her hand through her wild hair. "Things aren't going to slow down," she says. "But bear in mind we're here for you, no matter what. If you want to talk about anything, we're all ears. Understand?"

Her eyes are large with concern and her fingers tight with sincerity. I nod and she lets me go, petting my head before she leaves to get me a new change of clothes. Hiro and Nao leave behind her, bussing the dirty dishes to the kitchen. I am left alone in the room once again.

I sit on the bed, unsure of what else I could do. When I close my eyes, I see a darkness that brings me back to that weird in between place where I had met my past life, a secret I will keep with me until I see fit to share it. I see her smile, the soft curls of her hair as it edged around her face. I see her lips moving to form the words _The bond has been broken for a long time _and I feel the chill the statement had incited in me, the chill I feel now when I remind myself that the bond is broken, through and through.

My chest aches, like I have spent a long day coughing and my lungs need a moment of easy breathing. But each breath I draw burns in my throat, a fire that refuses to be doused even when I hold my breath. And before I realize it, I have my face pressed into the pillow, my entire body racking with sobs that hurt and send stabbing pains through my shoulders and back because I'm trying to suppress it.

This kind of crying—so hopeless and animal, like I am a primal thing that has lost its young, the only thing to carry on its legacy—is foreign to me. I try to contain it by curling in on myself, pulling the covers over my head and cocooning myself in, but it only causes my wheezing to echo in my ears, the gross hiccupping to amplify against the itchy sheets.

Suddenly I am eight, caught in a cave as a storm rages outside. I have been without substantial food for the past week and my hunger is starting to kill me. Despite how much I have been running, fighting, I am losing muscle. Despite how much water I drink, I am dehydrated. Despite my will to live, my life is waning.

I am eight, and I am on my own, in a cave just outside Konoha, wanting to return to my village, my home, but remembering the words my mother had spoken to me—_break the bond before the bond breaks you_. My mother, whose face is already starting to fade in my memory. This bond, which I have only just realized has already broken me into a million irreparable pieces because it has stolen my family, my normalcy, my vitality.

I am a child. Aching and soaked to the bone and sobbing into my knees as the storm echoes in the cave, drowning me.

I press more deeply into my pillow, my sobs muffled, my eyes already swollen with the ferocity of my tears.

This is the result of tearing apart my soul.

[+]

I fall asleep before Rei comes back. If she ever returns to the room, she doesn't wake me, but she must because the next time I open my eyes, the lights in the room are off. Through the night, I drift in and out of consciousness, at one point throwing my pillow on the ground because it is still damp with my tears. When I wake next, someone is beside me, lifting my head onto a dry pillow and smoothing my hair out of my face. I'm inclined to believe it is Rei, but their hands are too big, too calloused and familiar. I bend under their touch, causing them to freeze in place, and brush the palm of their hand with a kiss.

Without figuring out who it is, I am asleep again.

When I wake completely, my eyes are so swollen I feel like I am squinting. I don't have the strength to get up, so I roll out of bed, landing with a thump on the ground, my blanket tangling around my body. I stare at the ceiling, too bright white to remind me of newness and instead reminding me of hospitals.

I close my eyes, heave a shaky sigh that sounds like a surrender. I am pleased to see only a darkness this time and will myself to my hands and knees.

At the foot of my bed, I find a stack of clean clothes—a pair of black pants, a black shirt, and a bulky green flak jacket. A customary shinobi uniform like what Shikamaru and Kakashi wear. I stare at the clothes for a minute before grabbing everything but the flak jacket and shuffling to the bathroom to clean up.

When I pull on the shinobi uniform, I am dumbstruck by the person I see. While I am by no means small, I look like a child pretending to be a shinobi. The clothes hang too loosely over my shoulders, the sleeves too wide for my arms. Reflected in the tiny bathroom mirror someone has propped up on the sink, I am an unfamiliar thing, too pale from the events of the past few days, a sickness disguised as a cure. And my hair. It has grown wild, long enough to curl around my ears, and sprouts like a swollen, dirty halo around my head. I smooth it down, doing my best to flatten it so it looks reasonable, but to no avail.

I return to my room, relieved that no one has entered during the time I was away. The flak jacket remains on my bed, askew from when I had knocked it aside to grab the clothes folded beneath it. I eye it, wondering how much worse I will look when I pull it on, but don't give it more thought as I snatch it up and stick my arms through it. This is no time to be worrying about physical appearances.

As I'm zipping my flak jacket, a knock comes at my door. I call for my visitor to enter and Shikamaru comes in. He pauses at the door when he sees me, his brow knotted together as he looks me over.

"Hey," I say, frowning, and point at him. "We're wearing the same thing. This will not do. You're going to have to change, Shikamaru, before someone sees us. How mortifying."

"You look like a kid playing dress up," Shikamaru says. I grab my pillow off the bed and throw it at his face. It slides down his chest before he catches it, scowling, and says, "Sorry, sorry. Guess I'm not used to you looking professional for once."

"You are digging your own grave today, Shikamaru," I say, crossing the room to snatch my pillow back and whack him upside the head with it. "What's the occasion?"

Shikamaru smoothes down his hair, and his face hardens. He says, "There's going to be a village-wide briefing for the war at noon. Basically, we're going to tell the villagers what to expect when the war starts, the measures that will be taken to ensure their safety, and then we're going to separate the villagers and shinobi and announce the divisions."

My hands cinch so tightly around the pillow that it takes on the shape of a bowtie. I hug it to my body and say, "Oh. Well. Glad we're moving forward with the war plans."

I lean against the wall adjacent to the door so that when my knees give out, I slide down to the floor without hitting anything. Shikamaru watches me sink to the ground, then closes the door and sits down beside me. He slumps against the wall, his legs arched and his hands in his pockets.

"Tomorrow the Five Kage will convene," Shikamaru says, his voice low. "The plans will be finalized, and we'll mobilize. There's no going back."

There never is.

"Shikamaru," I say, resting my cheek against the pillow and looking at him. "If you can at this very moment tell me everything will be okay—that we'll be okay—even if it's a lie, I'll believe you, you know. I'll believe you and get up, stop moping, and I'll be okay."

Shikamaru's eyebrows upturn in reluctance, his lips pursing. He stays quiet.

I smack him with the pillow again and he groans in protest, yanking the pillow out of my hands and throwing it across the room, onto my bed. He grumbles under his breath, something about troublesome women and not being able to understand them. I smile at his disgruntled state, reach out to push his mussed hair back into place. He startles at my touch and moves to fix his hair himself.

"Thank you, Shika," I say, patting his knee and using it to help me to my feet. I offer him my hand and say, "If you had said anything, I would have hit you much harder."

"Good to know," he says, and takes my hand. As I heave him up, I feel the roughness of his hand against mine, how big they are in comparison.

I bet if he were to brush my cheek, I would feel the same warmth from last night.

[+]

Rei catches up with me when Shikamaru has to meet with his father to organize the briefing. We stand in the midst of the entire village; those who are not shinobi shuffle nervously back and forth, clutching their children close to their legs. Those who are shinobi remain grim-faced and distant.

"Glad to see you're alive," Rei says. She, Hiro, and Nao stick close together, taking up as little room as possible even though there's enough space for them to stand comfortably. They too have changed out their regular clothes for Konoha shinobi uniforms. The look suits them well. "In the meantime, I've managed to become acquainted with most of your friends, which I thought would come in handy as we're supposed to be fighting alongside each other."

"Great," I say.

"Bet your ass it's great," Rei says, pinching my cheeks. "In addition to charming your friends, I also covered for you while you were in your coma."

"It wasn't a coma."

"It was a coma," she says, and I roll my eyes. "The point is, your friends think you were too busy with gathering antler with Shikamaru-kun's family to bother with them. Granted, they were all busy with their respective families to really worry about you, but at least you already have an excuse under your belt, since you obviously hadn't told any more of your friends about this bond."

I huff as the Village Council takes the stage that has been set up and gathers everyone's attention. The tittering dies down and one of the Elder's voices booms over our heads.

"Now that the bond's broken, I wonder if I'll ever mention it to them at all," I say, watching as the Council reassures the villagers they're going to be safe, but not hearing a word they say. I can see the words in their faces though, the way they remain firm and how their gesticulations call for calm. "Maybe it'll just die and that'll be the end of it. Who knows?"

"Maybe when you're old and sitting around, annoying your grandkids with your reminiscing, it'll come up and you'll come clean, and then you'll die because your conscience is finally clear. Sorry, I hate hypothetical situations," Rei says, holding up her hands in defense when I regard her with irritation. "Too many possibilities, if you ask me."

I shrug.

"So. Life without the bond not what you expected it to be?"

The villagers around me begin to shift with unease, glancing at each other and offering smiles of support. When their eyes slide over me, Rei, Hiro, and Nao—or any shinobi, I notice—they look away quickly.

"It's funny," I say, crossing my arms. "With the bond broken, I thought I would stop lying. I expected life without it to be easier. Better. But I guess it's no different, huh?"

"Not really, no."

Rei holds her nails up to the sunlight, examining them as the Council begins to take questions from concerned villagers. There aren't many, probably because the villagers know there are more uncertain things than their fate: like the fate of their shinobi comrades and family members and significant others. Like the fate of their village as a whole. When there are no more questions, the villagers are dismissed and the shinobi begin to gather into a more organized group. We line up, shoulder to shoulder, one behind the other, making sure to stay close so we can hear the orders being given to us.

"Don't think that means your whole pursuit was meaningless, Ren," she says as I see Shikaku take the stage, his sharp eyes scanning us. Analyzing us and how we might serve our village. "Life unbound _will_ be different. The amount of lies you tell and the severity of them may not lessen, but that's because you're a shinobi."

"I know," I say with a finality that ends our discussion.

Shikaku's voice rings out over the congregation, smooth and steady, heartening. He doesn't falsely promise us that we will be okay or that we will make it out alive or even that we will make it far. But he reminds us of our strength, our solidarity. He reminds us of our unfailing faith in and love for our village and our comrades. He reminds us that we are doing this for a better day.

I don't need Rei to lecture me about my newfound freedom or how new bonds will replace the one I had with Sasuke and how my shriveling heart will bloom with love and friendship or whatever. I already know.

Life unbound will be harder only in that I will have to find another reason for living that doesn't center around only me. I have found a good start in wanting to protect my village in this war, wanting to protect my friends. And I will still strain against these strings, these bonds that cause me to hesitate in battle, these bonds that will trip me up and push me into compromising circumstances. I will still wish I did not care so much about people so I could perform my duties as a shinobi without pause.

But it will be different in that I will be able to choose who I love, and why I am doing the things I feel compelled to do. I will be able to choose who I will throw down my life for and when. And it will not break me.

Behind Shikaku, in a row of other strategists, I see Shikamaru, his shoulders squared, his head high. He raptly watches his father speak like the other shinobi do. Like I should. Instead I think of his hands, large enough to encase my own, and the smell of him, like freshly cut grass. I'm close enough to make out Shikamaru's general shape, but far enough where I can't see the details of his face. But I know what he looks like, what will await me when I see him next.

It will be different.


	98. Friends Like These

**Bound  
Chapter 98: Friends Like These**

When the briefing ends, the crowd moves around me to receive their assignments. I glance at people as they pass me, listening to what they have to say on the war. They argue about whether keeping Naruto and Bee, the jinchuuriki for the Hachibi, out of the war is a good idea, that we could use their strength. But if they were caught, their chakra taken, we would lose the war entirely.

I purse my lips, clipping my hair behind my ear. "The fact of the matter is," someone says, "we could use Naruto's charisma! He inspires hope in everyone, and that can't be a bad thing to have in this situation."

Before I can hear his partner answer, a hand wraps around my arm and pulls me aside. It's Rei, her eyes shifting over the fraying crowd. The feather in her hair bobs as she looks back and forth. She takes my hands, shoves something sharp into my palm, and says, "Before the war starts, I want to give you this. To help you recover from breaking the bond."

"What? I'm fine," I say. "Really, Rei, I don't—"

"Don't act so modest. The charm is beautiful, if I say so myself, but it's not a gift," she says, rolling her eyes. "It's a safety precaution. You've only been free of the bond for a few days now, and even then you were asleep for a majority of it. We don't know the true effects of breaking the bond, and if something happens to you during this war, and I know I could have prevented it, I will never let myself live that down."

I am touched by Rei's sentiment and laugh when she says, "Don't think too much of it, though."

I unravel the charm and hold it up to the light. It's an opaque rose colored crystal, held onto a leather rope by a metal band around the top. There appears to have been a weak attempt to smooth the crystal, but it remains rugged, the point at the bottom sharp enough to break skin if I press it hard enough.

"Thanks," I say, lowering the crystal, but she is gone. I search for her, irritated by her sudden disappearance. "Hey, I thought you weren't going to pull these tricks anymore!"

A voice that is definitely not Rei's comes from behind me, saying, "What are you yelling about?"

I turn and find Sakura approaching, her hands behind her back. She glances around and asks, "Are you looking for someone?"

"No," I say with a shake of my head. "It's not important."

"I almost didn't recognize you in official shinobi gear," she says, and holds out her own arm, inspecting the identical outfit she wears. "It is kind of weird wearing this stuff. Like we're finally adults or something, but—I don't know, I don't feel very grown up."

"You're not a shinobi until you've lived through war, right?" I say with a shrug.

She sighs, her shoulders sagging. "Anyway," she says, "what are you doing standing here still? We're all about to have lunch together."

"I got caught up in the crowd," I say and motion to the emptiness around us as though to help her imagine the buzz of people that used to be here. "And then I just froze."

"Well, it's time to unfreeze and eat," she says, nudging me. Her eyes catch the glint of the charm in my hand, and she asks, "What's that?"

"Uh," I say as she eases it from me and holds it against her neck. "A—good luck charm Rei gave me. For the war."

Sakura smiles, although there is a hint of sadness behind it, says, "Do you want me to help you put it on?"

Without waiting for me to answer, she swoops the charm around my throat and clasps it into place. The leather is smooth and warm against my skin, tight until Sakura finishes tying it and lets it go. I smooth the crystal between my fingers, thanking Sakura when she comes back around to admire the necklace.

"Now let's go," she says, waving me forward. "Everyone's waiting for us."

"First," I say, taking her wrist to stop her mid-step. I wince as I realize what I'm doing, what I'm about to say. Sakura cocks her head to the side, a curiosity that morphs into confusion when I say, "I want to apologize for all the times I judged you and your feelings for Sasuke. It wasn't my place and—if I had really tried to understand you, I would have and we would have become better friends sooner and our teamwork in the beginning wouldn't have been so awful and maybe—maybe Sasuke wouldn't have left and this wouldn't be happening."

Sakura blinks at me for a minute, then shakes her head, saying, "No, Ren, it's okay. There's no . . . no _point_ in thinking about what could have been and how things should have been. Thinking that way will only make us no better than what Sasuke has become. I know that now. You don't have to apologize, but I appreciate it."

She smiles, but her eyes don't wrinkle with the happiness she wants to achieve. I say, "I just think it needs to be said before we go to war. I admire you. And I'm glad we've become friends."

This time when she smiles, the lines crease right where they should.

"There's something else, I need to tell you," I say, and she nods, allowing me to continue. "I meant to tell you and Naruto at the same time, but I didn't realize they were going to ship him off before the war. Regardless, remember the bond, the one I have with Sasuke? Well, a few days ago, I—I broke it. With Rei's help. The bond between me and Sasuke is gone."

She blinks at me, uncomprehending. Then her eyes widen, her mouth shaping words, but unable to voice them. "That," she stutters, "that's—that's great. That's good, right? Wow," she says, pushing her hair back. "I—good."

"Yeah," I say. "You're taking this much better than I thought you would."

She gives a sheepish laugh, says, "I want you to be happy, Ren. And, with everything that's happening, this is—this is for the best." She releases a heavy sigh, one that causes her entire body to deflate.

I know she is thinking about Sasuke, where he could be, what he could be doing. Nothing else could depress her this much.

If I'm being honest, I am thinking about him too.

"Thank you," I say, and she immediately picks herself up again, beams a smile and says, "Now that that's settled, let's get lunch."

There is a collective lunch for all the villagers organized by village, but someone has managed to steal enough provisions to feed the fifteen of us in our own corner of the village. The area where we have lunch is in a lot not unlike where Naruto had gathered us to tell us that he alone would face Sasuke. The atmosphere is less solemn this time, despite our circumstances.

For a minute, we are able to forget about our circumstances and just revel in each other.

Rei and Hiro slide up beside me as soon as I arrive. "That looks good on you," Rei says, motions to the charm as Hiro offers me a canister filled with water. "Complements your skin tone nicely."

"Thank you?" I say, tucking the charm under my shirt, out of sight, before taking Hiro's offering. "Anyway, what are you doing here? Sakura told me this lunch was for our friends."

"We're friends!" says Rei, affronted. "Remember what I said about how I was warming up to everyone while you were passed out? Ino and I hit it off particularly well, and she invited me."

"Shikamaru is looking for you," Hiro says, pointing to one corner of the lot. There, the boy in question and Neji speak grimly of something—the war strategy undoubtedly. "And Rei has been unbearably cryptic about where you've been, so he's probably worried about you to boot."

"Gee, thanks," I say, and Rei laughs, latches onto Hiro's arm, and pulls him back toward where Ino and Nao sit, listening to a story Kiba tells. Rei's laughter is loud enough to draw attention to me, even though she's gone from my side in seconds. Neji and Shikamaru look over; Shikamaru says something to Neji, who nods and disengages from the conversation, allowing Shikamaru to come to me.

I meet him halfway, saying, "I don't know what Rei's been telling you, but I just got caught up with the crowd back at the briefing. I'm okay. You looked good up there, though. Very professional. Adult, even."

He scowls, says, "It was my dad, mostly. Why they had me go up there with them was beyond me. It was troublesome, if anything."

"Hey, none of that," I say, flicking his nose. "It was a good moment. If you try to think otherwise, I'll just have to convince you I'm right, and that'll be even more troublesome, won't it?"

Shikamaru's shoulders sag with relent. He starts to speak, but I'm distracted by the draw of his brow, the way the lines of his face pull together as he frowns, and none of his words register. Instead, my heart aches, my stomach turning as anxiety rises like bile in my throat.

I think back to the people who had passed me earlier, why they had stopped me short. I had wanted to listen to their conversation, yes, but at the same time—there were so many of them. They were all around me, these people who I had never met even though we lived in the same village, people who I may never meet again after this war. And there are more of them, from other villages across the Five Nations, people who laugh and share stories like my friends, people who love and admire each other, and look at each other like I am looking at Shikamaru.

I lower my gaze as Shikamaru turns to me, brow quirked. "What?" he says over our friends' cheers. Rei has managed to coax Kiba and Lee into an arm-wrestling match, and Sakura and Ino have taken bets on who will win. But the boys are evenly matched, and their fists remain centered, their faces reddening with each passing moment.

The tenderness of this moment makes me nauseous with a fear that must escape somehow.

Pressing my hand to my stomach to alleviate the sickness, I say, quietly, "I hate to admit it, Shikamaru: I'm—scared. Look at how much we have to lose. I can put on a brave face and tell everyone that I'm strong enough—that we're all strong enough—to make it through this war, but . . . " I give a weak laugh, shake my head. But that only rattles my nerves more, stirring up a lump in my throat. I lean my forehead into Shikamaru's arm, whisper, "I'm scared."

The truth of my sentiment forces my eyes shut. I let out a shuddering breath, rubbing the fabric of my shirt between my fingers to keep myself calm, but it's futile. My hands won't stop shaking and my shirt slips through my fingers, my bones aching with the ferocity of my shivering.

When did I become so scared? Or maybe this fear has been festering deep inside me for a long time, and has only boiled over now that we are on the brink of war. But I am a shinobi; my career comes from killing. And this is shameful. I should be brave. I should be strong, like Shikamaru and Sakura and Naruto—Naruto, who would give his life for the village without hesitation.

But I can't. My friends are growing, handling their new responsibility with such grace whereas I am still very much a child who cannot come to terms with the reality before her. Just like with the bond, my initial reaction is to run, run very far and very fast, away from any and every duty that befalls me.

Shikamaru's arm moves, and I feel his hand come to rest on my head. He is scowling, of course, but it's much less severe than usual. His expression is not one of irritation or pity, but one of mutual understanding and sadness.

"Me too," he says. "And I'm sure if you asked around, there would be other people who would agree with you. But being brave isn't about being fearless. It's about knowing that you have something or someone you want to protect, and protecting them anyway, even though you're scared. That's how I see it. So don't panic too much. You're all right."

There is a light breeze that blows through us and carries his scent to me. Like grass in the summertime, sweet and comforting. And I realize how close we are, our feet knocking together, and I am shaking all over again, though for much different reasons.

Shikamaru sighs, pats my head in an awkward attempt of comfort, his bony fingers knocking against my skull. I give a small, "Ahhh," swatting him away, and laugh when he flinches.

"Okay, if that is how it feels whenever I pat your cheek, I'm sorry and I will stop immediately," I say and then there is a foot of space between us, just as there should be. "But thank you, Shikamaru. Look," I say, holding out my hands. "I'm not shaking anymore. I'm okay. Thank you."

Shikamaru nods, rubs his neck. There is another crash of laughter and we turn to it. Somehow, Kiba has won the arm-wrestling match and shouts about how he is ready to face anything in this war. I scoff, rolling my eyes, but then I catch Shikamaru offering only a small smile before dropping it and his gaze.

For as much as he takes care of me, I hardly ever take the time to reassure him. To me, Shikamaru has always been smart and kind and—brave. Truly brave. In ways I could never be. But maybe I have put him on a pedestal, and that has hurt him more than anything.

"Hey," I say, nudging his foot. He looks up, his sharp eyes half-lidded with a fatigue I have not seen in a long time. "What about you, Shikamaru? Are you okay?"

He purses his lips, slicks his hair back. After a pause: "Yeah," he says with a bob of his head. "I'm okay."

"Don't lie to me," I say and prod his arm. "Come on. I told you my dark secrets. Your turn."

Shikamaru gives a short laugh, more of a wheeze actually, and says, "It's more of the same of what you said. There are people I want to protect. And I'm going to do everything I can to protect them."

_But when do you have time to think of yourself?_ I want to ask, but this _is_ Shikamaru thinking about himself. Protecting other people for the sake of his own heart. It's about as selfless as you get.

My heart pounds in my ears.

"Listen," I say, too loudly and too fast, giving cause for alarm. Shikamaru regards me with wide eyes, expectant. "There's—something I want to tell you."

His eyebrows raise, curious, and I am again struck by how familiar the gesture is in the midst of our lives being turned upside down boy this war. Throughout all this, we are still the same. He is still Shikamaru, my first and best friend.

"Heeeey!" Ino swoops in, taking me by the shoulders and steering me away from Shikamaru. Over my protests, she says, "If I wanted to see you two canoodling I would have just shoved money into your hands and sent you to a nice restaurant on a date."

"Stop it, Ino," I say, trying to fight her off and failing. "What are you doing? I was in the middle of something!"

"When you think about it," she says without acknowledging what I've said and continues to drag me toward our other friends, "if we make it out of this war alive, the two of you will have the rest of your lives to spend together, so you can't blame me for giving everyone the chance to spend one more night with you. I know you could hang out with Shikamaru and the Nara all night and you would be fine with that, but like hell if I'll let Shikamaru call dibs on you the night before the war of the century!"

"Call dibs? Do you even understand the words coming out of your mouth?"

"Look," she says abruptly and pulls me to a stop. She takes me by the shoulders, her blue eyes blinking fast. "I know we don't talk about it much, but it's a universally acknowledged truth that you are the last of your clan. I know we didn't start off as good friends, and I know we don't hang out much anymore because we've been busy with our respective duties, but for all the things you do for Shikamaru, I consider you to be like a sister. That means, _we're_ family. All the family _you_ have, and today is all about family, so you will suck it up and enjoy yourself with people _other_ than Shikamaru, understand?"

"Ino—"

"_Understand_?" she says, her fingers digging into my collarbones.

I see it, then, the last chance brimming in her face, in the slight tremble of her lip. _Be with other people,_ she's saying, _because this may be the last time you will ever see them._

"Okay," I say, and she cheers, pushes me into the circle where Rei is telling a story. Kiba challenges something she says and she gets in his face, the veins in her brow pulsing with irritation. Shino sits quietly as Hinata pulls Kiba back and Hiro calms Rei. A little farther back, I see Chouji, Ino, and Nao laughing at something that makes Neji and Tenten scowl, and Lee makes a comment that turns their glares toward him instead. He shirks back, shaking his hands in front of him in deference. Sakura laughs as Lee cowers away. She catches me watching, and gives me a two-fingered salute that I acknowledge with a nod.

I wonder if she feels the absence of the two boys as piercingly as I do.

My fingers knot together over my stomach.

I wonder where he even is in the midst of all this, whether we will see him again in opposing lines and how I will face him. If I even can.

Once Kiba promises to keep his silence for the remainder of the time, Rei picks up her story again. I am half-listening as she speaks. She gesticulates wildly and pulls Nao and Hiro in to help her flesh out her tale. At one point, she jabs her finger at me and everyone laughs and I hide my face, unable to determine how else to react because I haven't been paying attention. But then someone brushes up against me and I look up and find Shikamaru, hands tucked in his pockets, lips pursed, brow quirked, and I am glad that we are together even with everyone around us.

I nudge him with my elbow. "Okay?" I ask.

He nudges me back. The corner of his mouth lifts. "Okay," he says.

[+]

The night is full of fitful sleeping. Even though I want to get up and crawl between bodies, find comfort in someone, I stay in my bed, awake across the covers with my hand pressed to the wall, feeling the vibrations of people pacing and tapping their feet and tossing and turning. I listen to doors creak open, hear the faint whispers of people seeking console, crying.

I fall asleep to the sound of fear and anxiety and wake up to a new dawn.

[+]

I don't know exactly _where_ the Allied Shinobi Headquarters are, since I zoned out on the geography lesson given during the briefing yesterday, but it's an impressive sight to behold. Circular buildings and ramps stick onto a rocky cliff side, like bowls, and small mountains keep us contained to one area, walling us off from the sea we had to cross in order to reach the headquarters.

There is already a mass of people here when Konoha forces arrive. Everywhere I look, there is a different headband strapped to people's foreheads and clothes, different uniforms and accents and skins. While Shikamaru and Rei are ushered to the tents where the final strategy for the war will be laid down, the rest of us are led to more open area where we sort ourselves into the division we had been assigned to based on our skillsets.

There are other special divisions, like a medical division led by Shizune, that I had considered asking to be a part of, but I pushed it out of my head. I am a medic, yes, but I think, for the most part, I have become a shinobi. Besides, having a medical kunoichi at the front lines can't be a bad thing, can it?

Once we're in our division, we're shuffled to a hut where we collect a new headband. "Nice, huh," the official behind the counter says as I run my thumb over the shinobi symbol etched into the metal of the headband. "To represent our unity. I hope our camaraderie with the other nations will extend beyond this war, though."

"You and me both," I say, and step outside, back into the light.

In the open, people buzz about the division they're in, grazing shoulders as they navigate the hordes of people exiting the huts. The headbands are handed out quickly, considering the amount of shinobi who are here, and I step aside to find some space for myself, out of the way of the stream of people.

Shinobi of each respective nation stay with their own comrades, glancing suspiciously at others who come their way. The shinobi who do interact with those outside their nation are reluctant and usually only speak to clarify an order that has been given to them. I wonder how we're supposed to work together if we can't even break the mold and talk to each other like friends.

I pull my old headband from my forehead, shining it one last time with my sleeve. There are small, shallow grooves etched into the metal, but the Leaf at the center remains pristine, smooth.

Without thinking, I kiss the symbol before putting it into my hip pouch.

As I tie my new headband around my forehead, Rei, Hiro, and Nao come bounding up to me. Well, _Rei_ comes bounding up to me, while Hiro and Nao jog to keep pace. They, too, seem to have gotten into the Third Division. From what I witnessed during our encounter with Sasuke off the coast of the Fire Country, they all appeared to be more of general short-ranged combat types, but when I bring this up, Rei smiles broadly and says, "The best part about enlisting for a war like this is they don't have time to check your abilities. They trust you don't want to get killed and are telling the truth, so they put you where you say you'd be good."

"So you lied," I say as she secures her headband around her forehead.

"That's one way of looking at it," Rei says with a wink. "But trust me, Ren, none of us want to be killed, so don't worry. We're where we're supposed to be. Plus, this way, we can have each other's backs during the war."

Though I know we're bound to be separated from each other at some point during the war, I find comfort in her promise and don't say anything else.

If Rei is out of the meeting, Shikamaru must be, too. I scour the heads of the crowd to find him. At one point, I think I see a familiar head of black hair that causes my breath to catch in my throat. I freeze in place; Rei bumps into my back, gives a shout of indignation at my sudden stop, but I don't explain because the person turns around and it is no one I know.

"What was that all about?" demands Rei, and I shake my head, dismissing it.

I berate myself for thinking Sasuke could be anywhere near these headquarters without raising alarm.

I berate myself for thinking of him at all.

To my relief, I see Shikamaru approaching with Temari. I wave them down and quickly introduce Temari to Rei's team, who just as quickly pull Temari into a conversation about the Sand Village, leaving Shikamaru and me to speak alone.

He's struggling to unfasten the metal plate of our new headbands from the fabric. I take it from him and say, "Here." I unclip the plate with relative ease and turn him around to fasten it to his sleeve. "So what division are you in?"

"Hmm? Fourth," he says, watching me as I work. "Temari, too. Actually, they've assigned me as the proxy commander of the Fourth Division while Gaara fulfills his duties as regiment commander."

My hand slips against the metal, smashing into his arm. "W-wow," I say, regaining control of my fumbling fingers. "That's—amazing, Shikamaru. Jeez, first a spot on the war council and now this. You're really making a name for yourself, aren't you?"

He heaves a heavy sigh, and says, "I'm not doing it on purpose, I promise you. What about you? What division are you in?"

"Third," I say, standing back to make sure the plate isn't lopsided. "I'm with Rei's team," I add less enthusiastically, jerking my thumb over my shoulder at the trio currently sweet talking—or irritating, depending on how you interpret her expression—Temari. "I don't know how they do it, but they always seem to be around me."

"You're lucky to have them," he says, but he sounds distracted, like it's a line he's rehearsed. I glance at him to find him watching my fingers work on tightening his headband to his sleeve and catch his eye. He must see the disbelief in my gaze because he shakes himself out of his reverie and says, "Really. They've come through for us these past few days. We owe them."

I scoff, making last adjustments to his plate, and say, "Yeah, maybe they'll become honorary shinobi of Konoha after—actually, let's hope not. I like them, but not enough to see them all the time. There."

I step away, admiring my handiwork. Shikamaru lifts his shoulder to examine what I've done, and brushes himself off. "Thank you," he says, shoving his hands into his pockets. "And Rei and her friends are a handful, but you can't deny that they have been good to us."

I peer at them, find that Rei has managed to make Temari laugh. She catches me staring and then motions to me, leaning into Temari to say something that Temari nods and agrees with vehemently. "Yeah," I say, turning back to Shikamaru before I can let Rei's gossiping get to me. "I guess so."

We fall into silence during which I debate on what to do with the extra fabric from Shikamaru's headband. I end up wrapping it around my forearm to act as a small, extra buffer against attacks, though how much fabric will help I don't know. When Shikamaru sees me fussing with it, he says, "Let me help."

Shikamaru takes the fabric and ties it deftly into a knot, tucking the loose ends underneath and out of the way. For the split second his finger brushes my bare skin under my sleeve, I tense, but the weight is gone just as quickly and his hands are back at his sides. Shikamaru is unfazed by the small amount of contact we have made and I am embarrassed to have felt otherwise.

"Thanks," I say, rubbing my wrist, smoothing the skin where he had brushed me.

He nods, starts to say something else, and is interrupted by a voice that rings out over the crowd. I don't recognize the face or the voice that stands on a platform beside the tents. The man is confident in the way he speaks and holds himself, but I don't feel compelled to listen to him.

Instead, I search the crowd, and find furtive glances, fleeting gestures, affection lost to previous enmity. All these shinobi have been hiding their feelings for so long, and everywhere I start to see it: stolen glances between shinobi, the much too intimate brush of fingers behind backs, hands clutching onto one another in the guise of handshakes.

Have shinobi always been this close? I know camaraderie between us is exceptional because of the line of work we're in, but how could we possibly allow ourselves to become so involved with each other? Knowing what we do about the dangers of the job and how much strain it all is—

Well. I shouldn't be the one to talk.

Shikamaru elbows me, jerks his head toward the man, telling me to pay attention.

A silence has fallen over the crowd, one that even I can't ignore, and I look up at the man who has been speaking. He is tall with golden yellow hair gelled up in spikes. His eyes scour the crowd, searching but pauses on no one in particular.

"That being said, new intel is still coming in," he says, his voice sharp, grim. "The plans may change up until the very moment the battle begins. We who are old enough must remember the Third Great Shinobi War, the unpredictability of events. We must remember the horrors we will experience, how we may outlive those who are younger than us, even though it may not seem fair. But most importantly, we must remember that we are shinobi, and while we may remember past offenses and hold grudges against the people who will fight alongside us, we fight first and foremost because we have something that is worth protecting. And that something is worth putting our grievances aside and uniting in one common goal. Thank you. You are all dismissed."

The man walks off the platform without another glance at us, without a single clap of support, though he deserves it for his speech. Shikamaru exhales through pursed lips, massages his forehead.

"Well," he says.

"Well," I agree. We lapse into silence, although Rei falls back into conversation with Temari easily. I frown at her, try to listen to what she's saying, wonder how she is being so casual, when Shikamaru raises his head, suddenly alert.

"I just remembered," he says. "The other day, you wanted to tell me something. What was it?"

"Mm, I don't remember," I say, pushing my hair from my face. "It may have been that—"

"Ah, Nara Shikamaru? We've been looking for you." A woman comes up beside us, out of breath as she slows to a stop, unsmiling. Although she has long abandoned her village's headband in favor of the universal shinobi headband like we have, it's apparent from her clothes—a short-sleeved blouse coupled with shorts and a think scarf that hides her neck and trails down her back and front—that she's from Sunagakure. Shikamaru frowns as the woman says, "As you're proxy commander of the Fourth Division, we need you to get your men into place while Kazekage-sama handles his Regiment Commander duties."

She offers a small salute as she moves on, ushering people into their respective divisions. Shikamaru shakes his head, murmurs, "Troublesome."

"Hey," I say, taking him by the shoulder and giving him a small shake. "This is good, remember? Though I'll admit, of all of us, I never thought _you_ would become such an important asset to the village. No offense."

"No, trust me: I wasn't looking forward to it either."

"Well, anyway," I say, prodding the headplate on his arm. "You've made me remember what I wanted to tell you. Shikamaru, be strong. Be brave. And remember that—" I swallow thickly, wincing on the words I'm forcing down. "—there are people waiting for you to come back."

He blinks at me for a moment, like he is waiting to hear more, and he scrutinizes me for so long that I begin to fidget. Luckily, Temari rejoins us, Rei, Hiro, and Nao in tow. She's overheard what the messenger had told him and lectures him on the importance of being prompt as a leader, that he needs to be heading the division _now_, while everyone's gathering for the final briefing.

"I know you haven't spent a lot of time in government," Temari says as she leads Shikamaru away, "whereas I have had plenty of experience as one of Gaara's bodyguards, but it should be a given that this is the wrong time and place for your slacker attitude. In fact, there is hardly ever a time when your mentality is acceptable in a shinobi lifestyle. How it's gotten you this far is beyond me, but I suppose that's not the point."

Even from a distance, I can hear Shikamaru sigh. Before he gets any farther, he turns, meets my gaze, and waves to me one last time over his shoulder. _Good luck. Be brave,_ he mouths to me, and that is the last I see of him before he disappears.

"Ready?" says Rei, hooking her arm through mine. I clench my teeth, my fingers tightening around Rei's forearm. "Yowch, tonakai. That nervous, are you?"

"I just," I start, easing my grip on her. "We could lose everything in this war and—I don't know how people are staying so _together_. Shikamaru and our friends yesterday and—_you_, even. Everyone but me," I say, pressing my face into my hands. "Everyone . . . everyone is leaving me behind. And I thought I had this under control, but it doesn't feel that way anymore. Plus, Sasuke—"

"Sasuke?" Rei jerks me aside, out of the way of the crowd flowing into line. She clasps her hands on either side of my face. "What," she says slowly, "does he have to do with any of this?"

I stutter, clambering to collect my thoughts as Rei lets me go. She taps her foot as she waits. "I—yesterday," I start, "I told Sakura that I broke the bond with Sasuke and afterward, she—there was this sadness just at the mention of him and since then I haven't been able to stop thinking about where he is, where he could be, and what—what part he could be playing in this war. Rei, I would be lying if I said I didn't wish he wasn't part of this at all."

"I thought you didn't care about him," she says. "I thought that's why you broke the bond in the first place."

"It's more complicated than that," I say, sweeping my hair from my face. "The bond—was an obligation. It forced my hand and—without it, there wouldn't have been this struggle between me and Sasuke in the first place. You know—"

"So you," she says, "still care about him."

I flinch, sigh. "He was my friend," I say. "Despite what happened, he was my friend, _our_ friend, mine, Sakura's, and Naruto's. And maybe they're rubbing off on me, but I'm finding that I can't . . . give up on him on easily as I thought."

Rei's lips go taut and she pulls her feather from her hair, retucking it behind her ear. It bristles in a passing breeze, melding with her wild curls. Behind her, Hiro and Nao, ever present and loyal and reassuring. Like me, they watch her, but their eyes are glowing with endearment, respect, trust.

When people look at you like that, you know you've done something right. You know you have your head about you.

After a deep breath, Rei skims my jawline with her fingers, her nails drawing a smooth line against my skin. She says, "First, don't think in terms of who is more scared than who. That's not important. You all have the same goals in mind, with the same hopes and fears and that should be enough for you to find the strength for this war. Second, you don't need to explain yourself to me; it's all right that you still care about Sasuke. Friends like him aren't the kind you forget. Third, and this might not mean much to you, but I believe in you," she says, plants a kiss on my forehead. I roll my eyes, wipe the kiss off with the back of my hand, prompting her to laugh.

"You will do fine," she says. "Now you just have to believe it yourself."

She smiles, slings an arm around me, and walks with me to our division. Nao comes up beside me, bumps my elbow with his, and gives me a lopsided grin that I am inclined to return in earnest.

"You know," I say. "I'm glad we're friends, Rei."

Rei leans her head against mine, briefly, her hair whirling into my ear. "Me too. Now let's get in line."

* * *

**Thank you for reading! Please review!**


	99. Blood, Sweat, Tears

**Bound  
Chapter 99: Blood, Sweat, Tears**

Once we are all collected in our respective divisions, a rousing speech is given, anger and animosity between villages are quelled, and we are off. We are a great stampede of shinobi, fast and unsettling, quiet despite our numbers, solemn despite the sun.

We don't separate from the other divisions until we are a few kilometers inland. Then, the Fourth Division splits to the left, and the Second Division dives to the right. Our division leans to the south, but maintains a westward pace just as ragged breaths begin to set in over the damp crush of grass beneath our feet and rustle of clothes against skin.

Hand signals ripple through the crowd and we slow to a stop. I wipe the sweat from my cheek, observing our surroundings as shinobi crouch to the ground, taking cover in grass that barely brushes our ankles.

For a moment, I lean down to take the grass between my fingers, close my eyes. I imagine I am home, in a park with Shikamaru, listening to him breathe as the sun warms our skin. I imagine I am safe with him and that he is safe with me.

_Be brave_.

I inhale deeply. My lungs fill with the unglamorous smell of sweat and a foreign air that brings me back to reality. Opening my eyes, I see Rei sitting down beside me, crossing her legs as her eyes skim the horizon.

"Where are we?" I ask her.

She tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear, says, "Just northeast of the Fire Country. Probably right outside the Sound, now that I think about it. How long do you want to bet it takes for the action to get to us?"

"Let's not wager on those kinds of things," Hiro says, pulling on his collar.

"I was only kidding," Rei says and tips her head back to stick out her tongue at him. Hiro hovers closely behind her, his knees knocking into her shoulder. She scowls at him. He takes a minuscule step away. Unlike the shinobi who are scattered around us, Rei remains placid, her fists connected in front of her diaphragm.

"The spirits are unhappy with this war," she reports, "and it's starting to get to me. There's something about the enemy forces that's disturbing them. Undoubtedly, it's the overwhelming evil they must be exuding."

Rei opens one eye and waggles her brow at me. I am not amused.

"They won't tell me what it is exactly," she says, shutting her eye again. "The eternal struggle: The spirits want me to keep peace, but won't tell me against what or why. It's harrowing."

"During the briefing, they reported that Madara's forces were made up of a plant-human hybrid named Zetsu," says Nao, propping a hand on his hip. "He can make, like, millions of copies of himself or something. Like shadow clones, I guess, so I can't imagine them being very strong."

"Zetsu?" I repeat. "Kakashi and I encountered a guy named Zetsu when we were in the Land of Iron with Naruto. But Madara said he was a non-warrior type. Why would he use a guy like that to create an army?"

"Maybe he's expendable," Rei says, "and that's what Madara needs."

"That doesn't make any sense," I say, and she opens her eyes to glower at me. "When you create an army, you want one that can withstand forces, not one that will be cut down with a single strike."

"But think about it," Rei says. "If you have an army with soldiers who can be killed effortless one after another, doesn't your enemy become cocky? Don't they become careless? Not to mention, if this Zetsu guy can produce hundreds of thousands of copies himself, then it'll wear us out just trying to hack through his numbers, won't it, regardless of how strong or weak they are?"

I huff in reply.

Knowing she has won, Rei blows her hair out of her face and winds her hands through the grass in front of her. She says, "I think Madara's purpose is more to wear out our ranks than to defeat us. Whatever the result of his plan is, he intends for the whole world to see the Uchiha clan's greatness, and we can't do that if we're all dead."

I pluck the grass from the earth, rolling the blade between my fingers. All my life, it seems, the Uchiha have followed me. Even with the bond broken, they're still trying to pull me back into their shadow, their perception of the perfect world. Nothing is as good as when it is seen through Uchiha eyes.

There is a flash of movement, a shout of, "Kakashi-taichou!"

A flare of red smoke blooms in the sky, tainting the clouds a faint pink in the distance. I am on my feet as Kakashi acknowledges the flare and waves us forward.

"We don't know what's waiting for us with the ambush squad," Kakashi calls behind him, his voice carrying in the wind as we move, "so everyone hold off until I give the signal. I'll need three of you to cover me."

I recognize the forms of Gai and Lee leaping forward to volunteer, followed by another man I don't know. They flank Kakashi as we move through the trees, branches snapping beneath the feet of the more careless, inexperienced, frightened shinobi. They are few and far between, but they are noticeable against the silence of the trees.

The vibrations drum against my arm, sending tingles down to my fingers.

"Relax," I say to the shinobi beside me. He is my age, maybe a little older, and wearing a vest from the Sand. He blinks at me, his saucer-wide blue eyes sparkling against the sun. "You'll do better if you calm down. No matter what happens, just trust yourself and your comrades. We'll take care of each other."

He gives a short bark of laughter, rolls his shoulders back. "Yeah," he says. "Like Kazekage-sama said, right? 'There are no grudges when we understand one another's pain.' What a thing to be united in."

There had been an underlying rage before we left headquarters, one that elicited fights within ranks, one that Gaara addressed and dissipated. He made an example out of Naruto, how the other boy had cried for him and cared for him despite the fact that they were from rival villages.

I remember how frail he was, lying on the floor in front of us, bloodied and battered and bruised, his face smeared with dirt and tears. I remember thinking about his loneliness, the pain he had felt, how he was just like us. And now he is Kazekage, quelling fears and resentment, and doing for us just what Naruto had done had done for him all those years ago.

"It helps, though," I say. "To remember and be reminded that no matter what, you're not alone."

Ahead, an explosion cuts us off. The boy swallows. His hands tighten into fists. The vibrations steady.

"Thank you," he says.

We quicken our pace, break through the last of the trees as four figures begin their assault on four of our own. Kakashi and the tree men leap forward, blocking the attacks before any of our the shinobi from the ambush squad are hurt, while we fall into formation behind them.

There is a clank of metal against metal, the faint scraping of feet bracing against the earth. Then, when their bodies are still, we take in the enemy: a woman and three men with—

I freeze when I see the two in the center, held off by Lee and Kakashi. Though their backs are to us, I would know their form anywhere, the way the vibrations react to their chakra. They were the first real enemies I had faced as a part of Team 7, the first barrier I managed to break through on my way to becoming a fully fledged kunoichi—and a better teammate.

Sakura, two meters to my left, speaks my name softly, the shared memory under the shake of her voice.

They had been intimidating, then, big and monstrous in their ability. They had loomed over us, demons with dagger eyes. But now they seem no larger than anyone else, no more hellish.

Rei's fingers brush my wrist to get my attention. "These people," she says. "Their chakras are all wrong. These _people_ are all wrong."

"That's because they're dead," I say, my hands curling into fists as Haku and Zabuza stand before me, their shoulders lifting with false breaths. "They're supposed to be dead."

Rei tenses, starts mumble words that drop and bury in the ground. I can't pick what she says and am further distracted when Zabuza's voice carriers across the grounds, light and nonplussed, gravelly and bone-chilling.

"You two," he says, his eyes skimming over me and Sakura. "You're those kunoichi we fought. You've grown up! Is that brat doing well, too?"

Thrown by his line of questioning, Sakura stutters a feeble response, giving me a chance to assess the situation.

First: the area.

We are contained in an open field that is more dirt than grass, with little water in the soil or air to aid Zabuza and Haku. There are few shrubs and the trees in the immediate perimeter are shabby; they are so thin they can barely brace the weight of the wind, much less hide us in case we need to take cover. But contained within the field are a scattering of tree stumps and broken and hollowed logs, the products of a deforestation project from long ago, undoubtedly. How much they will help when the battle breaks out is anyone's guess.

Second: the enemy.

Intel on Haku and Zabuza can be provided by Sakura, me, and Kakashi, and the other two are already being recognized by their former kinsmen, who are just as confused as to how the four shinobi are before us when they are known to have been slain.

Which brings us to assessment number three: how these shinobi are here.

They are not puppets or genjutsu. What Zabuza and Haku spew aren't false memories. They are earnestly reminiscing with us, speaking easily of Naruto and even Sasuke. The mention of him makes Sakura tense, blink hard at the people in front of her.

The vibrations hitch, pressing harshly against my skin. Zabuza's chakra rises; I swear I see the shape of a demon taking form around him. Kakashi and the other men who had covered him falter, back away from Zabuza as the wind picks up, flurries dirt and detritus into the air, obscuring our vision.

Underneath it, there is a faint plea: _"Kakashi. Stop us."_

Our men grab the shinobi from the ambush squad and pull them back, leaping over the risen dead and back to our ranks. We watch as our enemies stiffen, like they are reluctant to move.

I waver, seeing the familiarity of their jerking movements. I was in a situation not unlike theirs, once, when there was a bond over my head, pulling my blood through my muscles, telling me how and when to act.

There is something keeping them bound.

The shinobi behind me tense as Haku begins to speak to Kakashi. Their conversation is based on our past encounter, full of details no one present but Kakashi, Sakura, and I could understand. While they talk, I take the opportunity to turn to Rei, demand, "What is this? How are they here?"

"A resurrection technique," she says, scowling. "I've heard about this sort of thing, but—god, sorry, everything is making sense now. Where Madara's getting his army, the disposable men—in order for this sort of thing to work to the scale of this war, Madara would need thousands upon thousands of sacrifices to bring these people back from the dead. So the Zetsus!" Rei reaches up to brush the feather in her hair, grasps it in her frustration. I hear the faint crunch of it between her fingers, the anxiety. "He can produce mass copies of himself. He's not a warrior-type because he only needs to be sacrificed for the _real_ warrior-types Madara plans on using."

"So Madara's men," I say, my heart lurching. "They'll all be like this? People we knew once?"

Rei doesn't reply and she doesn't have to because I knew the answer without asking.

The air grows thick, heavy with frost, and mist begins to set over the clearing, fogging our vision. I hear soft, strangled cries of alarm, feel Rei's shoulder press against mine.

"Zabuza can locate his enemies by sound alone," Kakashi says, his voice the only thing to guide us. "He'll use the mist as a cover and then attack. Put all perception shinobi at the center of the combat team! The others must surround them in the cross formation."

Rei, Hiro, and Nao are fast at my side, their backs pressed so closely that I can feel their shoulder blades digging into me. A sting of nostalgia threads through my heart; I remember this bloodlust, this sense of dread, this feeling of not being able to see. I remember how Zabuza's whispery voice, listing off our vital organs, had made Sasuke shake, how I had closed my eyes to ease the pressure and pull myself back into my own mind.

I don't need to do that now. I am thoroughly alone inside my own head.

It is all at once magnificent and heartbreaking.

Rei elbows me, shares a smirk as she says, "Good thing we have the spirits, huh?"

I blink, belatedly answer, "Yes. Good thing."

Then the first screams come.

"Ren!" calls Kakashi, and I inhale, filling my lungs and cheeks with as much air as I can possibly hold. On my exhale, a gust of vibrations pick up off the ground, swirling the mist and clearing it. Surprised by the sudden transparency, Zabuza and Haku are caught off guard by three cells, while the other two shinobi are pulled off their feet and thrown aside. Zabuza and Haku manage to escape their offenders while the other two recover their foot just as quickly, but the momentary assault has allowed for more shinobi to move in and make swipes at them.

There is fire. Explosions. Shards of ice that pierce through skin and impale arteries. But the undead are slowly wedged apart as the mist begins to descend again, the jutsu not completely undone by my vibrations.

Hiro, Rei, and Nao dive into the mist, and I am about to follow when I see a fireball heading straight for me. I flip backward, kicking up my feet to nail the shinobi that makes a beeline for me. She stumbles backward, steadies herself, her black eyes narrowing at me.

Pakura. I hear other shinobi shouting her name, yelling warnings at me when they see she has pinpointed me. Something about being from the Sand, having a kekkei-genkai of scorch release.

What have I gotten myself into?

The woman runs toward me, easily dodging and knocking aside each shinobi that tries to get in her way. She sweeps her arm over her head, spheres of fire circling around her like the black tomoe of a Sharingan. They leave embers in their wake, creating a glow around her that cuts through the mist.

I pull the vibrations forward, swinging them at her in a torrent. They catch and extinguishes one of the fires behind her, but the others continue trailing, and as she approaches, one of them comes free, flies toward me.

Unable to regain the vibrations in time, I swerve to the left, only to find that the fireball is following me. One of the others hits a man in the chest. He gives a screech, shrivels to skin and bone, falls dead. God, if only my element were water—

Rei swoops in from above, one hand extend to grab for the fireball. Instead of drying up her body as it had the other man, the fire spins out, expanding and disappearing in a small whirlwind.

"I've got this," she says as Hiro shoots up from behind Pakura, sending her into a crowd of waiting shinobi. "Go to Sakura! There are men who need to be healed."

"Rei," I protest, but she waves me away, hands pressed into a seal.

"Go! Before more people die."

The mist engulfs her at that moment, and I lose her in a wave of shouts and cries for help. I tsk, but do as she says and find Sakura. Pinpointing her is hard—there are too many chakras, too many erratic footsteps to find hers with the vibrations. I finally stumble upon her when I follow the groans of the dying. She sits beside a man, her hands pressed to his chest, where a kunai has punctured his lungs. She nods to me as I press my hands to his leg, healing the fractured bone that impedes him from standing.

"Play dead," I tell him when I finish, "until you feel you can get up again. Or until the fight is over," I say quietly when his eyes widen, his breathing heightened in panic. "We'll finish this and come back for you."

He gives a small nod, his eyes closing so quickly it seems like he's fainted. When I look up to see how she's doing, Sakura is already at another body, healing. Her hands are bloody, and there are flecks of red on her face, smeared in the mist. So concentrated on healing, on helping people stay alive, she doesn't even look up to see whether I have followed her.

I can't do that. I may be a medic, but I am more of a fighter. I cannot spend my time healing people who will be too dazed to fight back when I can be the one fighting.

Without a word to Sakura, I slip back into the mist with the vibrations to guide me. Chakras signatures disappear left and right, and somewhere beyond me, more of the same muggy chakra that Zabuza and Haku share is rising. Six others, to be precise, and their appearances still all the movement within ten meters of them.

Someone falls through the mist, rams into my side. I catch them, brace them, until I realize they are dead, the bloody stump of their neck dumping blood all over my clothes. I shove them off, blood tracking down my cheeks.

This is war.

My fingers steeple together, my concentration honing in on the vibrations. They are abuzz with elements, with fire and ice and rage. They sink into my bones, until I sense it: a power coming in from my left, hacking down every body in sight.

I take the vibrations, digging them into the dirt, and swing them up. The land rises in a wave, catches the enemy by the foot, and sends them tumbling to the ground where men are able to tackle them.

A voice chimes in my ear, sharp and strong. "_Ren_," Rei says, and I listen without looking because I know she's talking to me through the spirits. "_Ren_, ten meters from you at two o' clock—in about ten seconds, someone will land there. Trap their feet so I can stick them with this seal I made."

"Got it," I answer, taking the vibrations and spinning the around me, pulling the mist closer to my body until I am nothing but a white mass. I stop my heel into the earth, charging my chakra through the ground and bring up mounds of dirt. Someone sinks through, momentarily frozen by the soft earth, before the seals take them, binding them still.

My next exhalation comes out as ice, the temperature around me dropping to a level below my comfort. Someone is getting too close to me.

"Rei," I breathe, hoping the spirits carry my call to her and duck under the vibrations that move over my head, bring a swinging sword in its wake. I kick up, sending the sword skyward and bring its bearer closer to me. I roll through his open legs and, behind Zabuza, I straighten, ready to run, only to find a sweet face coming for me, senbon needles flying for my neck. I jerk aside too slow—one of the needle impales itself into my shoulder—and leap, half-bowed and twisting, in time to dodge Zabuza's sword from below and Haku's fist aimed for my head.

"Rei!" I shouted, panicked for someone, anyone to come to my aid as these two close in on me, their dead eyes trained to see but not see. Why are their efforts being concentrated on me when there are a hundred other men in this division? I'm not worth being singled out.

Am I?

"He knows what we mean to you," Haku says, causing me to flinch. I hadn't expected either of them to talk, but now that they are closer, I can make out the color of their irises against the black, a small beacon of their consciousness. "He was told about how angry you were when you saw that boy with Zabuza-san's sword."

"Gee, kid," Zabuza says as I dig my feet into the ground, determined to face them, determined to fight. I can do this. I am strong. I am brave. "I know we aren't enemies anymore—not personally, anyway—but to defend my grave like that—"

"It wasn't for you, if that makes you feel better," I say as they slow to a halt, only a meter from me. If they move, I might not be able to react fast enough to escape them. "It was symbolic of—of everything. It wasn't because I like you."

"But he wants to know," Haku says, raising a senbon to his chin. Smooth and slick, sharp and lethal. "Madara, that is, wants to know: Will you make good on your promise? Will you kill the boy who stole Zabuza-san's sword like you said you would?"

I freeze. Madara couldn't have known I said that unless—Sasuke told him. What would have been the point in bringing that up? And why confront me about it? Why corner me and ask me if I have the guts to kill someone?

The vibrations pitch as Zabuza jerks forward. I am unable to move in time and feel the stab of his sword on my forearm as I bring my arms up to protect myself, though I know it will do little to prevent me from being sliced in half. I wait to feel the pain of the blade in my chest, cutting across my shoulders, but the sting only goes so far as the bone in my right arm, and then there is a gush of air, the sound of blade on blade and grunts indicating that someone has been brought to the ground.

I open my eyes, not having realized that I had closed them in the first place, and find Nao has Zabuza's blade pressed against a kunai and Rei has Haku tackled to the ground. She sits on his back, his wrist in her grasp, his arm twisted behind his head so that his senbon points at his own neck.

"My, how the tables have turned," Rei says, raising her free hand to the sky. Her fingers light up with wisps of fire, the flames a brighter orange than I have ever seen. "May your souls find peace."

Rei reaches for Haku's forehead, but the boy writhes free, jumps to his feet as Rei is tossed aside. Instead of making way for us, he moves to assist Zabuza, who has likewise broken out of Nao's hold. As he regains his footing, Zabuza trains his eyes on me. They are hollow, inverted black and white, without feeling. He raises his sword, swinging it down in one fell swoop—

Kakashi crash in from overhead, his Chidori-lit hand shooting forward to pierce through Zabuza's chest. But faster than I can keep track of, Haku's frame barrels in through the mist, taking the brunt of the attack. I see flashes of the bridge, feel the hard concrete beneath my hands before it warps back into damp soil and grass. This time, there is no blood, no gasping breath slowing to death. There is only a flurry of what looks like paper pluming from Haku's chest and splitting in half as Zabuza swings his sword to cut through Haku and Kakashi both.

I spin, kick out Kakashi's feet from under him. He goes reeling backward, falling just out of reach of Zabuza's sword. But Kakashi is still hit; there is blood, blood that hits my cheeks, rolls down the side of my face, watery in the mist.

Zabuza staggers, his arm hanging in front of him like he is taking time to compute what has happened. Half of Haku lays at his feet, the paper that makes up his undead body wilting. I roll to my feet, grabbing Nao and pulling him aside.

"You okay?" Nao glances at my arm, which drips blood down to my fingers. I press my palm over it, the stinging pain of healing surging through my flesh.

"Fine. You?"

Nao nods as Rei stands, muttering under her breath. Her clothes are pulled in every direction, hanging off her shoulders in tatters. The bandages that had been wrapped around her calves are completely gone, leaving her pants to shiver in the breeze that comes by. And I notice.

"Hiro," I say. "Where is he?"

Rei stiffens, her hands rolling into fists. "We were hoping he'd be with you," she says.

Kakashi calls to Rei from where he stands, ensnared with Zabuza. Kakashi's arm protrudes from the other man's chest, his second attack having been successful without Haku there to be a shield. "Seal Haku! Now!" he says, and I blink at him, confused, still stunned by what Rei had said.

Rei moves forward without a word, raising a hand over Haku's forehead again, her fingers lighting with the same too-orange flames as before. I turn to Nao, who watches Rei with a furrowed expression, worry creasing between his brow.

"He isn't with me," I say quietly, and Nao gives me a cursory glance.

"We saw," he answers, and I leave it at that.

"May the spirits bring your soul peace," Rei says, laying her fingers against Haku's forehead. The flames sink into his skin, sends the paper flakes fluttering into the air. The ground around him blooms up, wraps around his body, and creates a makeshift mausoleum with inky black patterns that swirl over the surface like roots of a tree. Rei digs into her pouch, presses a seal to the tomb, and stands, quiet.

My arm has stopped bleeding. Across the way, Zabuza is sealed into a cocoon of fabric with a similar seal stuck to it. Black lines stain the white fabric, holding him in, and relief pours over me.

"I will kill him."

In the pause we have to wait for the mist to clear, Rei's voice, usually sweet and light, startles me with the malice and anger it carries. She whirls on her heels, eyes alight with burning fury. Without clarifying who she intends to kill, Rei pulls out a handful of blank tags and bites the tip of her thumb, drawing blood. She outlines a pattern I don't recognize, muttering under her breath, and when she finishes with one, she shoves it into my bloodied hands.

"I figured out how to inanimate these goddamn zombies," she says as she draws another tag. The blood on her finger begins to dry out; she raises it to widen the gash, spill more blood across the paper. I start to warn her against losing too much blood, but she raises a glare and stops me. "'Inanimate' is over exaggerating," she says. "I figured out how to momentarily pause them. These seals prevent the—god, what do I even call them? Corpses? That doesn't even—the point is, these seals prevent the corpses from absorbing the natural chakra they need to be, for lack of a better word, alive. I've handed them out to as many shinobi as I can, and we've been working on getting these attached to each of the corpses we encounter. Once the tags are on them, I'm able to further seal them using the spirits. It's similar to the five-pronged seal that you may have heard about; the Fourth Hokage used it to seal the Nine-Tails and—"

"Rei," I interrupt, grabbing her wrist to stop her from opening her wound again. Blood rolls down the side of her fingers, pooling at her wrist where her arteries jut out. She tugs against me, protests that she has to create more for the sake of the shinobi world, and don't I want to see this war end as quickly as possible?

I wrap my hand around her thumb, healing the injury she has inflicted upon herself. She flinches, her breathing growing increasingly ragged despite our idleness. "We'll find him," I say and she closes her eyes, her face contorting with misery. "Before this war is over, we will find Hiro."

Over Rei's shoulder, I see Nao watching me carefully, full of reservation. He hears the impossibility of the promise like I do, like Rei must. But she inhales sharply, says, "Thank you."

In a war, what's one more promise you can't keep?


	100. Dead or Alive

**Bound  
Chapter 100: Dead or Alive**

Severing the thread is more easily planned than it is executed. I'm pierced through three times before I can finally wrap my hands around it and cut it with my chakra, and even then it is a hassle wrangling down the last of the remaining seven swordsmen and sealing him in his own little cocoon.

The others had gotten away. Made a retreat, it seems, as night falls on the first day of the war.

"Ren," Sakura says as the bodies of the ones we had managed to capture are moved into a row. She reaches for my shoulder through which I'd been threaded by the "sewing needle" of the seven swords. I flinch away from her automatically, still on edge from the fight, and hiss as the sudden move makes my shoulder throb. "If you sit still I can help you!"

"Sorry," I say, and allow her to approach, kneeling on the ground beside me.

She braces my shoulder with one arm and takes the thread with the other. As she pulls it out, it feels like a fire burning through my skin, scorching me from the inside out. I suppress a gasp, eyeing the matted blood that covers the extracted thread.

"You were really brave to follow through with that plan," she says. "You know you didn't have to. We would have found another way."

"Delay is dangerous in wartime," I say as she drops the thread to the ground. It lands with a clank; I suppose, more accurately, the thread would be described as a wire. It's malleable enough to bend when pulled in the right direction, but not as free flowing as thread woven from cotton. "I did what I had to do to end this quickly and what do you know? We're done with this part of the battle. That's good."

Sakura purses her lips, cautious of my poor attitude, and lays a hand to the hole in my shoulder, healing me. Her chakra is warm on my skin, soaking through my flesh. I've healed myself plenty of times before, but never has it felt as soothing as this. I wonder if there is a difference between my technique and hers, or if it's just a difference of chakra.

"I wish Naruto were here," she says, her fingers tightening over my muscles.

I wince, let out a sigh. She knows the irrationality of that. We're fighting this war to protect him, after all. To have him come on the battlefield would be counterintuitive to our goals.

But I can't disagree with her.

When she finishes healing me, we stand to news that we're to retreat back to the Kumogakure area, where the Fourth and Second Divisions are taking a toll. Medics are to stay as spread out as possible, saving what casualties they can, but I mentally freeze at the mention of the Fourth Division taking a beating.

Shikamaru.

Sakura notices me blanch. "They're okay," she says, giving me a small nudge that wakes me up. "We'll meet them in time."

I find no solace in her words.

Everywhere, bodies are scattered. Near scorched earth, near pools of blood, made runny with water. Everywhere, there is evidence of our struggle. At least a third of us are gone.

Hiro is among those missing. Rei and Nao have split up to look for him, only to reunite empty handed and disheartened. I notice the way they stick particularly close to each other now, some part of them always within a centimeter of each other. They keep a close eye on me, too.

I had caught Nao, just as he and Rei were splitting up to do reconnaissance, and asked him what had happened, how Hiro had just disappeared. He exhaled until it seemed he would deflate, said, "Rei—_we_ got distracted. She was trying out this new sealing technique she had learned before being kicked out of her clan and one of the swordsmen snuck up on us. Hiro intervened, pulled the guy away, and disappeared. We saw the swordsmen again later but . . . no Hiro."

I separate from Sakura to regroup with Nao and Rei. They are whispering back and forth and stop abruptly when I reach them. "What's going on?" I ask, looking between them.

Nao watches Rei, waiting for her to talk. She pouts and crosses her arms, says, "We're moving ahead to look for Hiro."

I blink at them, uncomprehending. "Moving ahead," I repeat, "_where_?"

Rei points to the forest, the pathway back to the Lightning Country where we're supposed to rendezvous with the rest of the troops. "He might have escaped into the forests and gotten dragged off into another conflict. I felt another battle going on east of here. I intend to see what's come of it and whether Hiro found his way there. You can come with me or not," she says when I shake my head, "it's your choice. But Nao and I are going."

"Wait," I say, grabbing her wrist to hold her in place. "At least wait for the rest of us. Our division has to head back to the Lightning Country anyway. It'll be better for us if we all stay together. _Rei_," I insist when she tries to pull free. "Listen to me. I know you're scared for him, but—but _you_ are alive! What if Hiro _is_ out there somewhere, but you die before you can find him because you were reckless? For now—and I know you don't want to hear this—but for now, we have to assume everyone who is missing is dead and that includes Hiro. We can't take chances—"

"What if it were Shikamaru, huh?" she snaps, jerking hard enough to pull my arm out of its socket. She gets free as I massage my still healing shoulder, and demands, "If it were Shikamaru who were missing, you would—"

"_Rei_," Nao says, taking her face in his hands and turning her to face him. Her eyes flit over his face in a panic, her fingers prying at his hands to push him off. But his grip stays firm and he says, "Stop for a second. You know making those comparisons aren't going to help. Regardless of who it is that's missing, we can't throw away our lives if it's not for the greater good of this war. If Hiro is still alive out there, _he will make it fine on his own_. He will feel the spirits and find his way back to you. He always does," he says gently, easing his hold on her. "Calm down and remember that we're still with you, at the very least."

Rei blinks at Nao, in a daze. Then she takes his wrists and pulls his hands away.

"He's alive," she says firmly as she lets Nao go. "He'll find us."

"Yeah," Nao says as though it was her idea all along. "I know he will."

Rei clears her throat, adjusting the collar of her uniform. Unconsciously, she runs her hand over the feather pinned behind her ear and says, "I'm sorry for snapping at you, Ren. I'm just concerned is all."

"I understand," I say. "And you're right. If it were Shikamaru—if it were any one of my friends—I would feel the same as you. But you or Nao would have kept me levelheaded. That's what friends do."

She nods, then merges into a group of shinobi working to organize the remaining troops so we can leave. Nao and I watch as she stares blankly at people when they speak to her, taking too long to answer before refusing any kind of leadership at all.

"Can't she find him with the spirits?" I ask under my breath as she moves ahead, not turning back once to look at us.

Nao's body sags. "No," he says. "Too many people have died in the past few hours for the spirits to want to look for anyone. It might be weeks before they calm down again."

"She'll be okay," I say as Rei stands idly beside an arguing pair, "right?"

Nao drags a hand through his hair. "She has to be," he says, and then goes to her side.

A few cells stay behind to find and heal what's left of the injured and escort them back to the Lightning Country while the rest of us move on. We move slowly after the battle, but we still make good pace. Along the way, I see scuff marks in the trees, broken branches that indicate a struggle. _I felt another battle going on_, Rei had said. I wonder who had been engaged in that fight.

"Rei!" Nao shouts, snapping me out of my reverie. Rei has broken from the group, goes darting through the trees for god knows what, and Nao follows her without question. We've lagged to the back of the group, so Rei's divergence goes without notice. I tsk and follow them, knowing I can find my way back to the Lightning Country on my own, later. It's growing dark. If Madara has any sense at all, he'll retreat for the night to regroup and come up with a new strategy for tomorrow, and we will do the same. It will be safer this way.

When I catch up to them, Nao is shouting at Rei, saying, "—be sure he's involved! Even if he _were_ thrown into the forest, why would he have travelled _a kilometer_ in the wrong direction?"

"He got mixed up! You know he's never been good with directions," Rei says, and pushes herself faster, farther away.

I am tired. I am tired and irritated, and I want to regroup in the Lightning Country to find Shikamaru and make sure he is at the very least alive. Rei is worried and scared for Hiro—I understand. But I am selfish, and I don't want to be here, fussing over her, chasing her hopes, when I could be getting closer to Shikamaru.

I focus the vibrations, am about to lasso her in with them, when she falls back of her own accord, ducking into a tangle of brush. I skid to a stop beside her, crouching in the bushes and waiting to see what has caught her attention. Nao slips in beside me, pulling the bramble carefully aside and opening a small view for us.

I hear groans of pain, aggravated shouts of direction, and the definite sounds of someone losing a fight. One chakra essence is familiar. I figure out who it is as an unidentifiable pressure tips into my skin and sucks, like an octopus has attached itself to me. I run my hand over the pressure before I'm tugged out into the open, dragged through the earth until I have a mouthful of sand, and am thoroughly tangled up in myself.

Well, that's not true. Because as I sputter, spitting dirt, I look up to see a woman with a sagging face and white hair, and I realize my inability to move my arms and legs isn't because I'm too stunned, but because Chiyo has me tied up with her chakra threads.

"My, my, my," she says, her fingers splayed against the sun. "I never thought I'd see you again, Ren-kun."

"Ga—_Chiyo_?" I sputter, struggling against my restraints.

"No time for explanations," she says grimly, her hands moving over her head. Very faintly, I can see the threads of chakra glowing through the waning sunlight. "You must concentrate your chakra, sharpen it, and cut through these chakra threads before I'm able to manipulate you anymore."

"Don't patronize me," I say. I jerk my hands up and then I am free, her threads sticking to my chakra covered fingers. "I don't have time for this right now, old lady, so you'll have to excuse me if I skip the pleasantries."

I yank the threads forward, pulling her off balance. Clever lady that she is, she cuts the threads herself, but I am quick. I've replaced her chakra with my own, so even when she stops emitting chakra, I have already caught her in a bind.

Jerking the threads back, I reel her into my foot and send her flying into a tree that subsequently snaps in half. Three other shinobi I don't recognize begin to advance on me, and I falter, out of ideas. Chiyo is the only one I could stand against in a fight—and even then, my win wouldn't be guaranteed.

Nao and Rei burst from the trees, sliding in to cover me, but the men stop as Chiyo pulls herself from the brush, twigs sticking out of her hair. "We're not here to fight you, Ren-kun," she says, and I falter, my eyes flicking from one opposing shinobi to another. Chiyo's voice is different from seconds ago; the way she addresses me is not as kind as before, not as warm.

"What do you mean you're not here to fight me?" I say. "You've been brought back from the dead to fight all the Allied Shinobi Forces—and I'm one of them! How could you—"

"Kabuto, the one who has joined with Orochimaru to bring us back, has something special in store for you," she says, her arms staying at her side. I notice, now, her eyes are dark, completely eclipsed over by the technique holding her to the mortal world. Likewise, the men beside her remain stock-still, their eyes unseeing. "Tomorrow, when he unleashes the rest of his powers, you will suffer your own plague."

"What—"

"We give you this one chance to retreat," she says, her hands raising, her fingers splaying against the dying light. "If you don't run, we will be forced to fight. You will die here. Go, Ren. Before it's too late."

I begin to argue, demand what she means, but Nao takes my elbow, says, "Okay, we're going. Come on."

Nao pulls me and Rei to the edge of the forest, out of the clearing where Chiyo and her three lackeys remain, watching us retreat. At the last minute, I free myself of Nao and whirl on my heels, demanding, "Why? Why am I being singled out and belittled like this? First Zabuza and Haku and now this threat of tomorrow! What does Kabuto have against me? Or is it Madara pulling the ropes?"

Chiyo pauses, blinking at me as her black eyes flash from the ground to my face. "Everyone will die in this war," she says. "Even if they survive, they must be purged of who they once were, everything they once loved. They will become nothing, and from that catharsis, we will achieve peace."

"_Ren_," Nao hisses, and yanks me into the trees, Chiyo disappearing from my view for the last time.

[+]

_You will suffer your own plague._

Chiyo's words ring in my ears long after we've gone. I can't imagine what message Kabuto means to send me through these cryptic encounters with people I used to know. I can't imagine what he might have in store for me.

But I am livid.

To use the people we love against us, to have us fight and kill the people who we cared about most—it is the epitome of wickedness. There will be a special circle in hell for him and him alone.

Our journey to the Lightning Country is a quiet one. Rei lags behind me and Nao as we move, her footsteps heavy and uncalculated, like she wants us to be found. Luckily, there doesn't appear to be any sign of struggle on the path we take. There is only dry barren land, stretching as far as the eye can see. There is the occasional scuff mark left by the squadron that had gone to the Lightning Country before us, but nothing to indicate that they had encountered trouble.

"Do you think Kabuto will have his troops retreat?" I ask as we slow to a walk, tired from a day's worth of battle and running. We are close to where the Second and Fourth squadrons are stationed, the soil growing increasingly more fine, beaten by wind and water.

"It seems like it," Nao says, looking around at the mountains that press on us from the east. "It's getting late. They maybe be immortal, but they won't be able to see much in the dark any more than we will be. Besides, they must need to regroup as much as our troops do."

"I guess in that sense they're a little bit human," I grumble, my fingers rolling into fists. "At least once they stop we'll get a chance to rest."

Rei laughs, a sharp bitter laugh that makes us stop and stare at her, wide-eyed. "They won't stop," she says, walking past us with a breezy wave. Her voice is a low growl, angry and combative. "They'll give that impression, but they won't stop. They're sneakier than that. Look: They've already revived all your loved ones to fight against you in an army of undead. What makes you think they have any mercy after a move like that?"

Nao and I remain quiet, following Rei through the trees. What she says is the truth, but to keep up with that kind of thinking would be more discouraging than I can handle at the moment. I don't know if I can handle Rei even, especially if she keeps up like this. I need someone to be confident in our abilities, to believe we we'll come out this war the winners. I need someone like Naruto while he is not here, and Rei could have been that. But she is in a rough place with Hiro missing; her attitude needs to be excused until we get closure on what happened to him. I need to find comfort in something else.

I'm given no such opportunity. Up ahead, not far from where the earth cuts off to fall into the ocean, against the sky that has fallen into darkness, a bright light erupts, blasting a massive force of chakra that would bring me to my knees if I were any closer. Rei stops dead in her tracks, her hands clenching her chest as she gasps and doubles over. Nao braces her, asking what's wrong, but she doesn't need to answer for us to figure it out.

A beastly roar rips through the air and a massive figure uncurls from the ground, stretching its arms toward the heavens. From where we stand, it is a monolith against the horizon; up close, it must be hundreds of thousands of meters high.

"This chakra," Rei chokes, stumbling against Nao. "This power—who would gather this much suffering?"

Without a doubt, I know: Madara.

"Come on!" I shout and bolt forward, frigid ocean air swiping at my eyes, dragging tears from them as I run toward the carnage. I don't turn to see if Rei and Nao are following me, only trust that they are, as the beast lets out another howl. The earth around it flares up, like two halves of a mountain coming together to crush it. The massive upheaval causes my footing to stumble; I catch myself, reaffix my path, and watch as the beast tosses the mountains aside like they are pebbles.

This power. This ungodly strength. The way the vibrations react to it, continuously buzzing. It's all familiar. And it's when Rei says, "_The spirits_," that I realize why.

In the Wind Country, outside that cave where I had seen Gaara die, where those Akatsuki members had torn the Bijuu from his body and killed him, I had felt this power. This power is the same: stifling and unsettling and grossly overwhelming.

"That thing," I say, having to crane my neck back in order to see it. It has nine eyes, all shut tight against the world. Great stumps grow out of the monsters back, like bone that has been pulled out and haphazardly severed. "It's the culmination of all the captured tailed-beasts. If Madara's summoned it, does that mean—has he somehow managed to capture the Hachibi and Naruto?"

"No," Rei says, and I look at her. She stares ahead at the beast, her lips pressed so tight they nearly disappear on her face. "If he had those two, we wouldn't be here. That—_thing_—is barely the beginning of his plan."

The monster roars. The ends of the stumps on his back begin to glow, emitting a bright beam of chakra that drops to the ground and fries the people it hits. The attack is so powerful that the immediate area around the monster's feet explodes, sending debris raining down on the troops.

We are close enough to feel the heat of the blast, close enough to need to block the light from our eyes. While the aftereffects of the attack deters us, it doesn't stop us, and before long we are in range of the beast, scouring the area for what we might be able to do, what efforts we might be able to help.

Medics are healing the wounded, the dying. But there must be—

"Ren, there!" Rei says, and points to my left, where there is a cliff that rounds the ocean front. There are only a scattering of people standing on the staircase-like structure of the cliff side, but one of them stands out more than the others in his black cloak and orange mask that is luminescent in the light of the full moon overhead.

Madara.

He has his back to me, his head turned to his right as he holds onto two large jars reminiscent of the gourd Gaara carries on his back. The sight of Madara makes me irrationally angry, and I move to attack him without a plan, only to freeze when I realize who he is staring at, who Rei had really been calling my attention to.

A boy, kneeled a few levels above Madara, his hands pressed together in a seal while a strip a black stretches across the cliff and attaches itself to Madara's shadow. I choke, horror filling my lungs as the vibrations whirr in response to Madara's beast, which begins to cross the battlefield, his dry, crackled feet lifting to step right where Shikamaru is positioned.

"Shikamaru!" I shout, reaching for him just as the monster's foot comes down, crushing the entire cliff side and reducing it to nothing but rubble. I give a strangled cry of desperation, scrambling to get to him, only to have Rei throw herself around my waist, preventing me from moving. "Rei, get—"

"He's safe!" she yells as the dust below clears, revealing squirming shadows. "Ren, he's safe! I saw Chouji drag him out in time. He's safe."

Although her voice becomes progressively weak, small, her grip on me grows tighter until I can hardly breathe. I take her wrists, ready to pry her off of me, but only find myself leaning against her, reciprocating the ferocity with which she holds me. Because he is safe, and at least I know he is safe, can see he is safe, will see him safe. But Rei will not see Hiro. May never see Hiro again.

I shut my eyes against the beast, against the dead bodies strewn haphazardly against the rocks in the crooked way only broken people can be.

It is only the first day, but I am wasted.

"I'm so tired, Rei," I say, shutting my eyes as my breath hitches in my throat. "I'm so goddamn tired."

The air lightens, the vibrations calming to a deathly still. There are shouts—"It—it disappeared?" "Why did he retreat?"—and Rei and I collapse to the ground, my legs folding under me as I have my face in my hands, Rei still holding onto me from behind, her forehead leaning on the back of my head.

"Me, too," she says, her breath filtering through my hair, brushing the top of my spine. "What should we do?"

It would be easy to run. It would be easy to sneak away now, forget about all this carnage, and return when all is said and done, claiming to have been lost in the forest, left for dead, but alive to reap the consequences of a battle won—or lost.

It would be easier to not return at all.

I breathe. Open my eyes.

"We keep fighting," I say, watching as the ant-sized figures scurry about below, leaping from level to level to see who can be saved, who needs to be wrapped and sent out to sea in a final act of honor. I think of the boy from the Sand I had encountered at the beginning, wonder where he is now, if he is being pushed into the water, cleansed of this life, or if he is suffering still. "We keep fighting until we lose everything."

"We could never lose everything," Nao says, kneeling down beside us. His eyes burn with a determination that shines through his whole face, a sunbeam in the nightfall. It is reminiscent of Naruto and his brash bravery. "As long as we are alive," he says, and I feel Rei lifting her head to look at him, the ease of her breath on my skin, "we could never lose everything."

"We will fight," Rei agrees. "And we won't stop until we've won."

Incredibly, a smile worms its way across my face. Nao gathers the both of us in his arms, his face pressing into my hair.

"And we will win," he says.

* * *

**Thank you for reading! Please review!**


	101. Midnight

**Bound  
Chapter 101: Midnight**

With Madara and the monster gone, and all of the undead in the immediate area captured and sealed, our divisions begin to regroup. The First and Second Divisions have taken a beating, and what pieces of the Third and Fourth Divisions that have made it back haven't gone without their losses either. After we've done a rough headcount, it's estimated that only half of us are left on the battlefield.

The enemy's number is predicted to have been halved as well, but at this rate, we'll all end up losing.

"Do you want to go to Shikamaru?" Rei says, nudging me with her elbow. We sit at the edge of the cliff, recovering from the breakdown we had experienced, and watch the mass shift of bodies below. Groups are gathering the dead and pushing them into the ocean, letting them drift into oblivion before they can somehow be turned against us. It is a macabre sight and my stomach lurches watching the people down below work. I have no desire to assist in the effort.

"Yes," I say, pushing a hand through my hair, "but I've lost track of him since Madara's beast disappeared. I'll wait until everything settles."

But even when everything does settle, I'm called to do medical work. As soon as we leave the beach front and enter the more rugged, mountain terrain, a shinobi from Konoha who I'm vaguely familiar with catches me and tells me to report to the medical tents. I'm to tend to the injured and dying and stop their early deaths. I push past him.

"Where are you going?" demands the shinobi. "The medical tents are in the opposite direction."

"Yeah, but this is where all the severely injured are," I say, gesturing to the rows of people who pool together in front of the line of trees where the beginnings of a forest are sprouting. They watch for the enemy as the night deepens, keeping close to the frontlines. "Think about the shinobi and samurai who are only slightly wounded and still push themselves to out there. The slight wounds they have could become fatal if they're not treated. The injured at the medical tents are either dead, dying, or being taken care of so that they are sustaining, but when the sun rises, they can't help us. The ones in field at the moment, quietly suffering for our sakes, for _your_ sake, are the ones who need to be treated."

The man is left stuttering in our wake, the crunch of our feet against the gravelly sand drowning him out. Nao shakes his head at my insubordination. "You shouldn't have done that."

"Why not? I'm right. If other shinobi are anything like my friends, they'll be taking their duties too far, wasting themselves to the bone until they can hardly stand up, insisting they can continue even though they're half dead." I adjust my headband, make sure it is tight around my forehead. "Shinobi are idiots. It's hardwired in their brains to do stupid things like that."

Nao scoffs, says, "Well, there won't be much for me to do. I'm not a medic."

"Why don't you and Rei find somewhere to rest?" I suggest, pointing to a random group of shinobi I spot. They're hunched together, discussing the battle techniques they had seen, complimenting each other on their vigilance during the fighting. From the flak jackets they wear, they're not from the same hidden villages, but they talk comfortably and kindly to each other anyway. Such is the result of going through life and death situations with strangers. "We'll need guards to replace the current shift later in the night. It'll be a good if not everyone stays up all night keeping lookout."

Nao raises a brow, suspicion lining his face. But he nods, snakes an arm around Rei's shoulders, and pulls her off to the side. She follows without complaint, eyes drawn to the ground. The feather in her hair is crushed, more rumpled than I have ever seen it. She must be grabbing onto it so much that it isn't being given time to restore itself like it usually does. The sight of it, wilted and crooked, makes me ache.

Nao pauses, turns to me over Rei's head, catches me staring. "By the way, if you see him," he says softly, squeezing Rei closer. "Tell him where to find us."

I swallow and nod. Once Rei and Nao have integrated themselves into the group, I continue on my way, giving check-ups to the shinobi I run across along the lookout grounds of the warzone. We're stationed along the edge of the forest where the trees just begin to spot the flat terrain. We have enough cover to stay protected, but enough open range to see the enemy should they appear. Just as I've predicted, the shinobi on guard are all in some way injured: one man has a gash going from his left eyebrow to his jaw, a wound he is convinced is nothing that can't be staunched with his shirt; a girl has a cut that is showing signs of infection; another, a boy about my age from the Mist, has dislocated his shoulder and yet still strains it by using his injured arm like it there is nothing wrong with it.

Idiots. All of them.

I'm fixing the boy's shoulder when I hear the unmistakable sound of someone collapsing beside me. I turn and find Neji pushing himself up, his face pallid and damp with sweat. I finishing healing the first boy's swollen shoulder before moving to help Neji sit as Kiba comes forward, Akamaru at his heels, and demands, "Neji! Are you all right?"

"Fine," he dismisses, attempting to crawl back to the edge of the wall. I grasp the collar of his shirt, keeping him in place, and he glowers at me. "I'm fine," he says again, his voice unwavering.

"You'll forgive me if I don't believe you," I say. "Don't strain yourself."

"Yeah, don't kill yourself, man," Kiba says, frowning. "My nose is here to sniff out the enemy, too. Your eyes don't have to do all the work. In fact, you should head to the medical tents and get patched up. Let Ren take your spot for a second. She has her vibrations to watch out for us."

"_I'm fine_," Neji insists, moving back to where he had been keeping guard. "If anything happens, Ren can heal me here. I won't have to leave at all."

"Hey, I'm not your keeper," I huff and Kiba sighs, shaking his head. "I'm not going to sit at your side and make sure you don't die. There are other people who need to be healed."

Neji ignores me, maintaining lookout. I roll my eyes at him as someone taps me on the shoulder. It's an older man with a grim face. His clothes are torn on one half of his body, ripped to shreds like he has been put through a blender. At first glance, nothing appears to be wrong with him until he kneels down to be level with me.

Then I see the cuts. Millions of little cuts overlapping each other, barely bleeding but numerous enough to expose his pink flesh. "I saw you healing others," he says. "I was wondering if you could help me."

"Good god," I say, reaching for his arm. "What happened to you?"

The man gives a short hiss of pain as my fingers touch his exposed flesh. "One of those mummies Kabuto revived came at me with some weird jutsu that started to rip me apart. Someone dragged me away before I was torn to shreds."

The cuts have no pattern to them, no regulated spacing between each laceration. These aren't the result of claw marks or fingernail scratches. "What kind of jutsu did this?" I say, turning his arm over.

The man shrugs. "If I knew, I would tell you. When I was being attacked," he says, "I could feel it all at once, just this . . . this tingling pain that numbed my whole body. Slowly, at first, and I didn't even notice it, but then there was this pressure—I felt like I was trapped underwater and I'd been holding my breath for too long."

An eerie feeling creeps up my neck at his description. "What did your attacker look like?"

"I don't know," he says, face scrunched with confusion. I'm only supposed to be healing him, not interrogating him. "There were too many people fighting at once. No one was touching me directly, so I couldn't—"

"Okay, right, sorry," I say, and concentrate on fixing him up. He thanks me when I finish healing him. I watch him retreat, turning his words over in my head.

A numbing pain. An immense pressure. That sounds like—

"Kiba," I say. "Have you seen any of the others? Chouji, Ino, Shikamaru?"

Kiba affirms, raising his eyes thoughtfully to the sky. "All the divisions have gotten mixed up around here. Chouji and Shikamaru and part of the Fourth Division are here, and the last I saw, they were with Ino. Tenten is in the First Division, I think, because I've seen her around, too. Hinata's only a few meters down from us with Shino, and Sakura is probably at the medical tents. The only ones I haven't seen really is that Bushy Brows and your friends from the Sound."

"Yeah, they were with me in the Third Division. But we've also come this way to provide backup. Are you sure you haven't seen Hiro—the taller of the Sound boys I had had with me? You know, messy brown hair, wide, innocent eyes?"

Kiba's face hardens. "No," he says, and then adds, like he knows why I'm asking, "Sorry."

"Thanks," I mutter, sighing. I'm about to leave when Neji tumbles backward again, right into me, knocking me to the ground and crushing me under the weight of his body. "Kiba!" I shout as the boy bursts into an ill-suited fit of laughter. He sobers quickly and swoops in to lift Neji off of me with the help of Akamaru.

"Goddamn, Neji," I say, spitting out a mouthful of dirt. Kiba orders Akamaru to find a blanket from some of the supplies the medical corps has sent to the front lines as I brace him. "Have you really tired yourself out so badly? The night's barely started!"

"I slipped!" Neji counters.

I scoff. "Yeah, is that why you can't even lift a finger? Thank you, Akamaru," I say as he returns with a tightly bundled blanket. I spread it out and Kiba lifts Neji onto it, resting Neji's head on a stiff, rectangular pillow that had come with the blanket.

"You _sure_ you don't want to go to the medical tents?" Kiba asks, scowling at him.

"_Yes, Kiba, how many times do I have to tell you that I'm fine_," snaps Neji, barely a muscle in his face twitching as he speaks, although the anger is relayed through without a hitch.

"Overusing your Byakugan until you collapsed doesn't seem fine to me!" Kiba says. "Killing yourself like this isn't going to impress anyone either."

Neji turns toward Akamaru, who sits innocently on his left, and shouts, "Shut up, Kiba!" prompting Kiba to retort, "You're so burnt out you can't even tell the difference between a human and a dog and _eyesight is supposed to be your thing_!"

I sigh, but I can't help grinning at the two boys as I nudge Akamaru away and lay my hands over Neji's chest. I measure his heart rate, the flow of his chakra through his body to make sure he's all right. "If you won't go to the medical tents, at least rest for a few minutes. In the meantime, do us all a favor and lower your voice, Kiba. Neji needs to keep his heart rate down and some people are trying to sleep."

"Sleep," Kiba scoffs, crossing his arms. "What a joke. Who could possibly sleep after today?"

Akamaru rubs his muzzle against my side. I reach out and pet him, running my hands through his matted hair. Flakes of something too dark red to be mud comes off on my fingers.

I brush it off.

I push myself to my feet as Kiba scowls at me, puzzled. "I'm going to go see if anyone else needs help," I say, gesturing to the people stationed below us. "Send Akamaru to get me if anything happens to Neji."

My departure is once more delayed by a shinobi who lands beside us, looking frantic. "There are reports of an infiltrator at the medical tents," she says, her eyes brimming in the moonlight. She looks down, catches sight of Neji, and flinches away. I look at him too, trying to see what could have made her react in such a way, but there's no real reason for her to be cautious of him. He's not grotesquely wounded or anything, but she takes a small step back, says, "He—the infiltrator—is one of Madara's plant-human subordinates and can perfectly mimic the image and chakra imprints of those whose energy he absorbed during the fight. Everyone is to be wary of everyone. Report any strange behavior. Spread the news."

Kiba and I exchange looks of alarm as the shinobi leaves. "Maybe it's best if you stay with us," he says, and I wonder if he's beginning to suspect me of being an imposter. He must read the thought in my face, because he says, "Just so _you_ won't be attacked by someone. All of us have been here since dusk. We can all trust that the other is real."

"As much as it pains me to say this," Neji says, eyes closed, "Kiba is right. We're best staying where we are. There's no point in risking your safety."

Akamaru sits beside me, nudging my side with his muzzle and whining. I pet him, concede, "All right, I'll stay. As long as you _rest_, Neji. I'll check on you in a bit to see if you can resume your duties."

Neji sighs and settles into the blanket. Kiba waves Akamaru back to the frontlines. If I make a break for it now, there would be no one to stop me. Neji is incapacitated and Kiba is too preoccupied with keeping watch to bother pursuing me. But then I think about Rei, how she had run off to find Hiro and put us in danger. I think of what Nao had told her about us being alive at least and finding our way back to each other when all was said and done.

"Of all the moments to be resting," I hear Neji mumble and return my attention to him. He has his eyes closed, but his eyebrows are drawn together in frustration, his forehead creased. "There are imposters in our midst and I'm laying around, useless—"

"If you hadn't pushed yourself so hard to begin with," I say, and Neji's eyes shoot open, glaring and promptly cutting me short.

"If I hadn't pushed myself so hard," he says, "countless others would be dead at this moment, Ren. Saving one or two people in the moment may not seem substantial, but those people go on to save others. More and more, a whole chain of people, saving each other, until countless people have been saved because you managed to save one or two people. If I hadn't pushed myself so hard," he says quietly, "I wouldn't have been doing my job."

I purse my lips. Gently, I press my hand across his brow, say, "Calm down, Neji, otherwise you'll become hypertensive."

He turns away.

"Look," I say, sighing. "All I meant is after fighting as hard as you did—and I know you did—you should have taken it upon yourself to rest for a moment and let others—the ones you saved, maybe—take care of you. You should have let them take first watch so you could rest and refuel yourself so you could continue to save their lives in the morning. I'm a medic, Neji. Everyone I save has the potential to save two or three people, and the people they save have potential to save two or three people, so you don't have to lecture me on the merits of working hard to save lives. I'm a medic and a kunoichi, and if there's anything I've learned, it's that at some point, you have to take care of yourself, too."

When Neji doesn't respond, I flick his head. He winces, turns back to me, scowling. "You've trained with me before," I say, frowning at him. "You know I have the best intentions. You know that when it comes to medical advice, I'm nearly infallible."

"Nearly," he mutters, and I flick him again. "All right," he groans. "All right, I admit it, you have a point. Regardless. It doesn't feel right to have a moment like this when so many people have died."

"You have the privilege of having a moment like this," I say, "because those people have died. They haven't gone for nothing. We have to take advantage of that. Now, rest. I'll keep lookout for you."

The creases on his forehead let up at last, but his lips remain pressed in a tight line. "So long as you take a moment to rest too, then," he says.

I smooth my hair back, say, "Yeah. I will."

I stay at Neji's side, checking his heart rate, his chakra levels. He manages to fall asleep for a few hours before waking up to return to guard duty and asking me if I've rested. I wave him off, much to his annoyance, but he leaves without another word. Every so often, we hear reports from deeper inside the base: people are still being attacked, all of the wounds are external, physical. It is impossible to tell who is real unless, like us, you have been with them through the entire night.

I sit against the short rock wall that has been erected to act as a cover for our guards. I am dwindling my fingers when Kiba is relieved of duty. He drops down beside me, slumping, and says, "How can we be expected to tell if any of the people around us are fakes if the enemy can perfectly mimic our appearances and chakra signatures?"

I frown, leaning my head back to watch the stars. "Code words?" I offer. "Try to get the other person to say something they would never say, and if they say it then you know it's an imposter, right?"

Kiba groans, massages his temples. "It shouldn't have to be that complicated. Or so much work."

"Well, at least I can be confident that _you_ are the real Kiba," I say, patting his knee. He bats my hand away, scowling.

"You should get some rest, Ren," he says as Akamaru worms into the space between us. His heavy tail whaps my face as he rests his head on Kiba's lap. Kiba snorts with laughter and wraps an arm around Akamaru's neck, saying, "You'll be about as useful as Neji was if you stay up all night."

I turn my back on Kiba and Akamaru, hugging my knees to my chest and grumbling under my breath. I close my eyes, ready to sleep as Kiba suggests, but I find myself staring into the darkness, listening to the steady breathing and soft steps of people regulating the frontlines. I try to think of things to calm and comfort me, things I will be glad to have once this war is over.

There is a face that comes to mind, but it only makes me more anxious.

Kiba was right: after today, who could sleep?

[+]

I do end up sleeping, although I startle awake every few hours. When the sun comes up over the horizon, I am fully conscious. I stretch out my legs and back, stiff from sleeping upright. Akamaru's tail still rests across my legs, its heaviness explaining the numbness that prickles my calves. I shove his tail off, get to my feet, and glance over my shoulder. There are still other shinobi on the lookout, though there's nothing to see on the brightening skyline.

"Have there been any developments?" I ask a shinobi passing by.

She perks up, a quick smile easing over her face. There is something off about the gesture. I haven't seen anyone smile in a long time.

Then again, there hasn't been much to smile about in a long time.

"Yes," she says. "It seems, sometime during the night, Naruto-kun and Bee-san escaped the island where they were being held and are on their way here."

"_What_?" I say, my disbelief causing her smile to waver. "Is that supposed to be good news?"

"It's been approved by the Raikage and Hokage," she says, brow furrowing. "So I would assume so."

"How? Why? When are they going to get here? Never mind," I say, dismissing the girl who struggles to keep up with my questioning. Naruto will get here when he gets here, which will probably be late enough to make it seem like all hope is lost but just in time to restore our faith in everything.

As I lean down to shake Kiba awake, I feel the vibrations pick up, swinging at an alarming rate. I leap out of the way in time to avoid a kunai to my back, only to trip over Kiba's legs and have the girl who I had been talking to lunge at me, pinning me to the ground. I grunt, catch her wrists as she slashes the kunai in my face, and bring up my knees, kicking her over my head and off of me.

I leap to my feet, readying to fight the girl, but Neji has broken from his spot on lookout to knock the girl into a boulder that consequently cracks with the force of the attack. The girl slumps, broken, and slowly her features begin to transform, warping until she has turned a ghostly shade of white. And then she is someone else completely, the white plant-human hybrid that I had seen with Sasuke in the Land of Iron, his jagged teeth jutting out of his slack jaw.

"Thanks, Neji," I say, rubbing my head where it had hit the ground too hard. Kiba is just beginning to stir, sitting up and rubbing his eyes at the figure impaled into the rock. "I guess they weren't exaggerating the extent of this guy's abilities."

"What _happened_?" Kiba says, jumping to attention. "Who—"

"I'm surprise they've only just reached us," Neji says, shaking his head. "We've been hearing reports of attacks like this all night, but no one has passed through our area before this one."

"Kagiru Ren!"

Another woman approaches us, her shinobi alliance headband tied tightly around her thigh in a tourniquet. She bleeds profusely from a gaping wound stretching from the side of her knee down to her ankle. She hobbles as she comes forward, her injured leg dragging behind her, and says, "Is there someone with that name here? Or anyone who's a medic! I need some—_ah, f_—"

She lowers herself to the ground, no longer able to hold herself up, and I kneel beside her, ask her what happened.

"One of those goddamn white Zetsus," she says between ragged breaths. "Pretended to be my friend then jumped me."

"I guess he's getting bold now that it's daylight," I say, pressing my hands to the woman's wound. "He should have attacked sooner, though, instead of letting us rest all night if he really wanted to tire us—"

I'm tugged back by the collar of my shirt and pushed aside as the woman grabs for me, her hands clenching around thin air. She gives a roar of anger, her hands digging through her hip pouch for a knife before Akamaru pounces on her with enough force to smash a crater into the ground. When Akamaru steps aside with a low growl, we see the woman has transformed into another of Madara's little henchmen, his circular eyes wide open and empty.

"I think it'd be better for us not to trust the next person who comes looking for us," Neji says, letting go of my shirt and helping to steady me. "It might be that they're targeting the medics first. We need to send word back to the medical command somehow and alert them."

"Yeah, and what are the chances they'll trust any messenger we send?" I retort, brushing myself off. "They'll figure it out themselves. We can't worry about—"

I'm cut off by an explosion that seems to go off at my feet. I'm thrown across the cliff side, fire burning my legs, and ram into a rocky wall that knocks the wind out of me. I come up coughing through the dust and smoke that has dispersed throughout the area, clogging my vision.

"Neji?" I call, choking on the smoke that remains in my lungs. "Kiba! Akamaru?"

There is a woof of reassurance, and then a soft whine. I hone in on the vibrations, trying to figure out where each boy has gone or if anyone else has gotten caught in the blast, and duck in time to avoid a kick to my throat. I reach up, grabbing the ankle, and swing my attacker aside, into the wall behind me.

The illusion of a boy with bright green hair disappears, revealing a white Zetsu that groans. His head lulls to the side, and I dig my fingers into his throat, pushing his head back so that he has to look at me.

"What's the matter?" I say as the dust begins to clear. "Can't try to trick us with some kind of genjutsu? Are physical attacks all you have, because against us, they will do nothing."

His mouth moves into a sick grin. He says, "Maybe not. But how will you be able to attack someone you thought was once your ally? Someone you had spent your entire lifetime or maybe even a short night bonding with, comforting, and being comforted by, only to find out that they are not the person who had gained your trust? That's the problem with you shinobi," he says, when my face hardens. My grip tightens around his throat, but he manages to wheeze, "You all become too involved."

I deliver one deciding blow to the head and then drop his limp body to the ground. Pivoting on my heels, I follow the sounds of shouts and screams, and round a boulder to find carnage: a battle of shinobi turning against each other, cutting into their friends, people they had stood beside through the night. Everyone hesitates against the enemy because no one knows for sure who they are supposed to be attacking.

I stand at a loss, watching as two shinobi face off, one determined to keep on the defense until they can be confident the person they're fighting is not their friend. I have half a mind to jump in and protect the defensive shinobi—obviously, if their opponent was truly their friend, they would have stopped attack by now—until the defender is backed into against a tree. She ducks, her attacker's kunai digging into the bark and keeping them in place. Then her eyes sharpen, and she pulls out her own kunai, stabs her attacker in the back.

Her attacker doesn't turn into a Zetsu.

She smiles.

I send a kunai flying at her head, a blatant assault she dodges without difficulty. She looks up, startled to have another opponent so soon after killing her own, and her surprise gives me the advantage. I slide my leg under hers, tripping her, and yank free the kunai that had been stuck into the tree. I drive the kunai into the girl's chest; blood gurgles out of her throat, droplets of it splattering on my face, and as she begins to transform into a Zetsu, I kneel beside the other shinobi, pulling the kunai from his back and healing him.

He is already dead.

I curse, each word doing nothing to ease the weight on my heart. I pull myself to my feet, determined to find a way to rectify my mistake, and see a squadron of shinobi backed into each other, surrounded by a dozen Zetsu who haven't even bothered to disguise themselves. Swiftly, I work through hand seals and bring my fist back, punching the ground. The earth raises as my chakra flies through it, swirling around the squadron and sending the Zetsus flying away.

I shout for the squad to take cover when I feel the vibratixons rush behind me. I jerk to a halt, whirling on my heels to see what is causing this oncoming storm that I have only ever felt from the Genshindou. More explosions go off to my right, sending bodies skidding and debris shooting across the now bright blue sky.

I shake my head, pulling myself back into the fight. In the cloud of dust that has kicked up from the blast, I can't see anything. But I still feel it, the rumbling of the vibrations rolling forward, trampling the earth. Then there is a sudden shift, a spike where someone lilts and bolts at me. I raise my arms, blocking a foot that aims for my face. I grunt, shoving against my attacker and using the momentum to leap back and put a safe distance between us.

"Very good," says the shadow that slinks up from the dust. I narrow my eyes as there's a slight in the vibrations, creating a breeze that brushes the dust away. "You have gotten better at sensing the vibrations, Ren."

I freeze, taking halting breaths as the person steps forward, an army at their heels. A mass of familiar dark brown hair, mussed in the wind, graying at the roots. Robes and garments that are a deep blue, almost black in the sunlight, and footsteps that tread so carefully they don't disturb the vibrations in the least.

_You will suffer your own plague_.

"What's the matter, Ren?" the man at the head of the group asks. I can see myself in his face, the roundness of his eyes, the thinness of his lips.

And here it is.

My father's brow lifts up in disdain, his mouth pressing into a tight line of disapproval. "Don't you recognize your own family?"


	102. Family Business

**BOUND  
Chapter 102: Family Business**

"Is that anyway to regard your father?" he says as the dust around him settles, the immediate carnage around me giving way to calm. I stare at him wide-eyed, my mouth open in horror. By his prompting, I close my mouth, sewing my lips together and look over his shoulder to avoid his gaze.

Our family have me cornered, pressed almost against the craggy rock side. They are clustered tightly enough to make it impossible for me to barrage through them, not that I have that kind of strength in the first place. Any hope I have of blasting them away with the vibrations would be useless; they would sense the vibrations coming and dismiss them easily.

I grit my teeth when I realize I'm planning for escape rather than battle. But I can't fully suppress the fear I feel at seeing them again, my father in particular.

And I can't deny this inherent sadness that rumbles in my stomach and quietly, quietly tells me I can't fight my own blood.

My aunts, uncles, cousins all stand before me, stoic, their thick brown hair flurrying in the breeze. Other shinobi have been caught in the wave of my family. They stand frozen in front of the masses, backing up to my side as my family zeroes in on me. I want to tell the other shinobi to run, get away, but they are as surrounded as I am.

My father is different from the way I remember him. Aside from his crackled skin, that is, that smoothes over as the jutsu settles, softening from broken, barren sand to pristine ivory. His hair is greyer, his skin more wrinkled, cheeks more sallow. And he is not quite so big. I take a backward step, drawing closer to the cliff side. My father cocks his head to the side, says, "It'd be smart of you to run, Ren. Look at our numbers. The whole of your family is here. You can't face us the way you are. Run," he says, and I would think he's saying this out of concern for me if he didn't narrow his eyes, pull his lips taut. "Run away. Save yourself."

The shinobi who have been trapped by my family watch me, realizing that I am the object of attention, and wait for a reaction, for a cue as to what to do. But I am as hopeless as they are.

I do the next best thing, the only thing I know how to do when I've been cornered: I snap back. "Even if I could, why would I?" I spit, glad my voice doesn't shake or crack. My father raises a brow, amused but unsurprised by my retort. I half expect him to counter, but even if he did, what would happen? _He's already dead_, I remind myself. No matter how insubordinate I am, there's nothing he can do about it. Not anymore. "You were never one to encourage cowardice, Father. You were never one to let me do what I wanted."

"That never stopped you from getting your way," he says. A shinobi beside me grows antsy, her fingers opening and closing like she's thinking about attacking. Her eyes flicker from my father to my cousins, to my older aunts and uncles. Where would we begin our attack? Where is the most efficient vulnerable spot we could hit?

My father is still talking. He yammers on about how my mother and I were actively conspired against him. He sounds bitter and senile, and I wonder how anyone had ever thought he was the voice of reason in our clan.

Without waiting for my father to shut up, I concentrate my chakra into my fist, aiming for the ground. I release my chakra on point, and with that the earth explodes, sending a handful of my family flying and scattering the rest that had managed to sense my attack coming.

"They'll reconvene in groups!" I shout to the shinobi around me, the ones who blink at the broken earth in front of us, their eyes scouring the jagged pieces that jut from the ground like knives. "When you fight them, _feel the air_. I realize that doesn't make a lot of sense, but once you fight them, you'll know what I mean. They use the vibrations; don't get close to them if you can—"

My father plumes up in my peripheral, a blur I barely manage to dodge. His kunai makes an attempt at my abdomen. I kick up, catch his wrist against my ankle, and forcibly push his arm down, leaving his face open. I come in for the jab, but with nothing but an exhale, my father blasts me aside with the vibrations.

I slam into the cliff side I've yet to escape. Momentarily, I am stunned, and in that moment my father grabs me by the neck, his thumb digging into my airways. I sputter, clawing at his hands as he leans in, says, "What are you doing, Ren? Why are you protecting these people when you know your sole responsibility lies with protecting Sasuke? Have you forgotten your responsibility to him?"

Sasuke. My laugh comes in gasps under my father's unrelenting chokehold. He doesn't know. Of course he doesn't know. How could he when he's been dead all this time?

He must see the humor in my eyes, the spark of self-satisfaction that glints across my face. For a second, his fingers tighten, and my squirming intensifies as my toes lift from the ground. Then his hand is gone and I'm coughing into the dirt at his feet, my throat rattling, my lungs heaving for oxygen. His foot comes up, slams into my chest, and pins me into the cliff side again, but at least this time I have breath. I have oxygen to fuel my brain and figure out a plan of action as he asks, "What's got you in such good humor even though you're at the mercy of your father?"

My father's pride, his superiority complex, is getting the better of him. He's left me surrounded by earth, easily manipulated by my chakra, and enough mobility to conjure the vibrations should I be given the chance. I laugh, leaning my head against the rock, figuring the situation could be worse. At the moment, I debate on whether I should tell my father now, or save the good news of the broken bond until later.

His sandal presses more forcefully into my sternum. "Insolent," he mutters, and before he can go on with his petty insults, I say, "I'm laughing because Sasuke is gone. He left a long time ago, Father, and I didn't bother to follow. I'm here, fighting this war without him, a war started in part _because_ of him, and I find it _outstandingly_ hilarious that you're talking about him as though he is still my master when he is, figuratively, and his family is, literally, _dead to me_."

Pain—blinding pain sprouts from my jaw all through my head as my father's foot makes contact with the side of my face. Though I manage to stay upright against the cliff, black dots sprinkle my vision as I look back to my father. He blurs in and out of focus; at times, there are three of him before me, which makes me nauseous. Granted, the blow to the head might have had something to do with that, but doubles of my father certain don't help either.

"A little warning next time, please," I say, rubbing my jaw, checking for blood.

"Regardless of where they are, what they have done, you know where I stand," he says, his anger transparent, "where I will always stand. Where _you_ should stand."

I gape at him, astonished. "You can't," I say, even though talking makes me wince, "you can't really mean that I should turn my back on the village just for the sake of—"

"Our loyalty," he interjects, narrowing his eyes, "_your_ loyalty rests first and foremost with the Uchiha, with Sasuke-sama. The Uchiha remain with us, Ren. Their blood and power run through our veins. They are with us, always with us, and you cannot escape them."

Instead of answering, I punch my father, the vibrations spiraling up in a wind that shoves him off of me. Leaping to my feet, I swing my heel into his chest, send him flying into a cousin. He braces my father, throws him back at me with my father poised for attack.

I move away from him, slip under his fists, under the swings of his feet. I give him as wide a breadth as possible, feeling with the vibrations where he might move next. With each attack, I'm able to put more and more distance between us. By all means, I am gaining on him. He's not as agile as I remember. I wonder if it's a trick of memory, or if he's holding back, but before I have time to wonder any longer, the vibrations shift, and a distant cousin is behind me, knife at the ready to sever my spine. I dig my heels into the ground, change the direction of my escape, and leap out of the way as my father and cousin collide.

"Good," he says as I skid to a stop meters away from him. "Your defensive maneuvers leave something to be desired, but they are passable. Distance will work to your advantage when it comes to the Genshindou."

"Your advice means nothing. I've made it this far without you," I say. "I can manage on my own."

My father scoffs. Behind him, I see a shinobi being blasted aside by the vibrations, see another woman dodge a punch only to stumble and press her hand to her ear, suddenly deaf. They can't feel the vibrations. My family will kill them.

"You've always thought too much of yourself," my father says, regaining my attention. "But even I can tell: you're no better than you were as a child. You—"

He's cut off by a woman who approaches him from behind and holds up a hand by way of silence. She is the very opposite of my father: dainty and precious, her round face soft and bright. Her eyes are gentle as they size me up, and her smile is warm. Chills run down my spine, make my toes curl in discomfort as she opens her arms like she expects me to embrace her.

"Ren, dear," my mother says, her mousy brown hair swirling against her jawlines, eyes folding into half-moons as she smiles at me. "My little Ren."

"Suki," my father says unhappily. She comes up to his ears, and when he looks at her, he crosses his arms and frowns, not quite irritated, not quite displeased. It's a tired expression, one I've seen before on another face, a kinder face, when I say something that he knows means trouble for him. I hear the soft mutter of _troublesome_ before the wind picks it up and blows it away, grounding me to the reality of this: my father and mother, reunited and in front of me under the worst circumstances.

"Shh, Katai," she says. There is no sharpness to her voice, no real animosity to it, but I detect her impatience with him. She tugs on her hair, tucks it behind her ear as she side-glances my father. "Let me talk to my daughter as you never would."

"No," I say, my voice cracking, turning the single syllable into a near sob. They turn to me. At first, their eyes go to my knees before, with a start, they slowly lift their gazes as though they are surprised to find I have grown. There is a moment of pause wherein I think I see something like sadness and disappointment cross their faces. A soft, piercing pain in my heart threatens to bring me to my knees.

"_No_," I say again, forcing down the pain, the memories that begin to surface. "There is nothing you could say that I want to hear. Not anymore, not when I've gotten myself this far without you! I don't need your praise or your apologies or your scrutiny. Just fight me so I can seal you, fight me so I can overcome you and win, fight me so I will never have to see you again!"

My parents blink, their equally dull eyes staring blankly at me. Their faces relax, almost to the point of incomprehension, and I want for them to lose their consciousness, fight me like mindless dolls, but then my mother speaks and I want to cry at the fact that we still are not fighting without reason.

"How long has it been, Ren?" she asks, her voice so quiet I can barely hear her above the fighting. "Seven years? Eight?"

"Ten. Ten years," I say, desperate to put an end to the conversation. Tell them what they want to hear and tell them quickly before my guard falters completely. What I should really do is stop answering their questions, stop acknowledging anything they say to me, but years of pent up anger and resentment shatters any kind of resolve I might have to do what is reasonable.

"And nothing has changed," my father says, pushing my mother aside, much to her affront. "Your technique is shoddy, your sense of respect completely dead. This is your daughter, Suki, through and through."

A grin spreads over my mother's face. She says, "_Our_ daughter, Katai. She is _our_ daughter, through and through."

I make the first move. It is a straightforward attack, bold and, frankly, stupid, but anything to keep them from speaking anymore. And of course my father reacts in time, moves aside, exposing my mother to the attack instead. My mother, her hands alight with chakra, is prepared for me, though.

"Careful, Ren," she says. "Even the smallest cuts can become lethal."

"I don't need—" She strikes—one, two, three—but I sink under her hands, catch her elbow and drive her arm into the person who tries to sneak up behind me and catch me off guard. "—you lecturing me!"

I see a flash of a face as the person grunts, wraps their fingers around my mother's wrist to try to pull her free. For a second, I think I have pierced my father. Then he appears out of the corner of my eye, arm reeled back to deliver a punch undoubtedly fused with the vibrations.

"Pull!" he shouts. It takes a moment for me to understand what he means and react, but not a moment too soon. I throw out my hands and just before my father's attack is set to hit, I swerve to the side, sweeping my hands behind me, in the direction my father moves. In doing so, I redirect the vibrations, all of them, and get away from the attack without suffering any aftershocks of vibrations.

I'd forgotten I could pull the vibrations, forgotten there was a better way to divert them than simply pushing them out of the way. After all, we take the path of least resistance. Why shouldn't the vibrations too?

I turn, prepared to face my father again when the vibrations hike, pulling the ground out from under me. I catch myself on my hands, push myself back up. I steady myself, preparing for my attacker, only to falter when I see not my parents, but an older cousin of mine who I'd looked up to when they were still alive.

I say older cousin, but we must be the same age now. He's only a bit taller than I am, his gaze more fierce.

"Teaming up with my parents, as usual," I say as he approaches me with a smirk. I watch him as he circles me, but I'm waiting for my parents to pop out with a surprise attack. He makes a full lap around me before I realize they're really gone, fighting elsewhere.

"I think they're letting me handle this one on my own," he says. "You've had enough bonding as it is. It's nice to see you again, Ren-sama. It's been too long."

"Likewise, Daisuke," I greet, maintaining my defense.

My cousin laughs, his brown hair glinting red in the light as he moves. "Wow, dropped the honorifics completely, have you? You used to call me –niisan, even when I told you to stop. I never thought I'd see the day when you finally lived up to your snobbery."

"You never used to call me 'Ren-sama' if you could help it."

His eyes narrow, but his smirk remains, growing more callous. "You're right. I apologize. You preferred Ren-hime, didn't you?"

"Fuck you."

"Now is that anyway," he says, and the ground under me suddenly teeters, throwing me off balance, "to speak to your humble servant?"

The earth opens up beneath me and with a shriek I fall into a hole of darkness. I land hard on my back, which knocks the breath out of me. I cough as I roll onto my hands and feet, and look up in time to see the entrance of the hole being covered by a wave of dirt. I let out an aggravated groan, pressing into the side of the hole as the dirt cascades over my head, swallowing my feet, ankles, but then I am ingrained in the earth, like roots. I focus on the vibrations, feeling for where my cousin stands, and when I pinpoint him, I burst through the earth, a geyser of power that effectively catches him off guard and sends him flying.

He catches himself on his feet, says, "I see you've discovered the family penchant for earth. I'll admit I'm a little bit impressed at that, since you had no one."

I slam my heel into the ground, sending up pillars of earth that sprout up around my cousin. The vibrations follow, ramming the pillars which spill into the center and bury my cousin. At least, that's the idea. He escapes the prison, bouncing off the pillars and flying right toward me. The vibrations around him shudder, and I side-step, pulling the vibrations behind me so he is swirled into a tunnel that burrows right into the earth.

I can feel the vibrations as he tunnels through the ground. I leap out of the way as he explodes from under me. With a simple punch of the vibrations, though, my cousin sends the debris blasting at me, throwing me against the cliff side.

I fall to the ground, bruising my tailbone. Again, before I can figure out my next move, my cousin appears overhead, kunai poised for my face. I slide onto my back and out from under his legs, punching him decisively in his spine and impaling him into the cliff side.

He's buried under rubble that breaks off from the impact. I wipe the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand, watching as the pebbles cascade over his encasement. "Not bad for someone who had no one, huh?"

As I'm about to turn my back, the debris pile blows apart. A sizable rock hits me in the chest, knocking me onto my back. I gasp, my sternum aching, and attempt to turn onto my side, only to have someone slam their foot on my chest, right where I can feel a bruise from the rock blooming.

Daisuke looms over me, glaring. His skin, crackled and crumbling, sparks with energy as it heals, and I groan. "You can't take me down so easily, baby cousin."

"That's why I always liked you, Dai-kun," I say. "You were never one to let me win."

I bring the side of my fist to the ground, sending up a column of earth that knocks Daisuke off of me. Leaping to my feet, I press my hands to my chest injury, wincing as I surge my chakra through my fingers.

Daisuke prepares for another attack, the vibrations swirling around him in a twister. My breathing quickens as I try to anticipate what he means to do. The amount of chakra he's gathering around him is immense, and I have so little experience with the Genshindou that I can't imagine what he might do.

Before he can release the jutsu, though, a high-strung energy shoots out from behind Daisuke, driving into his back and burrowing him into the ground. I'm able to block the debris that explodes from the impact. When it clears, I look up to see my savior—a shimmering boy, coated in gold like he was borne from the sun, with flames flickering around him. It feels different from before, but I recognize this chakra.

Naruto.

He turns, beaming, and says, "Sorry I'm late! What were you doing, anyway, Ren? You could have easily deflected that guy's attack."

"I—you don't know what you're talking about!" I counter, punching his shoulder. He whines, rubbing his injury, only to shut up when I take his face in my hands. His skin is warm, like a hot spring, and even though it is blazing on this battlefield, the warmth of him beneath my fingers isn't uncomfortable or out of place. "I'm glad you're here," I say, deflating in my exhaustion. "Thank you."

"My pleasure!" he says as I pull away. "But what are you doing here alone? Shikamaru, Ino, and Chouji, Hinata, Kiba, and Shino—everybody is with their teams; why aren't you with Sakura in the medical tents?"

I rub my eyes, which have become suddenly irritated. "I was supposed to be with Kakashi," I say, unable to shake the ache that radiates from that back of my eyes, "but Rei and Nao got sidetracked and then we got separated and—I got separated. Then I got swept up in this fight. The boy you just attacked: he was my cousin. My family's been resurrected."

Naruto jerks back in his surprise, and I see the sympathy sewing his brows together. But then he is all determination again, lips pressed in a tight line. He holds up a fist and says, gently, "I can take care of them for you if you want, Ren."

The offer lifts a weight off my shoulders. Naruto takes them out, and I don't have to face them, don't have to see their accusatory glares labeling me a traitor, a stain on the Kagiru cause. I won't have to face my parents again, won't have to relive the abuse I had taken as a child under the influence of the bond.

"Thank you," I say, "but no thank you. Tell everyone you can that my family works with the vibrations and likes to use the earth element. Spread word that the best way to fight them would be to concentrate on the air around them, _feel_ for the vibrations. It takes some getting used to, but they just have to concentrate. Take out and seal as many as you can, Naruto," I say, grasping his arm. "But leave some for me. Like this bastard here."

Naruto glances behind him, where Daisuke is emerging from the crater. His skin rustles like leaves, pasting itself back together.

"I understand," Naruto says with a nod. "I'll leave this to you, then."

"Before you go," I say. "I need to tell you something: The bond—_my _bond—with Sasuke. I broke it. Right before the war started, I broke the bond. I've already told Sakura, but I didn't get to tell you before they sent you off and I—it's not relevant right now, I know, but I wanted to tell you before anything else happens."

Naruto blinks at me, and for a moment I'm afraid he'll turn his back on me, dismiss me. But then his infamous smile breaks out again, and he is beaming. "That's great! I'm happy for you."

"You—really?"

His grin widens, and he says, "Really. There's nothing better than finally being able to accomplish your dream. Take care of yourself, Ren!"

I laugh, a great laugh, a genuine one that sinks to my toes and rumbles in my gut. "Same goes for you, Boy Wonder. Don't use up too much of your chakra with this fancy new mode of yours."

He gives me a small salute and is off. Though brief, my encounter with Naruto is enough to rejuvenate my will to fight. How does he manage to do make me laugh when we are in the middle of a war? Naruto truly is an incredible presence, one I would gladly follow to hell and back. And surely, we would come back.

"The hell was that," Daisuke grumbles, wiping his mouth. "That power was—"

"My friend," I say, unable to stop myself from bragging. "Uzumaki Naruto. The fox boy our family was so ardent about talking down, and the future of this village. He's going to be Hokage."

"Wow. That we would even consider a beastly jinchuuriki to be the Hokage is appalling. Konohagakure is on quite the downhill slope. I suppose that was the natural progression of things after two of its most prominent families were obliterated with the likes of _you_ left to carry on a legacy."

He laughs, his expression darkening as I grit my teeth. "Now, now, Ren-hime," he taunts. "Keep making that face and you'll stay ugly forever. But don't worry. Your very own Dai-kun is here to make sure that doesn't happen. After all, you don't age when you're dead."

Daisuke throws his arms wide and whirls, weaving the vibrations around him in a storm that decimates the area around him. I lose sight of him in a cloud of dust, but feel the vibrations as they come, one wave after another. I try to move with them as much as possible, pulling the vibrations so that I can cut through them and redirect them back at Daisuke. But threads still graze me, slicing my skin and leaving thin scratches that cause my flesh to prickle with miniscule pain. _Even the smallest cuts can become lethal_, my mother had warned. And I feel it, the cuts making me wince, making me miss more and more threads as I pull the vibrations. The immense pressure of the vibrations weighs on my chest, like being trapped underwater, just as the other shinobi had described.

With a final twist, Daisuke gathers up the remaining vibrations under his command and hurls them at me. Unable to feel my fingers and thus adequately manipulate the vibrations, I throw up my arms, streaming my chakra to start healing myself preemptively as I take the attack head on. The vibrations swarm, biting into my skin, leaving millions of cuts on my exposed skin and shredding the hems of my clothes. The wave of vibrations push me back, causing my feet to dig two craters into the ground that come up to my knees by the time I come to a stop.

Despite how Naruto's enthusiasm had rubbed off on me earlier, and though I remain standing before my cousin, I am exhausted. The vibrations worm into my lungs, shaking the breath out of me before the pressure lifts and I can breathe normally again. I clench and unclench my hands, shaking out the numbness in them.

"Why are you pausing?" I say when Daisuke only stares at my hands. "Is that all you've got?"

He laughs, rolls his eyes. "Don't act so tough. Your hands are getting a little cold, aren't they? Numb? You haven't had the training I've had, Ren. You don't know how to properly control the vibrations so they don't kill you. You haven't even properly activated the Genshindou this whole time. You were always weak," he says. "You might have been the prized fighter in our family, allowed to train and take medical lessons with all the older kids, but the only reason we had to train with you was that you were the chosen one, the family's little pet. It had nothing to do with skill."

"Daisuke," I say, growing increasingly frustrated. "Why are you still _talking_? Why aren't we—"

"You think I want to do this?" he snaps. "Do you think I want to bother you with all the thoughts I had when we were kids? It's this goddamn jutsu," he says, clenching and unclenching his fist. "I can fight as I want, choose my own words, but when it comes to actually executing my actions, everything is calculated, figured out for me. For example," he says when I don't show signs of comprehension. "I'd really like to wring my hands around your neck, but the jutsu that's brought me here denies me that satisfaction. But it'll let me do as follows."

He punches the air—the vibrations hike and I dispel them with a wave of my hand. Daisuke rubs his wrist, frowning, and says, "Right. It looks like whoever is behind this jutsu just wants me to keep talking, so for now, that's what I'll do."

"We have nothing left to talk about," I say.

"Apparently that's not for you to decide, Ren," he says. "This is one situation you _don't_ any control over. I know how hard that must be for you."

I wince, stammer, "It—it wasn't like that. When you were alive, I—anyway, that was a long time ago!"

"I know," he spits. "I'd like to think I would have out grown these thoughts, but in case you forgot, I was murdered by that crazy Uchiha. I never— I've always hated that guy. I've always hated all of them."

I blink at him, surprised by the resentment in his voice. Daisuke rolls his eyes at my reaction, says "You weren't the only one who hated that goddamn bond with our great lords Uchiha. Did you ever think about how the bond affected us?" he asks, motioning to my other cousins behind him. "Did you ever consider how much we were neglected because it was _so important_ that you got the training you needed?"

"I—it wasn't—it wasn't like that," I say again, but he waves me off.

"Whatever. You just didn't realize it because _you_ were too caught up in yourself and the bond, too. I know you like to think that you weren't as bad as them, but you were. And if you ask me," he says, his voice lowering to a growl. "In my opinion, you were worse. Much worse. Because you thought you were better than them, better than us. You thought you were the only one who managed to break free of the hold the Uchiha had over us and that made you better than us, but you were wrong."

"Daisuke—"

"Don't," he says. "You don't get to tell us how sorry you are because you weren't. You aren't. You never were."

Daisuke's clones spring from behind him as he charges at me. Simultaneously, they reel back their arms, and I can feel the vibrations spiking.

For a second everything moves slowly. The clones close in, vibrations coating their fists. If I swerve to either side, they'll just release the vibrations, and I don't have enough stamina to try to redirect them. If I turn and run, they'll catch up to me. My legs are wobbly and I can't leap out of the way. The only thing left to do is brace myself for this attack.

I dig my feet into the ground and throw my hands up to protect myself, prepping my chakra for recovery. I can afford this one attack. I have enough chakra to at least heal myself afterward.

Without warning, I'm jerked aside. I collide with someone's chest, hard enough to floor them. When I try to push myself up, my hand palms my savior's face and he groans. "Sorry," I say, wincing and lifting my fingers, exposing Shikamaru beneath me. "Shi—the hell are you doing here?"

"Would you mind getting off of me before I answer that? Everyone's gotten jumbled in this mess," he says, as I do as he asks. He pushes the back of his hand across his cheeks. The gesture farther smears the blood that has tainted his skin. "I saw you and it looked like you needed help, so here I am to help."

"Bu—how do I know you're not one of those weird plant things?" I blurt, suddenly remembering what I had encountered before being distracted by my family. As much as I would hate for it to be true, I have to be sure and even with Shikamaru—I especially can't let my guard down around Shikamaru.

Shikamaru gives me an annoyed imploring look and says, "I ran into Rei and she wanted me to give you these."

He reaches into his hip pouch, prompting me to jump back in defense. He holds up his free hand in deference, says, "I'm not trying anything. Here."

He throws me a tightly packed wad that lands in front of me without exploding. I take a moment to prod at it with the vibrations, and when I sense nothing, I snatch it up and untie it.

Dozens, maybe a hundred slips of notes with black markings on it unravel in my hands. I flip through them, finding each one is drawn up identically. When I look up, Shikamaru holds a note of his own, but the markings on his are drawn in blue.

Shikamaru explains, "These are seals Rei created to bind the reanimated corpses. These blues ones I have slow them enough for us to capture and seal them. It looks like she gave you different notes; maybe those ones bind them completely."

"This doesn't prove anything," I say, ready to throw the notes to the wind when one of them catches my eye. There is a writing on one of them, writing in a deep evergreen ink, bold across the paper. The kanji reads THIS IS A NOTE OF AUTHENTICITY STATING THAT NARA SHIKAMARU OF KONOHAGAKURE HAS RECEIVED THE KANNAGI REI SEAL OF APPROVAL. GOOD LUCK, TONAKAI. BE BRAVE.

You can't make that shit up.

"Fine," I say tersely, crumpling the message. I pocket both it and the notes, checking over my shoulder. Behind me, I can hear the battle going on, feel the vibrations continue to buzz over the din. Wherever Shikamaru has me, it's hiding our chakra signatures well enough. But the lull has lasted too long. They will find us.

I look at Shikamaru. Despite the fact that I've accepted that he's the real Shikamaru, he remains at bay, sitting on his heels. His shoulders sag. Sweat has ingrained dirt into his skin. He is tired. He must have chosen this hiding spot for my sake just as much as his.

"Okay," I say, reassuring myself again, brushing off my hands. "You should know what you're getting yourself into then—"

A body eclipses the sun behind me, making me freeze in place. I turn to see Daisuke, his fist barely a foot away from my face. I give a shout of alarm and scramble backward to Shikamaru's side.

But Daisuke remains frozen in place, arm over his head, vibrations buzzing around his fingers. He grits his teeth, his eyes searching frantically for the power that holds him in place.

"Th-thanks," I say, noticing Shikamaru's hands in a seal, the stretch of his shadow across the ground.

"Don't mention it," he says. "He's not putting up much resistance. Seal him, now, while we have the chance."

"Ah." Daisuke's gaze falls on the shadow that connects him to Shikamaru, and his lips pull into a smile. "This must be the infamous Shikun."

"Don't call him that."

Daisuke laughs, and I swear I see his body twitch, like Shikamaru's shadow technique isn't holding. "Definitely the infamous Shikun, then. You were a sore subject in the Kagiru household. Many a fights were had over you."

"That is _not_ your place to say," I snap, forgetting about the seals for a moment.

"Trying to reestablish your power, Ren-hime?" says Daisuke with a smirk. "Fortunately, your reign has no meaning in the land of the dead. Besides, it's only fair that Shikamaru know what he's getting himself into by associating with you and our family. We're not all rainbows and butterflies like the Nara are. We are tainted blood and curses and—"

I punch the earth at my knees, which effectively causes the ground around my cousin to sprout up, encasing him in a cylindrical tomb that leaves only his head exposed. Once he's trapped, Shikamaru releases his shadow and throws out one of his blue seals, a kunai pinning it to the rock face. The seal smokes, and the blue markings begin to writhe off the paper, spreading across the case.

"What? Surely Shikamaru knows about the bond by now," Daisuke taunts, unrelenting, his eyes narrowing with malice. Even though I know where the conversation is leading, even though I know Shikamaru already knows, and old, unshakable panic rises in my throat, causes my breathing to come out unevenly. "The one that keeps you bound to the Uchiha, the one that makes you love Sasuke, without condition—"

"As a matter of fact," Shikamaru interrupts, "I do know. Ren."

He takes my hand, presses a black seal into my palm. I don't know how he had gotten a hold of it without me noticing, but it doesn't matter. I push myself up, swallow the anxiety rising in my throat, and approach Daisuke, who regards Shikamaru with wide eyes.

"It's the truth," I say, hovering the seal over the encasement. Daisuke bares his teeth, unbelieving. He squirms with slow, lethargic movements; the blue seal must be working, then, sedating him somehow. I take my time putting the black seal on, getting my final words in. "I told Shikamaru all about the bond and how it killed our family, Daisuke. I told him everything it made me do and feel. And when I broke it," I say, annunciating my words carefully, taking pleasure in the way Daisuke's face turns from anger to shock, "he was right there with me."

"Impossible," he breathes and I press the seal to his container, letting the paper smoke under my fingers, the black symbols wriggle off the sheet and over the blue markings. Unlike the blue markings, the black ones carve themselves into the rock, weaving like vines over my cousin's container before writhing over his skin, staining it black.

"You're wrong. It's done. I only wish I could have done it sooner," I say, leaning closer, watching as the markings swirl over his eyes. "Because you were wrong about another thing: I was sorry about our family being killed. I _am_ sorry."

Daisuke stares at me without blinking. When he doesn't respond, I flick the earth, which rises higher until his face is completely covered.

I want to plant my face in my hands, to close my eyes and take deep breaths until these feelings have been completely compartmentalized. But even then, I would have to go back out there, fight the rest of my family, my parents.

A pressure comes down on my shoulder, causing me to flinch and step back. Shikamaru apologizes, looking at me only briefly before he turns to my cousin's case. "I had to fight Asuma yesterday," he says, his voice low.

My shock makes me dig my nails into the flesh of my palms. The pain doesn't cut nearly as deep as I'd like. This war has reached a new level of hurt, a psychological warfare that we will all have a hard time coming to terms with when the end comes.

"Are you gonna be all right?"

I force a smile, say, "Don't worry about me. I can take a few hits. We need to look at the bigger picture. We need to come up with a strategy to combat the vibrations and—"

Shikamaru holds up a hand to silence me, his ear cocked toward the battle, listening. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

Shikamaru's eyes narrow. "Exactly."

We look up to find the fighting around us has stopped. No, not stopped. They've moved to a whole area completely, left Shikamaru and me isolated. At first, I think Naruto has taken care of everyone in this vicinity, but—even so, there would be movement from our own shinobi.

I take the initiative and peek over my cousin's tomb. There are two silhouettes standing not far from us. My breath catches in my throat. I grasp Shikamaru's forearm, say, "Fair warning, Shikamaru. My family really does hate you. Do you think you can handle that kind of animosity?"

"Ren, we're in the middle of a war. Animosity doesn't even begin to cover the kind of power we're facing."

"Point taken," I say. "Better question: Do you think you can handle my parents?"

* * *

**Thanks for reading. Please review!**


	103. Spill Their Guts

**BOUND  
Chapter 103: Spill Their Guts**

"Shikamaru-kun," my mother says when I pull Shikamaru from the crater. She stares at him, wide-eyed, seemingly awestruck, as Shikamaru brushes himself off. I scowl. I'm her daughter, after all. The least she could do is acknowledge me first. But she and my father stand there, all their attention directed at Shikamaru like he is the ghost.

"Hi, Suki-obachan," Shikamaru answers, and I elbow him.

The gesture doesn't go without my mother's notice. "He was just being polite, Ren," she says.

"Sorry to disappoint, Mother, but this is really neither the time nor place to be polite," I reply, flashing her a sardonic smile. "Where did you two go? If you wanted to fight me, you should have just fought me instead of letting Daisuke interfere."

"There are things beyond our control in this realm," my mother says, eyes flickering toward my father. I follow her line of sight, see how my father remains stoic, glaring at Shikamaru. "Whoever is controlling us wants to maximize your suffering, and getting Dai-kun to fight you must have helped them get closer to that goal."

"What could Daisuke have done that you couldn't?"

"Shown you that there were people who resented you being born," my mother says plainly, and my breath hitches in my throat. But then I laugh, a twisted laugh, pulling my hands through my hair. My mother, taken aback, looks to Shikamaru as though he could help explain the situation to her, but he is as confused as she.

"Of course," I say, shaking my head and wiping the tears from my eyes. "Why wouldn't there be people who resented me? I pulled all the attention away from the boys. I made all the older girls and the ones born after me irrelevant. By the simple fact of being alive," I say, my voice gaining, my fury burning deep inside my lungs, "I made everyone unimportant. Isn't it comforting to learn all your cousins hated you? Thank god I didn't have to grow up in that atmosphere! Thank god I had the fortune of having my family _massacred_—"

"Ren," Shikamaru says, but I brush him off, take a step toward my parents.

"You know, I wasn't clear before, when I said Sasuke was gone and dead to me," I say. "When he left the village a few years ago, he cut me off, severed the bond. At one point, he reinstated it and I followed him, but after he was done using me, he threw me away. But the joke's on him," I say, and again I laugh, the sound bubbling up warped from my gut. "Joke's on all of you because a week ago, I broke the bond. For good. The bond that tied me—tied _us_ to the Uchiha and caused all of you to die no longer exists."

For the first time since Shikamaru and I have emerged, my father moves, prompted by my announcement. He turns his eyes from Shikamaru to me, his face twisting from surprise to incomprehension to anger.

"You heard right," I say, and again, Shikamaru says my name, compelling me to stop. I ignore him, caught up in the momentum of my rage and take another step forward. "I can imagine what you're thinking, Father: _Insolent, foolish child. That she would have the gall to blaspheme like this_—because you don't believe a single word I say. To you, I will always be insolent, weak, a worthless excuse of a Kagiru who was lucky—"

Shikamaru grabs a hold of my arm, pulling me back as I continue to round on my parents. I struggle against him, spit, "—who was lucky to even _be_ born, much less have the bond borne to me because I take it for granted, every moment of every day. Good thing the bond is broken then, huh? Good thing I broke it and Sasuke is gone and good thing you have been resurrected to hear all of this from me personally!"

"Ren!"

This time it's my mother who shouts for me to stop. She is cowering at the sight of me—actually cowering, half-hiding behind my father, her eyes wide and panicked at my hysteria. She is even smaller than I remember; if I stood beside her now, I would have a few inches on her.

That only makes me want to laugh harder.

Shikamaru's grip on me tightens, making me wince. "Breathe," he says softly, and it's then I realize I am gasping, my heart pounding in my chest. I allow him to pull me back to his side. I lean my head back to the sky, still bright blue in the daylight.

The clouds, which usually take shape in my eyes, are amorphous splotches.

"Sorry you had to see that, Shikamaru," I say when I have a reached a state of relative calm. "Not very professional of me to lose my cool. I could have gotten the both of us killed."

"Luckily," he says, "your parents seem to take more satisfaction in you suffering than dying."

"Apparently," I say as he finally lets me go. I rub my arm where Shikamaru's fingers have burned my skin bright red. That I had lost control so easily—I really could have gotten us killed.

"Shikamaru," I say, tugging on the fabric wrapped around my arm, the fabric that had come from his headband. It's tattered and frayed now, and hangs loosely around my arm. I tighten it as best I can, but a few more hits, and it'll be gone.

Shikamaru watches me expectantly, waiting for me to finish, but my father speaks up, his voice dull and flat.

"I don't believe you because there is no way a child like you would have been able to break the bond," my father says, glare unwavering. "All the resources you would have had to break the bond were killed with our family. And simply tearing up the contract—which I'm sure you've found by now—wouldn't have made the bond invalid."

"There were other resources. The Kannagi, for instance," I say, and my father startles. When he realizes my mother is less surprised, he hisses, "_Suki_."

"I only told her a name and where to find them," she says, turning her nose up at my father. "I never thought she would do it. They lived on the other side of the country, and she was just a child."

"She came to me, actually," I say. "Kannagi Rei, the girl who helped me break the bond. She came to Konoha when the Chuunin exams took place, and she found me. She helped me. We broke the bond together."

"Why?" my father demands, the whites of his knuckles shining as his fingers roll into fists. "Why would you want to break the bond in the first place?"

"It _killed_ you," I say, awed that my father still could not see what was so plainly in front of his face. "This bond that bound our loyalty to the Uchiha is what got our family into the mess that killed everyone. If we hadn't been so close to them, Itachi wouldn't have targeted us. We wouldn't have been complicit in the Uchiha plan to overthrow Konoha leadership. I broke the bond for the same reason Sasuke hunted and killed Itachi after the massacre: I broke the bond to avenge our family."

"You're misguided if you believe you have done _anything_ to bring honor to our family," my father snarls. "And comparing yourself to Sasuke-sama as if that will help you win me over is useless. What he did—"

"Is what all shinobi do," my mother interrupts. Her small frame is still tucked behind my father, but her voice overrides his by far. I've noted that every time she speaks, there is an edge to her voice that cuts him down a size, makes him remember his place, and for a moment, it makes sense to me why they were together, how they balanced each other, how they could have been happy before the bond got between them. Before _I_ got between them.

"We are a vengeful race," my mother says. "We are brainwashed into believing that what we are doing is right, that the lives we are taking are for the better because they help something or someone grow, because it helps us or our village or our family foster a sense of honor. There is no denying that, Katai. You should understand that."

"But that's not why she did it," my father says. "That's not why she broke the bond."

My mother sighs, looking past me at Shikamaru. She smiles as she meets his gaze, says, "Shikamaru-kun. I'm sorry we've totally disregarded you. I should mention it is a pleasure to see you again. You've grown into quite the handsome young man. I wouldn't be surprised if you were the most sought after bachelor in Konoha by now."

Despite the complete turn in the conversation, I can't help but scoff, say, "He's not."

Shikamaru glowers at me as my mother raises a brow. "Not an eligible bachelor," she says, "or not _the most_ eligible bachelor?"

"Trick question," I say when Shikamaru opens his mouth. "Don't answer that. What's the point of showering Shikamaru with praise, anyway? Let's not pretend you ever liked him."

"That's not true," my mother says, pouting, and I am struck by the way her mouth curves in the same way mine does, the way the ends of her lips dig into her cheeks, making them dimple. I frown, touching my face as I do, and feel the dips in my flesh, just like hers. "Shikamaru and his family took very good care of you. Even after we died, the Nara made sure you were well-off, didn't they? I'm indebted to them for that. Don't you dare try to tell me otherwise."

"Nara," my father says before I can retort. A flash of understanding crosses his face, his head jerking up with his revelation. "_That's_ why you did this? Because of them, because of _that boy_—Shikamaru."

"I did it for myself!" I say as Shikamaru tenses at the sound of his name coming from my father's voice, so full of malice and unkindness. "Why is that so hard for you to believe? I broke the bond because I wanted to—"

"It doesn't matter what you want," my father snaps. "If Sasuke-sama calls you, you are bound to go. Regardless of Sasuke-sama's allegiances, you will always—"

"That's the best part about the bond being broken, Father," I say. "Even if Sasuke were to call on me now, I wouldn't hear it."

"Your relationships outside the Uchiha cannot be preserved!"

"_Nothing_ can be preserved," my mother says. "We don't have a say in this anyway, Katai. What Ren chooses to do—what she has chosen to do—is far beyond our control."

"That's _enough_," my father snaps at my mother's calm demeanor, and I shake my head.

"No, Father. It will never be enough for you. You're right about one thing," I say, the vibrations gathering around me, picking up tendrils of my hair, brushing my cheeks. Beside me, Shikamaru tenses as the pressure of the vibrations pushes down on him, too. "These bonds I have will never compare to the one I had with Sasuke. But that's fine by me because the bond I shared with Sasuke isn't the kind of bond I want. It's not the kind of bond anyone should have. It was overbearing, and it suffocated me. It ate away at me because everything about it was against my will. With Naruto, Sakura, and Shikamaru—with my friends, I have a choice. And for me, that is enough."

My father scoffs, unimpressed by my speech. "You had everything," he says quietly. "With Sasuke and the Uchiha, you had everything, and now that they're all gone, you have nothing."

My mother's shout is faint as my father flies toward me, vibrations whirling around him in a tornado of fury. I gather the vibrations myself, feeling the drum against my skin, a constant rhythm of pressure prickling like needles against me. My mother's continued shouts for my father and me to stop is garbled in my ears, and my vision begins to disintegrate, but I feel the movements, feel the rush of my father's attack as he nears, feel the pounding of another battle taking place not far from us.

I feel the immensity of my father's chakra, much grater than my own. If—_when_—we collide, I will not stand a chance.

But then my father dives aside, weaving around me. I think he's going to try to round back, attack me from behind, but he keeps going, and I realize: he is going for Shikamaru.

I come skidding to a halt, horror filling my stomach. Even if I turn back, I will not reach him in time. The vibrations—my vibrations are useless at this distance and—

A flash goes through my peripheral, a shock of lightning that flies past my face, leaving a smoky scent in its wake. The bolt strikes the ground right in front of Shikamaru, collapsing it and sending both my father and Shikamaru leaping for cover in opposite directions.

I turn toward my mother, see her arm extended, evidence of her attack. She lowers her hand, says, "Well. It's been quite a while since I've used my chakra like that. But I only thought it fair that we focus on you, Ren."

"You—you're a lightning element?" I say dumbly.

My mother smiles. "Yes. It comes in handy when you're performing medical operations, especially when it comes to neurology. You've must have learned a bit about that by now?"

I stutter and my mother's face falls. First out of sadness, then alarm as she steadies her feet, says, "Ren, behind you."

I whirl around to deflect my father's attack, a punch aimed right at my face. Though I am able to push him away, the vibrations coating his fist blows into my face, momentarily blurring my vision, and he is able to grab my wrist, take me to the ground.

I'm not pinned for long; black shadows rise and grip my father about his waist, throwing him aside. I jump to my feet as Shikamaru lands behind me, presses his back to mine, and faces my mother.

"Do you have a plan, Ren?" Shikamaru says. "Or do you just plan on taunting them until they surrender?"

"You know, I have a feeling that's not going to work anyway," I say, and right my stance. The vision sharpens, then blurs until I can only see the general shape of things, veiled by vibration threads that spike around the blob that is my father. Behind him, I catch the unmistakable carnage of another battle, of what must be the remainder of my family fighting our shinobi forces. I roll my fingers, preparing. "Follow my lead, Shika."

My parents move in at the same time, flying toward us from either side. The vibrations whirr around my father, while my mother's hands light up with her chakra. No matter how we move, one of them will be able to strike us, my father with his vibrations, my mother with her speed. I flip through hand seals, press my palms to the ground, and the earth beneath us rises in a pillar, sending us into the sky.

My parents crash into the pillar, sending us teetering. Shikamaru tight on my heels, I leap off the pillar, over my parents' heads, and we make a run for it.

The rubble is enough to delay them, but they recover quickly, give chase. A flurry of vibrations pursue us, the frequency of them hitching like electricity sparking a heart back to life. My mother is a lightning type, I remember, and her chakra will push the vibrations faster, powering them with sparks of electricity unless—

I charge my chakra to my feet, leap ahead of Shikamaru, and slide to a stop, turning to face him. Even with my vision blurred as it is, I can see, over his shoulder, a flash, the undeniable crackling of lightning shooting after us. I charge the vibrations, winding them in front of me as Shikamaru lunges for me, grabbing me around the waist. I shove the vibrations forward, blasting the lightning back at my parents, blowing us away from them. They will follow without fail, without difficulty, but the boost is enough to toss Shikamaru and me among the carnage of the greater part of the battle where other shinobi—our allies—fly out of our way as we slam into the ground, come skidding to a stop.

They stay in a tense circle around us until they realize we are on their side. Then they give us room to breathe, to assess the situation, and as I right myself, I ask, "Does anyone know if we're still trying to fend off the Kagiru who have been resurrected?"

"Yes."

Hands catch me by the shoulders, pulling me up. The impact was enough to make me lose my concentration, deactivate the Genshindou, so when I turn I can make out clearly the muddy brown eyes of my aide, topped with a mop of unruly brown hair, matted with blood. He is dirtied and considerably bruised, as I must be, and though a puckered white scar, the result of an amateurish healing, now cuts from his right temple, across his cheek, to his chin, I know his face.

"I thought I'd find you eventually," Hiro says, grinning as I gape at him. "Your family have given us quite the beating, but I've managed to combat them pretty well if I do say so myself."

"But—where have you _been_?" I ask as Shikamaru steadies himself beside me. "Rei and Nao were—"

"I'm sure they were," Hiro says, and his face drops for a moment, tired and melancholy. "But more importantly—"

Hiro spins me around just as a wave of vibrations come forward, fast, in a barrage. "Earth elements!" Hiro shouts over his shoulder, and a line of shinobi come forward. "On Ren's count!"

"Now!" I signal, and we flip through hand signs, slamming our palms into the ground and bringing up a counter wave of earth that absorbs the vibrations. The impact is enough to send a spray of sand over us, but I blast it away, saying, "We can't fight them with earth alone! We need wind elements, too, to divert the vibrations—"

"Ren," Shikamaru says, and nudges me to the attention of the battlefield before us. A figure emerges from the dust; my mother with my family at her heels. They are all medics, all their hands alight with chakra. I search the area for my father among the men of my clan, but I can't pinpoint him. He must be here somewhere, though. He wouldn't so quickly abandon a fight like this. He can't.

"Remerging with the greater part of the battle," my mother says, "so assistance will be nearby when you need it. Very good, Ren. But did you realize you would be giving _us_ reinforcements as well?"

"The better to build up your confidence," I say, "so that you will overestimate yourselves and fail in the end. Where's father? He can't witness to my demise if he's not here."

My mother's face falls, and she says, "Neither of us want to see your end."

With that, the crowd of my family come forward, bodies poised for attack. My mother comes for me first, says, "Medical ninjutsu can be offensive as well as defensive. You may have figured that out by now."

I don't dignify her statement with a response, only block her arm with the inside of my wrist, pushing her chakra-coated hands away from me, pulling a kunai from my holster and bringing it up in one smooth motion to slash through my mother's chest.

"That is the disadvantage of using it offensively, though," she says, sliding back as she presses a hand to the gash that rips across her sternum. "It is much too close-range. Plus, it is more draining than using taijutsu alone."

She moves her hands away as her flesh ripples, the edo tensei healing her on its own. She springs forward again, dodging a body that falls where she stood, and twists at the waist, bringing her hands back. I lean aside, pulling the vibrations down. Her knees buckle, causing her to stumble, and her slowed movements give me enough time to charge my hands with chakra, prodding the tip of her shoulder, in the middle of her bicep, moving steadily down her arm to the inside of her elbow, mid-forearm, wrist.

The chakra surrounding her hand flickers, disappears. She leaps a safe distance away, blinking at me in surprise as she rubs her wrist, and says, "The keirakukei."

"I learned a thing or two," I say as shadows rise behind her. "It's not as severe as the Hyuuga's Gentle Fist fighting style, but it's enough to cut off your chakra supply for a few minutes."

"That—" Her body tenses, but instead of being held in place like I expect, she leaps away, avoiding the onslaught of black spikes that the shadows morph into, burrowing into the ground and leaving craters.

I see Shikamaru on the other side of the field, irritated that his jutsu had failed. But then my mother skids behind him, her good hand beaming with chakra. He turns in time to see her, in time to dodge her attack, and I flip through hand seals, slamming my palms to the ground to lift the earth in a wave beneath me, sending me soaring toward my mother.

The wave crashes into her as I jump off, catching others in its current, dragging them under the earth. Shinobi nearby take advantage of the trap and stick seals to the bodies, the seals smoking as the ink writhes over their skin. I land beside Shikamaru, my gaze flickering toward the cliff that rises on the other side of the battlefield. I say, "If we can get them closer to that cliff—"

"Yeah," he says. "Think you can manage that?"

Before I can answer, my mother's voice rings over the din, says, "I'm glad you and Shikamaru-kun are still friends. At least you were not left totally alone all these years. I am—I am all at once overjoyed and sad to see how much you both have grown."

Her voice is soft, a lullaby beneath the fighting, and her words make me step back, push my defenses up. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear her kindness. I just—

"Shikamaru-kun has been good to you," she says, and my breathing quickens, panic rising in my throat because I don't know how to make her stop. "He has been good _for_ you. Even your father can see that, and it makes him sad. That is the only reason he resents the Nara so much. He wishes Sasuke-kun could have been that way for you."

"Stop!" I shout, clenching my hands into fists. "Stop _talking_ to me! Critiquing my technique, telling me my abilities are subpar—that's one thing, but I can't—I can't listen to you _talk_ to me anymore! It just…it hurts. So, please, either kill me or let me kill you because I can't—"

My mother shoots forward, faster than I have ever seen her move. But with the vibrations, I sense her, am able to deflect her arm, holding her in place. The chakra on her hand slices the ends of my hair, and her face is only inches away from mine.

"Once more, then, Ren," she says. "For old time's sake."

I sink down, swooping my leg under her feet. She jumps, yanking her arm free of my hold, and spins toward Shikamaru, who deftly evades my mother's attack. Her arm dives toward Shikamaru's face, but he catches it this time as I appear beside him, jabbing my mother's arm on her bicep, the inside of her elbow, mid-forearm, wrist.

My mother breaks free, sliding back. "If you're right, then this block will only last for a few minutes," she says. "You had better seal me before I regain control of my chakra."

"That's the plan," I say, my hands coming alight with chakra. "Shikamaru, if you would please."

My mother's surprise is evident as Shikamaru's shadow stretches across the terrain. She leaps away until Shikamaru's shadow goes taunt begins to slink back toward us, but when she lifts her gaze from the ground, I am before her, arm reeled back.

She raises her foot, kicking my arm aside with her ankle, bringing her other leg up to kick my jaw. I lean back, the heel of her sandal grazing my chin. But there is a release of chakra and I am sent flying, rolling across the ground.

I cough, tasting metal in my mouth. I spit up blood, my vision blurring in and out as I focus on my mother. She has her feet spread for balanced, her hands still held in front of her. She says, "Tsunade-sama was on to something with her chakra release tactics, wasn't she? I always admired her. I hear she is Godaime Hokage now. I would have liked to see that."

A shower of kunai blaze toward my mother; she jumps, avoiding the onslaught of knives, and I dig my fingers into the earth, pulling up a massive chunk of it and whirling it toward her. She adjusts her body mid-air, brings her heel up to deflect the boulder, promptly causing it to smash into pebbles. But I am already finished with my hand seals, activating the chakra I have seeped into the earth. Pieces of the rubble merge together, sharpen into icicle shapes. They point at my mother like magnets, and with the seal of the dog, the rocks smash back into their original shape and drop to the ground with a heavy thud.

I think I've got her, when cracks appear in the boulder that is my mother. And then the rock blasts apart, a faint chirping ringing through the air, making the hairs on the back of my neck rise. Electricity sparks over my mother's body, and she is placid as she says, "This is what happens when you marry into a family full of earth elements."

I curse, searching the area for Shikamaru, but my mother is already flying toward me again, moving much faster than before. She's using her chakra to increase her speed, I realize as I bounce to my feet. Because her arms should still be disabled, she'll probably focus on lower body attacks. Sure enough, she kicks out, aiming for my knee, but I bring up my own leg, deflect her foot with my calf.

"Why are you involved in the fighting anyway?" she asks. "Rule number two of being a medical ninja is to never engage in battle."

"There are much more capable medical ninja than me," I say. My mother's face crumples and a part of me wishes I had never said it. I remember how happy she had been when I had finally grasped the concept of chakra control and breezed through my medical lessons. "Just like your mama," she'd said, gathering me into her lap and hugging me hard. "One day, you'll surpass even me, won't you, my Ren-chan?"

I had basked in her praise then, worked harder and harder on medical ninjutsu because the idea of gaining a legacy like my mother had was so appealing. For once, I would have an identity outside of being Sasuke-sama's partner. But then the massacre happened and then the bond and then—

My mother's fist shoots out, hitting my shoulder. Though it hurts and sends me stumbling, it will leave nothing but a bruise. She shakes out her fingers, says, "Looks like my chakra control still hasn't returned."

"The electricity," I say, and she blinks at me, her body at once returning to an offensive stance. "How do you do it? Not elementally—just converting your chakra to electricity to use in medical ninjutsu. I saw Tsunade-sama do it once with Sas—with a neurology case. I tried to read up on it, but other things got in the way."

My mother stares at me, her shoulders relaxing. Then she says, "It's a matter of how you form your chakra, rather than how to transform it. Tsunade-sama may be talented enough to transform her chakra into electricity—she may even be a lightning element for all I know—but for those who don't have the lightning release, it's easier to manipulate your chakra into sparks and release them as pinpricks as opposed to all at once."

"Like the vibrations?" I ask.

My mother smiles. "Like the vibrations."

"Okay," I say, catching movement behind my mother. "Okay. I have an idea."

"Quickly, then," she says, straightening, preparing for another assault. "Before I can regain control of my chakra."

The vibrations rise in a storm around me, flurrying my hair. My mother's hand flies through seals, and with a stomp of her foot, electricity surges through the ground, leaving cracks in its wake. But with a wave of my hand, the vibrations push the lightning away, dispersing it until it is nothing but a cloud of sparks.

"That's what happens when you marry into a family that can control the vibrations," I say, and a smirk lilts its way over my mother's face.

I rush toward my mother, the vibrations gathered around my hands in lieu of chakra. She steadies herself and, as I swing the vibrations for her, she concentrates her chakra into her feet, uses it as a boost to get her off the ground. She leaps backward, toward the shadow of the cliff side where it is harder for me to see her movements.

I slow, giving my eyes time to adjust to the sudden darkness ahead, when there is a spark—lightning comes careening out of the shadows, arcing into the sky before striking the ground right at my feet. The lightning barely misses me, but the attack is close enough to force me to a halt, spot my vision with green dots.

I blink away the blindness as I feel the vibrations rumbling, light footsteps speeding toward me. I can sense her well enough with the vibrations to know how she will move, even slightly blinded as I am, but instead of dodging her, I shoot forward as well, prepared to meet her attack head-on. There is not much she can do without chakra to her arms. She is a medic; her fighting style is based on the use of her upper body.

But when I am close enough, I see her feet, coated with a thin layer of chakra. She swings up her leg; I am more careful about dodging this time, but her chakra surges, billowing to graze my shoulder, tear a hole in my shirt and a gash in my flesh. I give a hiss of pain, but am given no time to recover. My mother deftly spins around me; her foot makes contact with my lower back, sends me crashing forward.

I roll onto my back, my body sore from the waist down, and leap out of the way just as my mother brings her heel down. Quickly, I press my hands into the earth, bringing up a wave that encases her foot. But she clasps her hands in the seal of the snake and electricity explodes from the sole of her foot, freeing her.

I flip back to avoid the debris, catch myself on my hands, cartwheel to standing. Digging my heels into the ground, I raise an arm, curling my fingers, keeping just my forefinger aimed at my mother. I hold my wrist, bracing the childish finger-gun I have pointed at her as she stares at the gesture, dumbfounded. I say, "It will be cooler than it looks, trust me. Don't let your guard down. This is a move I've been trying to perfect for years now."

"Which means you haven't perfected it yet," she says. "Which means I have nothing to fear."

She dives toward me. I see, faintly, her hands flickering with her chakra. The block is fading faster than I anticipated—but maybe that is because of my mother's own prowess. This technique is better suited against the layman. It's easy to undo that kind of thing when your knowledge of medical ninjutsu is at the level of my mother. Tsunade, I'm sure, would not even bat an eye at such a technique.

I don't move from my spot, allowing the vibrations to gather in the point of my finger, their buzzing like a hive of bees in my ear. I groan internally, searching the area for Shikamaru as my mother sprints toward me, gaining speed with each step she takes.

I can't wait for him forever.

I release what vibrations I have gathered. They fly at my mother, a fluctuating ball of vibrations otherwise invisible to the eye. But as it bursts through the dust that has been kicked up from the battle, I can see it, a writhing sphere of air.

Unfortunately, my mother sees it, too, and is able to duck beneath it, continuing on her path toward me. I readjust my stance, trying in vain to gather what vibrations I can, but I know I won't be able to do it in time. But this is my last hope, and as she closes in on the last five meters, two and a half meters, one meter—

She is wrenched to a stop, her leg half-raised in a kick aimed for my face. I give a sigh of relief before scowling and saying, "You're late, Shikamaru."

"The vibrations are more effective at a close range, anyway," he says, his voice coming from just over my shoulder. "I thought I would give you the upper hand."

"Ah," my mother says, her gaze flicking toward the ground. "That's why you lured me into the shadows."

"We don't need Shikamaru using up all his chakra, do we?" I say calmly, the vibrations whirling steadily in my finger, growing strong enough to draw a breeze over us. "Maximizing the surface area of the shadows makes it easier for him to capture things without expending too much energy."

There is a spark of amusement in my mother's eyes. "You two make a good team," she says. "But there is one thing you overlook."

Dread fills my stomach, nearly causing me to lose my concentration on the vibrations. "What's that?"

"Shadows," she says, "fade."

The kage bunshin in front of me dissolves, and from behind my mother—the actual her—comes streaking toward me, hands alight with chakra. Her arm pulls back; I hear Shikamaru shout for me to move, but this is my last chance, and if I lose the vibrations now, I will never forgive myself, not when I am so close to defeating her.

I take one wide step to the side; my mother's hand slices through my side, cracking my ribs. I adjust my arm, the vibrations spinning at the point of my finger, aiming it right for my mother's chest. She jerks out of the way, but it doesn't matter because I only need to brush her—and I do, the tip of my forefinger grazing just beneath her ribcage, which is good enough for me. I release the vibrations I have gathered, shooting them into my mother's body with enough force to send me reeling, my arm thrown back over my head. I can feel the vibrations shake through her body, feel them reverberating against her spine, numbing her from the waist down.

I gasp for breath as I catch myself, the vibrations sending a trill through my body, up my spine. A coldness seeps into bones, a shiver I can't shake. But they are much harder on my mother, who staggers into the cliff, unable to maintain her balance. Shikamaru's shadows wrap around her in bands, pasting her to the rock. She struggles against her restraints, but I am already before her. In one smooth motion, I twist, the momentum of my movement carrying my elbow into my mother's cheek. With a surge of chakra, my attack causes Shikamaru's shadows to snap, the rock around my mother to burst and slam her into the ground. The impact is enough to crater the earth and stun her.

Then, without hesitation, I drive my hand through her chest.

She gasps, her breath bubbling up her throat like blood should follow. But she is a reanimated corpse, nothing more than false flesh and memories and words. She and my father and the rest of my family—they are all puppets with nothing to prove.

I pull my arm out of her, rocks coming up through my stream of chakra. I can see straight through her body to the crackled earth beneath, see the puncture my attack has left in the earth.

"It's funny," she says, her chest still heaving unevenly. "My body acts as though it is dying, but I know it can't."

"The edo tensei can't heal you now, either," I say. "I fused my chakra into the vibrations and spread them through your body. Not only are your chakra channels disrupted, paralyzing you, but so are the channels linking you back to Kabuto."

The ground crunches beside me and I look up, find Shikamaru approaching with a blue seal between his fingers. I shake my head, pull out my own black seal. I rap my knuckles against the ground; the earth wraps around my mother, raising her to standing before encasing her tightly in a sarcophagus from the neck down.

"You can't use that attack again, Ren," my mother says and I pause. "The vibrations—"

"I know," I say, pushing myself to my feet. "But I will do anything to keep my comrades alive, and if that means sacrificing myself—"

I wobble, unable to steady myself. Shikamaru takes me by the elbow, helping me up, and I thank him, bowing my head. When I turn back at my mother, I see her glancing between the two of us, light in her eyes. She opens her mouth, ready to speak, but shuts it just as quickly. I consider prompting her to hear what she has to say, but it doesn't matter. Not because she is dead, will be truly dead after I seal her, but because there are some things that a parent will always keep from their child, and sometimes, that is for the better.

"I'm sorry," I say as the earth settles around her. She betrays no fear in her expression, nothing other than seeming content. "I'm sorry everything has ended like this. I'm sorry you had to die for the Uchiha. And I'm sorry I've let you and Father down so much with the path I've taken."

She shakes her head, unwilling to listen. "We are your parents, Ren," she says, her mousy hair trailing over her face as the last of the vibrations die down. "No matter what we do or say, know that we love you. We only ever wanted what was best for you, even if it may not have seemed that way to you. It has been a very long time since I have been your age—but I remember what it was like to be misunderstood by my parents. And now, as a parent myself, I know what it's like to be misunderstood by your children."

"You understood me, Mother," I say. "More than Father ever did. And I do understand, now, that both of your intentions were…good. But I've made my own path. And I don't choose the Uchiha."

I hover the black seal over my mother's tomb. My fingers twitch toward the rock, but—

I look to Shikamaru. He remains at my side, even after all this time, looking more battered than when I had encountered him earlier. There is a cut that runs along his jaw, blood crusting it shut, and the metal plate of his headband is skewed. But he remains here, remains as he always is: my first and best friend.

Shikamaru catches my eye. He nods for me to go on, and when I don't, he moves his fingers over mine, guiding my hand toward the rock. His skin is hot, overheated with battle, his fingertips callused with years of fighting, training. But the weight of his hand on mine is light, gentle, and makes me ache from the inside out.

When the seal connects to the stone, it immediately adheres, black ink swirling over the rock. I flatten my hand against it, and Shikamaru's hand spreads over mine, his fingers filling the spaces between my own. And I stare at our hands, his much bigger, squarer than my own, keeping it in place just as he always keeps me in place.

This is what I choose. Over everything, this is what I choose.

"I choose myself," I say softly, my nails digging into the seal as I watch my mother die before me, one last time. "I choose the Kagiru name. Our clan will not have died in vain. We will be restored with honor and known not only for our loyalty to the Uchiha, but our loyalty to all our friends, all our kinsmen in Konohagakure and across the shinobi nations and we will be a storm. I swear it."

The corners of her lips turn up into a smile, and her cheeks begin to flake. I blink at her in surprise, watching as she dissolves before my eyes into hundreds of shreds of paper.

"Ren-chan," she says, and through the swirl of her body falling apart, tears well in her eyes, overflow down her cheeks. Shikamaru pries my hand from the rock, pulls me back as my mother says, "I love you. I love you so much. You have grown into a wonderful, powerful kunoichi, and I am proud of you. I am so very proud of you."

Her words lift away with the wind, and there is nothing left in her wake except the body of a white Zetsu that remains limp and unseeing in the tomb I created. I stare at it, mildly horrified at this jutsu—this goddamn jutsu—and everything it has done to us. Horrified that such a terrible jutsu has brought me and my mother closure after all this time.

"Ren," Shikamaru says, letting go of my hand. I grasp his wrist, holding him at my side, the image of the Zetsu burning into my eyes.

"Kabuto," I say, turning to Shikamaru, my grip on him tightening. "What reason does Kabuto have to pick on me? I keep running it over and over in my mind, but I can't think of a reason unless he is doing this by Madara's orders. But, even then, what reason—what reason does Madara have to resurrect the whole of my family and have them fight me? What reason would he have for wanting to torture me like this? I haven't done _anything_—"

I stop there, releasing Shikamaru just as someone lands beside me. It is Hiro, again, his hair wisps of light brown, his gaze fierce as he looks between me and Shikamaru. "Glad I found you. Ren, your father—"

"Still on the loose," I mutter. "Don't worry; I'll find him."

"Better," he says. "I brought him to you."


	104. Flare Out with Love

**BOUND  
Chapter 104: Flare Out with Love**

I rise in front of my father with my hand pressed to my ribcage, staunching the bleeding from my mother's attack. My cracked rib isn't a concern—it hurts a bit when I breathe, but I can soldier through it. The bleeding from the wound makes me woozy, though. I'm losing too much blood from it, in addition to the gash on my shoulder and the many little cuts on my body from the onslaught of vibrations.

Comparatively, the edo tensei has kept my father in perfect form. He must see the differences in our conditions too because he sizes me up, looks smug. But when Shikamaru appears beside me, the smugness falls right off his face and his hands roll into fists.

"Hi, Father," I say, and gesture to the boy beside me. "You remember Shikamaru. But you don't know Hiro, do you? He's one of Rei's friends—Rei, the Kannagi who helped me break the bond. Hiro, this is my father, Kagiru Katai."

Hiro looks between my father and me, confused by the formality of my greeting, then to Shikamaru for clarification. Shikamaru shakes his head as though to say, "She's lost it. Just ignore it."

"I'm surprised you've managed to last this long," my father says, and I can't quite tell who he's speaking to because, while I had spoken, he glares at Shikamaru. "Though looking at the condition you're in, it doesn't seem as though you will last much longer."

"You underestimate us," Hiro says curtly. "Ren doesn't keep company with those who are easily overwhelmed. You might do well to have a little bit more faith in your daughter, Katai-san."

"Don't be polite with him, Hiro," I say, waving him down. "He won't show you the same kindness. Do you have a progress report on my family?"

"From what I can tell, only a handful of them remain," he says. "We caught a lot of them in the wave back there, and we should have more than enough seals to capture the rest of them. There is a sealing squad somewhere among us, but I'm sure Rei has given you her own seals to use."

I prod my ribs, trying to gauge the damage my mother has done. "Right," I say, wincing. "We should have more than enough. I've only used a few myself, so—"

I give a hiss of pain as I push down on a particularly sensitive area. My father raises a brow, says, "It appears your mother did a number on you."

"Yes," I say, struck by how tame my whole family has been throughout this fight. With the others who had been revived and controlled through this goddamn jutsu, the attacks had been relentless. But with my family, they stop to talk, to observe. It is an even stranger aspect of the war that I don't understand. "I got her in the end, though. I sealed her a few moments before you arrived."

There is a spike in the vibrations as my father's eyes narrow. He says, "I see. Then perhaps we're not trying hard enough."

I don't have time to ask what he means because he disappears. I'm about to scan the area for him when I catch movement just beyond where he was standing. A barrage of my family fly forward, the vibrations whirling around them. I press my hands together in a seal, dig the heel of my foot into the earth; the ground rises, a wall that pushes my family back.

They break through it with ease, but the delay gives me time to press forward, vibrations gathered in my palms. I begin to move toward them, the vibrations trailing behind me. I swing them forward, and the threads slice through my family, halving them at their torsos. But when they fall over, their bodies find each other again, reconnect. I tsk, knowing I should have pushed more of my chakra into the threads to disable the edo tensei like I had done for my mother.

I prepare to mow them down with the vibrations again when Shikamaru does something I don't anticipate: using kunai, he sends blue seals flying at my family, pinning a few of them. They slow and the earth element shinobi send a fall of earth over them, burying them under rubble. I escape the cascade in time to avoid being caught under the rubble too—but just barely, as one of the rocks slams onto my foot, spraining my toes.

When I am away from the carnage, I fall to one knee, my foot throbbing, and curse. It is a small injury and, frankly, a lame one considering all the other ways I could be hurt in a goddamn war, but it is _my foot_, which is a body part integral to moving, running, escaping.

If I had even had the idea that Shikamaru could have pulled a move like that, I would have gotten away from the crash site faster. Or if he had known exactly how close I was to the cliff, he would have called out to me before springing that attack. But I am not so clever, and he didn't have time—or maybe we are not so close. It's odd that I can be such good friends with him, but we still can't synchronize as well as he, Chouji, and Ino can.

The vibrations flux. I pick myself up, grimacing as pain shoots through my foot. My father emerges from the cloud of dust that has raked up in the collapse. How is it that even after all this, he still has managed to avoid every attempt we have made to seal him?

"You look defeated," he says, and I take a step only to falter on my bad foot. He glances at it briefly, then meets my eyes again. "And you're injured. Unfortunate. But that proves it. You can feel it, too, can't you?" my father says. I expect a smugness from him, but there is only an unseemly sadness. "As well as you and Shikamaru fight together, it does not compare to the fluidity you had when you were fighting alongside Sasuke-sama."

"So you mean just how any shinobi duo would fight?" I counter, annoyed that my father has picked up on my exact thoughts. "Shikamaru didn't kill me; I think that's what matters."

"But enough close calls like that," he says, "and he could very well lead you to your end. With Sasuke-sama, at least you could have always been sure that he could protect you, that you could protect each other."

"Earth elements!" I shout over my shoulder, refusing to listen to my father any longer. "Follow my lead!"

I bring up pillars of earth that my family aptly dodge. I continue to drive them back, pulling up pillar after pillar as I weave around the ones I and other shinobi following my lead have already drawn up, pursuing my father. My family come to a stop just as a pillar breaks overhead, sending rubble crashing down and preventing me from getting to them.

A swarm of my cousins drop in front of me, their bodies swaying with the vibration threads. They swing the vibrations at me, merciless. I surge chakra to my feet, keeping me stuck to the ground as I clap my hands together, fingers pointed at my cousins and the winds headed my way. I open my hands and pull the vibrations around me; the current digs into the ground, burrowing a moat around my feet as I push them back toward my family.

The vibrations I send carry debris in it, and try as my family might to redirect the threads, they are hit by the rocks, knocked off their feet and into each other.

Beneath my feet, the shadows created by the pillars writhe, stretch out to connect to my family's shadows, freezing them in place.

"Nice timing, Shikamaru," I say, and blue seals fly toward my cousins, kunai pinning the seals to their chests. Without delay, I bring up the earth around them, cocooning them, and press black seals to their tombs, sealing them for good.

For a subpar shinobi team, Shikamaru and I do well for each other.

But as I seal the part of my family that has been caught in our trap, I don't find my father. I search the immediate area, but find only a scatterings of my family left, and they are quickly being overwhelmed by the other shinobi. I see Hiro, digging a kunai into a cousin's chest, see another man wrapping an uncle in sealing cloth not far behind me.

We are winning, but I feel no sense of satisfaction.

In fact, it's becoming hard for me to sense anything. I flex my fingers, trying to draw the numbness out of them and heat back in, to no avail. They are cold despite how hard I am fighting.

_You can't use that technique again,_ my mother had warned. _The vibrations—_

I am about to reenter the fray when there is a flash out of the corner of my eye. My father, fist reeled back, comes flying toward me. I leap away, narrowly avoiding his fist, but I feel the vibrations, see them as they ruffle my clothes. They are weaker than before, barely buzzing my skin. I think it is by mere chance and bad timing that he was unable to release an adequate amount of vibrations to affect me, but as I avoid the next attack, I feel the same fluttering of the vibrations.

It doesn't make any sense. What can he possibly hope to accomplish with such a weak concentration of the vibrations? Whatever it is, I shouldn't let myself be hit by them any more. Even a brush with the vibrations can cause scratches, and even small scratches can become lethal.

When my father's foot comes up to my face, there is, again, a light ruffle of vibrations that puffs into my face as I catch his ankle between my palms. I grit my teeth and flip through hand seals. He tugs, but I hold him steady and, with a puff of my chest, I spit out a stream of mud, soaking him through. I release him, shaking mud off my sleeves and going through more hand seals. As my father moves to wipe the mud from his face, the earth hardens, freezing him like a statue. Quickly, I reach into my pouch for a seal, but there is a massive swelling of the vibrations, enough to make cracks vein across the caked earth.

And with that, my father explodes, the debris from the layer of mud shooting like shrapnel across the battlefield. I throw my hands in front of my face to block the attack, but someone dives for me, pushing me behind a pillar. The explosion is much more violent than I had anticipated; the midsection of the pillar, which catches the brunt of the attack, is blown apart. The pillar goes careening to the side, falling askew instead of directly over us, which saves us the inconvenience of being crushed under its weight.

"Shikamaru," I say, breathing hard into his shoulder. I grapple at the back of his vest, pulling him off of me and sitting upright. He is yellowed with dust, his eyes sharpened as he maintains his guard. "Thanks. Thank you."

"Don't mention it," he say, wiping his brow, smearing dirt across his skin.

The dust that blooms up from the wreckage gives us extra coverage as we stay crouched behind the remains of the pillar. We will have a few minutes before my family find me again—before my _father_ finds me again. I lean on the rock, calming my breath, and allow my muscles to relax as much as they can, to see if that will help the feel return to my body.

A plan—I have to come up with a plan. The idea of having to come up with another plan makes me tired in and of itself, and I wonder, briefly, how Shikamaru manages this all the time, the pressure of coming up with the perfect strategy to defeat the enemy. Of course, it probably doesn't take him quite as much effort being that he's a genius, but whatever.

I scowl at him now, scowl at how brilliant he is. I have never resented the gap between our intelligences until this moment, and I think at least, between the two of us, I am the one with the looks.

Anyway, it's not even that Shikamaru is unattractive. Like my mom said, he has become handsome over the years, the angles of his face more pronounced, making him look more serious than the other boys our age. But the reason girls don't swoon over him like they do with Sasuke or Gaara is that Shikamaru is too lazy to want to show off and be cool and impressive and show everyone his true strength. I'm sure if he busied himself with going on more missions instead of messing around with the Chuunin exams, he would have scores of girls lining up him. Plus, that would get Temari off his case, which would be a relief for us both.

Shikamaru turns to say something, but then notices the look on my face. "What?" he asks, glancing over his shoulder to make sure there is nothing else I could be glaring at. "What's wrong?"

My frown deepens in thought. "You told me once that you wanted to grow old," I say and his face crinkles with confusion. "You said you wanted to marry a normal girl, have two kids—a girl, then a boy. You said you wanted to retire after your daughter was married and your son became a successful ninja, and then spend the rest of your stupid geezer life just like you spent your goddamn teenage years—playing _shogi_, of all the games in the world. Then, you want to make it harder on your wife and die before her. Right?"

"Is that—yeah," he says when my scowl doesn't waver. "But what does that have to do with—"

"I don't know if I want to have kids," I say. "And even if I did, I wouldn't care whether I had a boy or a girl first, and if I had a girl I would retire after she became successful in her own right because like hell if I'd let my daughter's security be dependent on whether she marries. And if my good-for-nothing husband spent the entirety of his retirement playing _shogi _instead of doing things with me, I'd leave him, regardless of how many years we were married. Are you following so far?"

"I—"

"After bearing his two children," I say over his bewilderment, "and putting up with all his complaining and then having to watch my husband grow senile playing shogi on our goddamn porch, the only way I would let him die before me and leave me alone would be if I killed him myself. Do you understand what I'm saying? You can't make those kinds of plans. You can't decide those kinds of things without thinking about how other people would feel, how your wife would feel, how your kids would feel. My point is: You'd make a lousy husband, Shikamaru! I'm telling you that as a friend."

He gapes at me, his mouth opening and closing as he tries to find words, but the only thing he can muster is an irritated, "Okay?"

"Okay," I say, rubbing my hands together. "I just wanted to get that off my chest in case I don't make it out of this."

"Ren," Shikamaru starts, admonishing, but the matter-of-fact look I give him shuts him up.

"Don't tell me there hasn't been a moment during this war," I say, "when you thought, 'Surely, I am going to die.' Ever since I saw my family, Shikamaru, I haven't stopped thinking that. There's no hope in convincing me otherwise; trust me, I've tried. I've looked at you, seen you fighting at my side, and tried to convince myself that as long as I have you with me, I can make it through this. But the more I think about it, the more I realize you're going to be the death of me."

Shikamaru is struck speechless, but we are saved the silence that would follow by Hiro, who lands beside us at that moment, looking grim. He says, "Ren, we can't keep going like this. Even though we've dwindled their numbers, they're still overpowering us with the vibrations. You have to do something, and do it soon."

I nod, tell him quickly what I have in mind. Shikamaru scowls at the plan, says, "That forces you to get too close to them. The vibrations will eat you alive."

"My father's tactics are changing," I say. "He's not pushing the vibrations as hard as he was, which means I can get closer to him than before. Plus, with everyone else, we can drive them all into one area and attack."

"The problem, then," Hiro says, "is how they're going to force the vibrations on us once we have them surrounded. If we don't move fast enough, they're going to retaliate and we're going to be blown to bits."

"We'll have to move fast, then," I say, and Hiro sighs.

"Sometimes," he says, "I think you're just as bad as Rei."

"That's why you like me," I answer, and he rolls his eyes. "Go tell the others about our plan before my parents find me. When they do, that's when everything starts. Shikamaru," I say as Hiro leaps off. "This is the part where I ask you to leave."

Shikamaru's displeasure deepens, but, much to my surprise, he relents without resistance. "Even if your father is going easier on the vibrations," he says, "I know as well as you do that the aftershocks can still hurt you, Ren."

"I know," I say, tucking my hair behind my ear. "What matters is that I am able to stop my family. My father underestimates me. He expects me to get close to him, to mess up, so that's what I'll do."

"Plans like these," he says with a sigh, "are why _I'm_ the strategist."

"If you can come up with something better, then be my guest," I say. "But this is what we have right now, Shikamaru, so this is what I'm going with."

Shikamaru's eyes search my face, and when he can't find what he's looking for, he smoothes down his hair, frustration tensing his fingers. "Fine," he says. "Fine, but—"

The vibrations hike and the air around us explodes. I am blown out of my hiding spot, and slam into the ground so hard that I am momentarily paralyzed, momentarily deprived of oxygen. The impact sends shocks to my brain and I sway drunkenly as I push myself up.

I look for Shikamaru and find him nowhere. "Shika," I say, and raise my voice to a shout when I hear no reply. I get to my feet, stagger, trip over something. When I turn over, I find a body with their eyes wide open, their insides blasted out of their torso. They are covered in millions of little cuts that make it look as though their skin has been painstakingly peeled off. I gag.

Fortunately, it's not Shikamaru, but the sight still sends shivers up my spine. I look down at my own hands, find them covered in scratches, find my sleeves tattered, threads fluttering in the breeze that flits by.

"Shikamaru!" I cry, scrambling to my feet despite the dizziness that buzzes in my head. "Shika—"

A hand comes down on my shoulder, turning me. I am met with wild mahogany hair, made even more insane by the battle, I'm sure. The right shoulder of her uniform has been completely torn away, though she doesn't seem bothered by it as she says, "Over here, tonakai."

"Rei," I say in disbelief as she takes my hand, drags me forward, careful to brace me as we step over bodies. "Rei, how—"

"I've quite the affinity for the vibrations now," she says, squeezing my hand. "It's a gift. Nao and I saw you and Shikamaru from a distance, and we saw the attack that blasted you apart and other people to pieces. Nao went after Shikamaru while I found you. We're reconvening. Come on."

She drags me over the carnage and despite the stupor I am in, I follow with relative ease. There is something I need to tell her, something important, I think, and it isn't until I see a figure with wispy brown hair that I remember.

"Hiro," I say. She doesn't falter, doesn't seem to have heard me as she pulls me along, so I say, louder, "_Hiro_. He's alive. He found me earlier. He's here somewhere—"

"Here," Rei says, and pushes me in front of her without acknowledging what I've said. I'm about to reiterate the news when, spread across the ground, I see Shikamaru, Nao kneeling at his side, fingers pressed to his jugular, searching for a pulse.

At the sight of Shikamaru lying out, Hiro is forgotten. I drop down beside Shikamaru, pressing my hands over his chest, and feel his pulse, his lungs filling and emptying under his ribcage. Under the weight of my hands, his eyes flutter, much to my relief. Nao and I help him upright, and he groans, bracing his head.

"Shikamaru," I say, lifting his chin. "Are you all right?"

He blinks at me as though he can't understand what I'm saying. Concussed, I think, taking his face in my hands, but then he meets my eyes and the alertness snaps back and he sits straighter.

"I'm okay," he says, taking my wrists. Instead of pushing me off like I expect him to, his grip tightens, and I can't tell if one of us leans forward or if he pulls me in, but—

"Shikamaru," I breathe, my heart aching in my chest. The bones of his face, sharp beneath muscle and flesh and dirt and blood, dig into my palms. I can feel his pulse racing through my fingers, feel it burrowing deep inside me with every beat. "Shikamaru, you have to go, now, before I watch something happen to you and then I can't—I _can't_—"

"For once," he says, and I squeeze my eyes shut, the rumble of his voice a comfort on my skin. "I can't think of a better plan."

I laugh and he lets go and I let go and Nao and Rei are helping us to our feet. Rei orders Nao to escort Shikamaru back to the other battle—I sigh at the phrase _other battle_, like a child discovering for the first time that a world exists outside of hers—and before they leave, I say, "I'll finish this as fast as I can, Shikamaru. I'll find you again, soon, and you better be alive when I do."

And, in spite of everything, Shikamaru grins, the expression reaching his eyes, lighting him up. I realize I hadn't counted on seeing him smile again, and the sight of it makes my adrenaline rush, makes my confidence rise in my stomach, makes my heart fill to bursting.

"You can count on it," he says, giving me a two fingered salute. "I'll be waiting. So come back, you hear?"

I blink at Shikamaru, recognizing his words. I grin too, amused by his cheek, burning up with love for him, for how he always remembers. And I salute him back, reply, "Where else would I go!"

I want more. I want to say more, do more. I want _him_ to say and do more, for us to have more time together beyond this war, beyond a few smiles filled with memories of a better worse time.

But with that he leaves, leaves me staring after him and Nao, leaves me watching as they disappear beyond the horizon to the greater part of the battle while we finish up here. Rei presses her hand on my shoulder, pulling me back to the fight with my father.

"We'll regroup with them later," she says like a promise. There is an angry red bruise on the line of her jaw, and when she smiles it causes her to wince.

"With Hiro, too," I say, and she falters a bit, says, quietly, "Yeah."

But for now I turn to face my father and the handful of my family that are left. This time, I don't waste time talking; with only a brief glance at my family to gauge how many of them remain, I bolt forward, the vibrations trailing behind me. My father feels the shift in the vibrations, aptly prepares to redirect them, but at the last minute, I change tactics.

I charge my fist with chakra and release it into my father's stomach. His body folds in half, the impact of my fist into his abdomen so forceful that it burrows through the ground, which blasts apart below us, jagged pieces of earth the size of buildings seesawing into the air. I leap back, flipping through seals, and press my hands into the ground. The earth comes up where my father has landed, encasing him. I extract a seal from my pouch, but just as I'm about to place it on my father's tomb, someone grabs my wrist.

An aunt, her face scrunched with determination, yanks me forward, forcing me into a half bow. Her finger digs into a pressure point between my fingers and the seal flutters from my hand just as my father bursts from his tomb. A growl of aggravation rumbles in my throat. I'm able to regain control of my arm and jump, wrapping my legs around my aunt's neck and pulling her to the ground, slamming her face into the rugged terrain.

I flip to standing, my father coming straight toward me. In the few seconds I have before his attack, I search his eyes, expecting to see a blankness to them like I had found in Haku and Zabuza's eyes, like I had seen in Chiyo's eyes. But there is still the consciousness behind them, even though I can feel the malice behind his attack, can feel the intent to kill.

And that shocks me enough to break my guard. He is my father, after all. How can he be so—

My father punches me, his knuckles grazing the bottom of my ribcage. I expect to be blasted by aftershocks of the vibrations, but there's nothing. Not even a little bit of pain from the attack.

But I know what he means to do now, know what he is trying to accomplish through these weak attacks.

Again, my father's fist comes toward me, barely brushing my shoulder, my collarbone, my sternum. Each time, there is only a soft pulse of the vibrations that tickles my skin. The next time my father tries to punch me, I catch it in my palm, twist so that he turns, and shove him toward the ground, bringing up my knee to his face.

There is a crack as he nose caves in on his face. I dispose of him without trying to seal him because I see Rei just a meter away, going hand-to-hand with one of my cousins. Rei dances around the vibrations well enough, but there is a lethargy to her step that makes he stumble, allows my cousin to drive a chakra coated hand into Rei's abdomen.

I blaze forward, vibration threads swarming my fingers. I fall into place beside my cousin, giving Rei the opportunity to leap to safety and take care of herself before rejoining the battle. My cousin's face a blur in the rush and I swing my hands at her head. She ducks, but it is not enough to escape the flurry of the vibrations, which presses into her ears, causes her to stumble enough for other shinobi behind me to incapacitate her and others caught in the wave of vibrations.

I am able to take out five more aunts and uncles when someone manages to catch my hand. Their fingers dig into a pressure point as they draw my arm behind my back. From their vantage, they press me to my knees. Other hands come for me, grabbing my shoulders, my wrists. No matter how I struggle, I cannot get back to my feet, cannot even get slightly free.

The vibrations rub against my ear, a soft current that I automatically jerk away from. But my cousins keep me in place, keep my arms spread open like I am being prepared for crucifixion. My father comes forward, head held high. There is a smoothness to his walk that makes him look like he is floating as he nears, and the illusion is further reinforced by the fact that I cannot feel the the soles of my feet. My body has grown cold in my extremities, numb, and as I am, I am useless.

My father comes to a stop not a foot away from me, his fingers catching my chin, forcing me to look at him. "You poor child," he says, the nubs of his nails digging into my flesh. He'd had a habit of biting his nails in another life, and the jagged ends of them cut into me now, nothing more than prickles of feeling as the numbness slowly spreads to the greater parts of my body. "Deprived of the training and expertise you so desperate need to navigate this life. It is my own fault that you are dying now."

I am momentarily struck by my father's remorse and brought to defenselessness by what my father seems to imply by his statement. He is sorry he could not protect me. He is sorry that I have had to live without him.

But then he says, "I should have trained you harder. As soon as you started fooling around with that Nara boy, I should have had your aunts wipe all memory of him from your mind so you could have focused on what was important to our family."

Of course. How could I have thought my father would feel any kind of remorse?

"Shikamaru was important to me!" I snap, pulling my face free of my father's grip. "I focused on him because he made me believe I could be valuable in ways that didn't involve who I was connected to. Because having your existence depend on one person is so lonely," I say, my words losing steam, my heart aching. "Because once that person is gone, you have nothing. You are nothing. You are lost. You are alone. And I don't expect you to understand that, but Shikamaru—Shikamaru…"

I lose my train of thought as my father moves aside to reveal the boy in question, battered and broken as my uncles shove him to his knees. He staggers, doubling over to catch himself on his hands, and I shout as my cousins grab him by the shoulders, pushing him upright.

He had gone. He had left, and I had watched him, made sure he went away unscathed by my family, and yet here he is now, bloodied with a fat lip and a swollen eye that bubbles over his sharp cheekbones. A gash runs across his brow to his ear, and his ponytail is half in place, his hair brushing the nape of his neck. There is an odd concavity to his collarbone, an unnatural slant to his shoulders as my family move away from him but remain in a circle around him, like a crowd circled around an offering.

"It is harder than you think," my father says, holding out an outstretched hand to Shikamaru, his fingers pointed to the sky, his palm facing out, "to escape the wrath of our family."

"No," I say as I feel the needles on my skin increase, feel the vibrations hike at my father's command.

It starts slowly at first, starts with small rips in his clothes. Shikamaru blinks at his sleeves, at the tears that form on the collar of his flak jacket. But then the vibrations cut into his face, and he winces.

"_No_," I repeat more forcefully, yanking against my cousins who hold me firm. "No, please, Father, I am begging you. Please—_please_!" I cry as the first of Shikamaru's shouts pierce the air, reverberate against my ears with the vibrations. He falls to the ground, dirt flying around him as he writhes in pain, a pool of red gathering around him, blood seeping from the millions of little cuts that carve into his skin. "_Stop_, Father, please stop, _please_—Shikamaru. Shikamaru!"

But my voice does nothing for him, can do nothing for him, and he becomes a blur of red and peeling flesh. I watch Shikamaru—_Shikamaru_ be torn to pieces while I am slumped idly by, all my strength lost as he is lost.

He screams and bleeds and twists in agony as the vibrations eat him alive, and there is no voice left in me to cry or beg, and I cannot even know if I am crying or if it is the vibrations that fog my vision because I can't feel my face, can't feel anything because of the vibrations that drum deep beneath my flesh. I can only hear him dying, moaning my name between breaths and—

No.

_No._

I shut my eyes and will my chakra through my body, will myself out of this illusion. My arms come loose, catching me before I hit the ground. My fingers dip into the vomit that I cough up, that burns my esophagus and leaves an acidic taste on my tongue. And between the coughing and spitting, I gasp and moan, a child waking from a nightmare.

"I would commend you on your ability to break out of my genjutsu," my father says, his voice hollow on my ears, and I look up to find him and not Shikamaru—not Shikamaru—in front of me, looming over me, critiquing me, "but it took you much too long to even realize what was happening. And the fact that you were caught in it in the first place when you should have felt the vibrations—"

With a roar of anger, I raise the earth around me, knocking my family aside, burying them beneath the sand. The shinobi behind me, unaffected by the genjutsu, back up in shock, but then swarm in, seals at the ready before my family can get free of the sand that hangs on their clothes, clings to their forearms. Without waiting for the others, I dive for my father, who had managed to escape the attack. He dodges my punches, my hands enveloped with chakra, and uses the vibrations to send me tumbling, my aim wayward.

Multiple times my hands burrow into the earth, leaving craters in their wake as my fingers drill through the ground. But it takes me too long to recover from having to yank my hands free, so I adjust my holdings, catching myself on my palms so I can bounce back faster, attack my father faster.

His vibrations are softer when he throws them at me. I wonder if it's because of the numbness setting into my bones or if it's because he is showing mercy. Regardless, each time I fall, which becomes increasingly more often as my father whirls the vibrations at me, I charge my chakra to my fingertips, throwing myself to my feet as my father draws me in circles.

Before long, the chakra around my hands begins to flicker. My father mutters, "Foolish," and unleashes a blast of vibrations so strong that I am thrown backward, sent skidding and rolling over the ragged terrain. The rocks dig into my clothes, tearing at them before shredding my skin. But what should be a debilitating pain is dulled to an ache because of the vibrations.

I attempt to push myself upright, but can only remain on my side, braced on an elbow as my father approaches me slowly, eyes brimming with distaste.

"To waste your chakra on such relentless attacks when you should have been focused on keeping your distance. Not to mention, the vibrations are eating you from the inside out. All those threads that grazed you soaked through your flesh and shake your bones. They are destroying you. That is the true power of our kekkei genkai, Ren. It is a silent killer. And you. You were so afraid of your own family," my father says as my chest heaves for air, "that you didn't notice you were already dying."

"No," I say, holding out my fist to stop him from coming any closer. "You were so bent on killing your own child that _you_ didn't even notice."

I open my hand, activating the chakra mines I have laid, and the earth around my father crumbles. I hear him shouting as he falls into the crater I'd created from one of my attacks, covered, and painstakingly led him over so I could finally, _finally_ capture him.

He's not the only one who is caught in the makeshift sinkhole. I feel the vibrations of other bodies, the last of my family, hitting the ground, activating the other chakra mines I had placed under the earth that erupt now and encase my family. The free shinobi around me are quick to jump in and place the blue tags on them, disabling them until I can press Rei's black seals on them.

Hands reach for me, lifting me off the ground. "Grab the black seals in my pouch," I order as my teammates brace me. "We need to get them sealed as soon as possible to reduce the risk of them breaking free again. _Now_, everybody, grab a seal and pass it on. Not him," I say, stopping the girl who approaches my father. "I'll seal him myself."

The shinobi at my side leave, distributing what few seals I have left in my pouch. Someone hands me the last one and I take it with a curt nod. I take a moment to sort out the numbness in my stomach, the coldness that begins to overtake my fingers before limping toward my father as he pulls himself together from his fall. He shakes his head out, blinking hard as I come forward.

"'Each time you fall,'" I say, smoothing the seal between my fingers, "'you dirty your palms, but at the same time, you plant the seeds for growth.' You told me that once. Who knew it would come back to ruin you like this? I was going to ask you if you had any last words," I say loudly as my father opens his mouth to retort, "but then I realized I don't want to hear it. I _trained_," I say. The ferocity I use to speak causes my lungs to hitch, for the pain to exacerbate in my side. I give a hiss of pain and take a deep breath before continuing.

"I trained," I say again. "Without _anyone_ to teach me about the Genshindou like I needed, without mother to teach me about medicine like she was supposed to. I lived on my own for ten years because _you_ couldn't distance us from the Uchiha. I survived on my own for _ten years_ because this bond took everything—_everything_—away from me. It _killed_ you, Father, killed our family, and it was going to kill me too. That's why I broke it. So how—how can you still root for them? How can you still support them knowing how much they've hurt—everyone?"

My father remains stoic, unresponsive. I sigh, hobbling closer to him to lay the seal on the rock. "I'm sorry, actually," I say, and at that he raises a brow. "Don't get your hopes up, old man. I'm not sorry to you or our family or the Uchiha. I'm sorry that we ended up this way. Well, I guess sorry is the wrong word. I'm…I'm _sad_. I'm sad that I never got to study our techniques and learn our family secrets with you and Mother." I press the seal to the rock, flattening it against the jagged edges. Black marks sink across the casing, swirling up to my father's neck, painting his skin. "I'm sad that our closure has come to this: this battle and this—all this arguing. I'm sad this is how it has to end."

I close my eyes, readying my feet to turn and leave my father behind, but then I hear, "You've become strong."

I freeze, thinking I'm mistaken in hearing the voice. The vibrations have burrowed too deeply, messing with my senses. But then it comes again, and I turn around in time to see my father, the black seals completely covering his face now, with his eyes still wide open, blinking at me.

"W-what?" I say, straightening. "What did you say?"

"Despite not having us to teach you," he says, "you've learned more than—you've become strong," he repeats with a nod. "It's a true testament to the will and resilience of our clan. A testament to your own strength, your own capabilities. Even without us, you've become strong, Ren. I…"

"You what?" I demand, approaching his stone again. "You _what_? F-finish your sentence, you goddamn—you bastard," I manage before losing steam, falling to my knees as the pain in my abdomen spreads to my hips, making it hard for me to stand.

He can't finish his sentence, anyway. The seal has gone into effect, sealing him, his consciousness, and it would be foolish of me to claw it off just to hear my father's last words, words I claimed I hadn't wanted to hear in the first place.

I duck my head into my chest, my heart splintering at the echo of my father's voice, my mother's voice. There is a thickness in my throat I cannot swallow, and even though I knew the war was going to be awful, I did not quite anticipate this, did not anticipate this kind of psychological agony.

_I am so very proud of you._

I press my hands to my face as I start to cry, the wind whipping my hair all around me. Someone comes up beside me. They say my name softly, and I know the voice at once. Rei wraps her arm around my shoulders, and leans her head against mine, squeezing me against her. It only causes me to cry harder, even though I know this is a bad time and just because we've beaten one battalion doesn't mean I can let my guard down.

But _I am so very proud of you_ and _You have become strong_ and _We love you._

These are blows that hit harder than any physical attack, and I wonder if this had been part of my parents' strategy to foil me all along. How am I supposed to recover from that? That kindness and love I have missed out on for the past decade?

"Hey," Rei says, smoothing down my hair. "It's okay. It's over."

But I can only think _no, it is not okay._ It is by no means okay that this is what it has taken for me to get closure. It's not okay that I have come this far only to regress into a child.

My fight with my parents may be finished, but this war is far from over. Until Kabuto and Madara are dead, this will never end.

"I'll kill him," I say. Rei startles, pulls away from me. I get to my feet, standing taller than before, striking the tears from my face. "I'll kill that bastard if it's the last goddamn thing I do. Kabuto, Madara, whoever—I'll kill them myself if I have to."

Rei doesn't protest, only watches me as I turn my back on my father, who had spoken much less than my mother, but who I got just as much from. He was never a man of many words, but now I understand—everything he has done, even fight me without mercy like he did, all of it was, he believed, for my own good.

I can't condone the way he treated me when he was alive or the way he went about treating me still after he was revived. But I understand it now. And underneath it, underneath everything, all the time, there was only ever love. A twisted love, one full of fear for me and my future, but a love all the same.

I will be better than my father. I hope I can be better than my father. I know I will be angry sometimes, and I will be mean sometimes. But, when all is said and done, I will love without discretion or ultimatums, fully and completely, until I am bursting. I will love like Naruto and Sakura love, with infinite hope and utmost confidence. I will love because, in the end, that is all we ever need.


End file.
